Despite limited resources and often overworked staff, a number of innovative New York nonprofits manage to provide lifechanging alternatives to young people caught up in the criminal justice system. To support these organizations and attract talented students and scholars to the youth justice field, The Pinkerton Foundation joined with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2012 to develop a unique fifteen-month paid fellowship program.

Combining rigorous academic preparation and work with a scientist on an authentic research project, The Pinkerton Science Scholars Program aims to provide a transformative educational experience for talented high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The program builds on the success of the Science Research Mentoring Program developed by the American Museum of Natural History.

Designed to foster a new culture of reading in an impoverished, academically struggling community in Queens, South Jamaica Reads knits together and expands a continuum of literacy services for children from birth to fifth grade. With the help of local businesses, health providers and the library system, ten Pinkerton-funded organizations working together have produced very promising results.

When robert pinkerton and George Gillespie formed the Foundation they had no idea what it would eventually become or of the lives it would eventually touch. They had no idea society would go from embracing the notion of rehabilitation, to rejecting it, to tentatively embracing it again.

Malike sidibe was born in 1997 in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Africa, his father’s native land. His father moved to America a week after Malike was born, and Malike and his brother moved with their mother to Guinea, her birthplace. He didn’t see his father again until 2008, when his dad returned to Africa for a few months to visit.

Even as the foundation has grown and developed new ambitious programs, it has endeavored to hew close to its original purpose—making a positive difference in the lives of young New Yorkers who might otherwise fall short.

With the death of Ann Pinkerton in November 2010, questions about the Foundation’s mission were again front and center. Joan Colello, who had run the Foundation practically since its beginning, was then in her mid-seventies and decided to retire. The board turned to Richard Smith, a tall, affable former editor-in-chief and CEO of Newsweek magazine who joined the Pinkerton board in 1996, and offered him the reins.

Pinkerton tapped into the new thinking by reaching out to several of those deeply involved in the field. At one point, Executive Director Joan Colello invited Sister Paulette to a Pinkerton board meeting to discuss youth development. “It wasn’t codified. It wasn’t anything,” said Sister Paulette; but her views nonetheless reflected a deeply-felt philosophy that was mirrored by the work of Cahill, Murphy and others in the field.

New York was recovering from a near financial collapse and also coping with a so-called crack epidemic. Geoffrey Canada, an educator and youth worker who became head of the Harlem Children’s Zone, recalls returning from Boston in the 1980s to a Harlem that “was just chaos and despair—abandoned buildings, trash, graffiti, filth.”

The saga of the Pinkertons began in Chicago around 1850 when Allan Pinkerton, a native of Glasgow, Scotland and Robert Pinkerton’s great-grandfather, launched what was to become Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. Pinkerton, whose father was a police sergeant in Glasgow, served briefly as a Chicago detective.

In 1966, america was in turmoil, roiled by the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, resurgent feminism, and a brutal fight for civil rights. The Ballad of the Green Berets, a tribute to a soldier slain in Vietnam, was the nation’s number one record.

About Young People

READ MORE

About Youth Programs

READ MORE

About the Foundation

READ MORE

Fifty years ago, when Robert Pinkerton met with his young lawyer to lay out his estate plans, he had no idea what ripples those decisions would set off. As the last member of the Pinkerton family to run the fabled (and once notorious) private detective and security firm, Robert amassed substantial assets, and he knew he was in failing health.