vercoming obstacles community courtsovercoming obstacles workshop brought together an extraordinary...

OVERCOMING OBSTACLESTO COMMUNITY COURTSA SUMMARY OF WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS

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C O M M U N I T Y J U S T I C E S E R I E S

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

Bureau of Justice Assistance

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OVERCOMING OBSTACLESTO COMMUNITY COURTSA SUMMARY OF WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS

U.S. Department of JusticeOffice of Justice Programs

810 Seventh Street NW.Washington, DC 20531

Janet RenoAttorney General

Raymond C. FisherAssociate Attorney General

Laurie RobinsonAssistant Attorney General

Noël BrennanDeputy Assistant Attorney General

Nancy E. GistDirector, Bureau of Justice Assistance

Office of Justice ProgramsWorld Wide Web Home Page

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov

Bureau of Justice AssistanceWorld Wide Web Home Pagehttp://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA

For grant and funding information contactU.S. Department of Justice Response Center

1–800–421–6770

This document was prepared by the Center for Court Innovation under grant number96–DD–BX–0090,awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance,Office of Justice Programs,U.S.Department of Justice. The opinions,findings,and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official positionor policies of the U.S.Department of Justice.

The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which alsoincludes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justiceand Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

OVERCOMING

OBSTACLES TO

COMMUNITY COURTSA SUMMARY OF WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS

November 1998

NCJ 173400

From the Director

The movement to make our nation’s local justice systems more respon-sive to the citizens they serve is clearly one of the most important develop-ments in criminal justice in recent years. At the heart of this movement aretwo innovative tools: community policing and community courts. Thesetools are bridging the gap between the ideal of responsiveness and thehard, daily work of meting out justice in America’s cities, suburbs, andrural areas.

The Overcoming Obstacles Workshop described in this BJA monograph,the first in a new series on community justice, offers us the rare opportuni-ty to listen in as representatives of eight cities discuss how they haveadapted the community court model to their neighborhoods’ unique needs.Their conversation is valuable because it is frank. Community courts chal-lenge traditional thinking about how the criminal justice system best func-tions. The inevitable resistance to this change, from both inside andoutside the justice system, has created obstacles for community courtplanners at every stage of the process.

The discussion in this monograph explores these obstacles and how citieshave responded to overcome them. Community court planners in New YorkCity and Hartford, Connecticut, for example, have found new ways toaddress the common problem of finding adequate funding for a court withintheir local justice systems. Their experiences offer important lessons forother justice systems just beginning to consider alternative funding sources.Other critical issues examined at the workshop include navigating local poli-tics, deciding the kinds of cases the community courts will accept, reachingout to allies within the system to overcome resistance, and ensuring that thecommunity is genuinely involved in the court’s operations.

It is our hope that this monograph stimulates innovative problem solvingfor court planners who are working to create and improve communitycourts. The nation’s first community court planners must be countedamong our most important pioneers in community justice. Their experi-ences will be a valuable source of guidance as we prepare America’s crim-inal justice system for the 21st century.

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Contents

I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

II. Obstacles and Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Politics: Neighborhoods and the City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Funding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

What Kinds of Cases?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

System Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Community Service and Social Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Jail Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Specialty Courts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

The Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

III. Selected Remarks of Workshop Speakers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

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I. Introduction

“When the Bureau of JusticeAssistance and the Center for CourtInnovation first decided to hold aworkshop with the theme ‘obsta-cles,’ the idea was not warmlyreceived,” John Feinblatt, directorof the Center for Court Innovation,remarked at the outset of a Decem-ber 1997 conference in New YorkCity on implementing communitycourts. Court planners told himthey would prefer a workshop thatfocused on communities’ successesin establishing community courts.Focusing on obstacles, however,turned out to be a good idea. TheOvercoming Obstacles Workshopbrought together an extraordinarygroup of people from across thecountry who are confronting similarproblems. This report, the first in aspecial BJA series on communityjustice, is a summary of their discussion.

The Center for Court Innovation’sOvercoming Obstacles to Com-munity Courts Workshop was heldDecember 4 and 5, 1997, in NewYork City. The workshop’s partici-pants comprised representatives ofsix major urban centers (Balti-more, Maryland; Indianapolis,Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota;Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; and St. Louis,

Missouri) and two smaller cities(Hartford, Connecticut, and Hemp-stead, New York) that are workingwith the Center to develop a com-mon vision of the role of communi-ty courts in the criminal justicesystem.

Also in attendance were New YorkState Chief Judge Judith Kaye, U.S.Deputy Assistant Attorney GeneralNoël Brennan, Bureau of JusticeAssistance Planning and PolicyDirector Timothy J. Murray, andmembers of the Center for CourtInnovation staff.

Representatives from the eightcities expressed similar reasons for needing a community court intheir community. All recognized theserious problems caused by quality-of-life crimes such as shopliftingand other thefts, panhandling, pros-titution, and low-level drug posses-sion. The incidence of such crimesis increasing in cities across thecountry, and the traditional courtresponse to them has been ineffec-tive. Offenders cycle through thecourt process—arrest, arraignment,ineffective sanctions, return to thestreets—and little or no impact ismade on either the individualoffender or the overall incidence oflow-level crime. Most jurisdictions

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OVERCOMING OBSTACLES TO COMMUNITY COURTS: A SUMMARY OF PROCEEDINGS

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are by now familiar with someform of community policing; pros-ecutors are increasingly interestedin finding more creative ways todeal with low-level offenses. Formore and more communities,community courts look like thelogical next step.

The workshop attendees havesimilar goals for the courts theyare planning to create. They seek a court process that imposesimmediate, meaningful sanctionson offenders, is visible to the com-munity, and has the capacity toaddress the social problems thatunderlie minor crimes. They be-lieve that a court should be deeplyinvolved in the community itserves and that community resi-dents should have a continuingrole in court operations. Specifical-ly, they want to make social serv-ices available onsite or throughongoing arrangements with pro-viders who can enroll clientsimmediately after court disposition.

Moreover, they would like thecourt to develop relationships withbusinesses, civic groups, and uni-versities. Some have plans for formal community advisory boardsto monitor court activities, partici-pate in setting court policies, andhelp develop appropriate sanctionsfor crimes committed in theirneighborhoods. Workshop atten-dees also expressed interest in thecomputer database of the MidtownCommunity Court in New York,

recognizing that sharing informa-tion quickly is essential to the success of any community court.

On other issues, however, thecities represented at the workshopdiffered. While the six large citiesenvision community courts that arebased in neighborhoods, Hartfordand St. Louis are planning centrallylocated courts that will serve theentire city. Hartford has a popula-tion of 125,000, the size of a big-city neighborhood, and St. Louishas a population of 400,000.

And while all of the court plan-ners at the workshop saw theircourts handling criminal misde-meanors, the Hempstead, Indian-apolis, and Portland teams had acivil role in mind as well. Neigh-borhood disorder, the Indianapolisteam pointed out, arises from prob-lems that are better addressedthrough civil law. Two commonexamples are infractions of healthand safety code violations andlandlords who rent to drug dealersor otherwise allow properties toturn into public nuisances. ThePortland team proposed combininga criminal court for quality-of-lifeoffenses with small claims andlandlord and tenant courts to dealwith disputes among neighborsthat sometimes escalate intocrimes. The Hempstead team sug-gested involving the communitycourt in juvenile and housing court matters as well as cases normallyfiled with the criminal court.

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Introduction

Other differences in approachstem from cities’ varying jail spacecapacities. In New York, the Mid-town Community Court has jailbeds available onsite and uses thethreat of incarceration as a “ham-mer,” pushing offenders into com-munity service, drug treatment, andsocial service-related sentences.Several cities have modeled pro-grams after Midtown’s approach.

However, in other cities that face shortages of jail space,notably Hartford, Minneapolis, and Portland, the credibility of the“hammer” approach is eliminatedby court orders requiring automaticrelease when the jail populationreaches a certain threshold. In St. Louis, limited jail space forfemale offenders has created sucha problem for prostitution arrests.

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Politics: Neighborhoodsand the City

In theory, the location of a city’sfirst community court should de-pend upon the living conditions,needs, and level of criminal activityin the city’s neighborhoods. Whereare the concentrations of arrestsfor offenses the community courthas targeted? How do these arrestscoincide with the existing bound-aries of police precincts? Locatinga community court near high-concentration crime areas facili-tates the quick arraignments, sentences, and assignments tocommunity or social service pro-grams that distinguish communitycourts from traditional courts. Italso makes the court more acces-sible to the public it serves.

Despite this logic, all of theworkshop participants agreed thatcourt planners must deal with fund-ing issues and local politics thatmay be the deciding factors indetermining the location of a city’sfirst community court. For exam-ple, although the prototype MidtownCommunity Court had plenty ofquality-of-life crimes to deal with in its Times Square neighborhood,it benefited greatly from the con-current desire of powerful businessand political interests in the city to clean up the area. Community

courts looking for federal fundingmay be best located in a neighbor-hood that qualifies for funding fromthe Weed and Seed Program. Thelocation of a city’s first communitycourt may reflect a compromisebetween ideal and reality. The goalshould be to preserve enough ofthe ideal so that a successful firstcourt can serve as proof that theconcept works.

As the community court conceptgains a positive national reputa-tion, it becomes hard to site acity’s first court in one neighbor-hood without incurring the resent-ment of others suffering fromsimilar problems. The resentmentgrows, especially during periods of scarce public resources, when it becomes apparent that the newcommunity court is benefiting from substantial startup fundingthat might have been put to otheruses. Such pressure prompted theSt. Louis planners to declare thattheir community court will servethe entire city. “In St. Louis, thefactor is politics,” explained theleader of the St. Louis team. “If we were to say, ‘It’s going in thisneighborhood because it has bigproblems,’ we’d get into a scrapwith people saying, ‘We have thoseproblems too.’ Doing it citywide is a way to get around politics.”

II. Obstacles and Issues

Other workshop participants dis-agreed with St. Louis’ approach. “I find it hard to see how you cancall it a ‘community court’ if it iscitywide,” said a court plannerfrom Indianapolis. “Such a court,”he said, “is just another specializedcourt downtown.”

Some participants observed thatother courts with special missions—drug courts, housing courts, anddomestic violence courts—arebeginning to proliferate. A down-town community court with city-wide jurisdiction may duplicateservices provided by other special-ized courts and begin to be super-fluous. With no distinctive geographicbase, it could find itself at a com-petitive disadvantage for resourcesfrom private funders and the courtsystem. Those at the workshopwho felt strongly about locating acourt in a neighborhood and limit-ing its jurisdiction to that commu-nity suggested ways to get aroundpolitics. They suggested startingsmall, without much citywide pub-licity, and emphasizing the experi-mental nature of the first court withthe promise of replication in otherneighborhoods if the experimentproves a success.

The St. Louis team said that itscourt will distinguish itself by itsapproach—swift and immediateconsequences that combine pun-ishment with help—rather than itslocation. “If people see that there’sa difference as a result of thisapproach, that’s what matters,” a St. Louis planner said.

The leader of the team fromHartford, where the communitycourt will also serve the entire city(although Hartford is about one-third the size of St. Louis), saidthat his group sold the court byemphasizing that it will operateoutside the present judicial struc-ture. In that way, they distinguish-ed it from the failed approaches of the past.

The workshop did not resolvewhether it is possible to have acommunity court that is not locat-ed within a community. The experi-ences of Hartford and St. Louismay provide the answer.

FundingCommunity courts may cost

more than traditional courtsbecause they take on expandedroles and responsibilities. To theextent that they operate more effi-ciently, moving offenders fromarrest through arraignment morerapidly and imposing alternativesentences that cost less than jail,they may realize some savings. But the increased investment insuch courts also promises largerdividends, notably greater publicconfidence in the courts and crimi-nal justice system, an improvedenvironment for economic invest-ment in distressed neighborhoods,and possible reductions in crime.

Community courts can seekfunding from a wide range ofsources, including some that arenot usually involved in criminal


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justice. When searching for funds,planners need to determine whowould be interested in the project,who has a stake in the court’s suc-cess, and how much they can con-tribute. In particular, the strategyshould be to seek out contributionsand grants from respected sourcesand then use those commitmentsto persuade others to participate.Greg Berman, a member of theNew York team, described how theCenter for Court Innovation foundfunding for a second New York Citycommunity court in the Red Hooksection of Brooklyn, an area withneither an affluent business com-munity nor a powerful politicalconstituency. By first attaining aplanning grant from the city’s pub-lic housing authority, the groupwas able to secure funding fromthe U.S. Department of Justice(DOJ) and the City of New York.The effort reflected “good analysisof who are the stakeholders,”Berman said.

Funds may be available fromfederal programs that do notexplicitly target community courts,such as programs that promotepublic health or fight substanceabuse. Cities may also be eligiblefor money available through theExecutive Office for Weed andSeed by locating community courtsin Weed and Seed neighborhoods.

Some court planners at theworkshop recommended beginningwith government funding sourcesbecause private donors will likelyask why they should pay for a

criminal justice function that oughtto be financed with tax dollars. Ifpublic funding becomes an issue,participants suggested ensuringthat private funds would be allocat-ed only for capital and startupcosts that the city cannot currentlyafford.

Private funders may also beapproached with the compellingargument that the communitycourt is an aid to economic devel-opment. Such a court would focusintensively on a community’s pan-handlers, drug dealers, prostitutes,and shoplifters, who create a hos-tile environment for retail businessand real estate investment. Courtsanctions would put them to work,cleaning up the neighborhood andmaking it safer. The court wouldalso use its considerable power to push offenders into programsthat would help them improve their lives, potentially eliminatingthem as sources of trouble in theneighborhood.

In addition, the court would bedeeply involved with communitymembers, including private fun-ders, and would seek out their help in identifying the community’smost urgent problems and devisingpractical ways to address them.Foundations, citywide businessgroups, civic organizations, realestate and merchant’s groups, and others interested in criminaljustice reform and the city’s qualityof life would likely respond to sucha partnership, and local institutionscould serve as an important source

Obstacles and Issues


of nonfinancial resources such ascleaning and painting supplies forcommunity service crews.

A member of the Hartford teamreported that he developed a strongrelationship with an important localinstitution, Trinity College. Its pres-ident pledged to provide studentinterns, computer resources, andfundraising assistance. In manycommunities, forming a partner-ship with a college or universitycould provide a low-cost way for a court to conduct research andevaluations to help it shape anongoing program and document itsprogress for funders, the criminaljustice system, and the public.

What Kinds of Cases?All of the planning teams partici-

pating in the Overcoming ObstaclesWorkshop expect their city’s com-munity court to handle low-level,quality-of-life crimes, but they also acknowledged that the term“quality of life” is broad. Planningrequires careful choices. Shouldthe court focus its resources onprostitution? Street drug deals?Public intoxication? Petty theft?When making such critical deci-sions, the court must involve thecommunity. A basic principle ofcommunity justice is that a neigh-borhood’s perception of its crimeproblems should be taken as seri-ously as the priorities establishedby law enforcement professionals.

Court planners need to find alliesin police departments and prose-cution offices who understand the

importance of ceding their tradi-tional crime analysis strategies toone based more on research intocommunity life as it is actuallylived by residents. For example,although crime reports show aconcentration of petty thefts orvandalized cars in a community,residents may be more concernedabout aggressive panhandling andprostitution that creates a sense ofmenace on the streets. To conductsuch research, the court’s plannershould meet with business owners,landlords, tenants’ associations,and civic organizations. However,these groups are likely to see thecourt’s inquiries as an opportunityto pursue their own agendas, andthe court may want to convene its own meetings with residents or even conduct door-to-door sur-veys. These tasks could be turnedover to a college class as a socialresearch project, or a local marketresearch firm could be persuadedto make a pro bono contribution ofprofessionally conducted consumersurveys and focus groups.

While every team at the work-shop realized the importance ofcarefully deciding what types ofcases a court should focus itsresources on, one planner cau-tioned that too much time andeffort could be wasted on oneissue. “It’s okay to start small, to go somewhere with a magis-trate, a prosecutor, and X numberof cases,” he suggested. “Just start doing it somewhere in a community by identifying a


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manageable number of cases thatresonate with the neighborhood.”

System ResistanceWith its efficiency and focus on

accountability, a community courtis likely to disrupt the culture oftraditional courtrooms, where law-yers long ago found ways to turninefficiencies to their clients’ ad-vantage. A good computer data-base and information-sharingsystem may shift power from theprosecutor or the defense attorneyto the judge. People who sense that they are losing power andinfluence usually find ways toundermine the institution thatseems responsible. Police officers,meanwhile, may object to an unfa-miliar court routine and an empha-sis on crimes that they do notconsider serious.

Workshop attendees suggested a number of strategies to over-come or at least minimize suchresistance, including:

• Make the rational case. Defend-ers of the status quo typicallydo not admit that they are sim-ply trying to protect their turf. A traditional court’s failure tohave an effect on quality-of-lifecrimes should be easy to docu-ment with statistics about dis-missals, sentences to timeserved, and the return of offend-ers to lives of low-level crime.“The way to get people to acceptchange,” one participant said, “is to hold up a mirror to them,

let them see where the gaps are,what the problems are.”

• Build on existing understand-ings and informal arrange-ments. In traditional lowercourts, prosecutors and defenseattorneys often find themselvesstriking deals for probationdependent upon communityservice or attendance at drugtreatment or other social serviceprograms. They can be persuad-ed that the community courtprovides a structure for gettingsuch results more often with agreater level of accountability.

• Find good allies. Most policeofficers and prosecutors are nowfamiliar with the principles ofcommunity justice. In manyprecinct stations, it is possibleto identify a few officers whorespond to the idea of commu-nity policing and pursue it withenergy and imagination. Youngprosecutors are often appalledby the conditions they find intraditional lower courts and areintrigued by the possibilities of amore creative approach. Suchpeople should be brought intodiscussions of the communitycourt at an early stage, both towin their support and to takeadvantage of their knowledge of the neighborhood and the criminal justice system. Theymay respond positively to theidea of participating at theground floor of an innovativeproject that promises successand recognition.



• Understand how the court willchange the culture of the localjustice process and sell theidea to people who could bene-fit. A community court’s fastpace and information technolo-gy may enhance the power ofits presiding judge. These fea-tures could become importantselling points when recruiting agood judge. Police officers mayobject to the idea of a court thatprovides speedy arraignmentsbecause it promises fewer lucra-tive hours of overtime. Policemanagers, however, are likely toendorse the idea for exactly thesame reason. Community patrolsupervisors could be shown howa court willing to provide socialservice referrals and neighbor-hood work crews can becomean invaluable resource for com-munity policing.

Community Service andSocial Service

Traditional courts have a longhistory of sentencing offenders tocommunity service. Should a newcommunity court depart from thistradition? If existing communityservice programs are rigorous andrelevant to the community, the new court may not need to departfrom them at all. But if, as is oftenthe case, compliance rates for traditional community service pro-grams are low and the work assign-ments mainly benefit downtownpublic agencies, the court shouldinvest its resources in a new ap-proach. What this really means is

identifying work the communitywould like done—cleaning up apark or empty lots in the neighbor-hood or washing graffiti off build-ings. The Midtown CommunityCourt went so far as to set up anonsite community service projectin the form of a letter-stuffing andmailing shop that puts offenders to work for the benefit of neighbor-hood organizations. Communityservice projects in the courthouseor nearby in the neighborhoodmake immediate assignments possible. Instead of being told toreport back in a few days to startwork, the offender may be escort-ed by court officers directly fromsentencing to the office of the per-son scheduling community service.As resources permit, the courtmay want to consider fielding itsenforcement officers to follow upwhen offenders fail to appear forcommunity service assignments.

In every community court,accountability is crucial. From thebeginning, the community courtmust track community servicecompliance rates not only to keeppressure on the program to main-tain compliance, but also to justifycontinued financial and politicalsupport.

The community court’s need for immediacy argues strongly fordeveloping an onsite social servicecapacity, despite the need forspace and staff that this activitymay create. John Feinblatt, direc-tor of the Midtown CommunityCourt, told workshop participants


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that Midtown’s planners investedconsiderable time in getting toknow potential service providersand learning about what might bepossible. Moreover, discretion wasnecessary in selecting partners.“Some we turned away,” Feinblattsaid. “Some we decided to use on a referral basis, and some weasked to set up shop at court.”Because many of the agenciesinvolved did not receive budgetsupplements to pay for their workwith Midtown, the court supportedthem in other ways, including providing free office space, com-puter access, subway tokens forclients, and other amenities. InNew York, Feinblatt said, socialservice agencies working in tradi-tional courts were treated as“stepchildren working out of clos-ets. We tried to reverse that tomake them feel appreciated.”

As for the types of services acommunity court should offer,Feinblatt indicated that the MidtownCommunity Court addressed theproblem with research early in theplanning stage. Midtown’s plannersconducted focus groups with drugtreatment center residents and then developed an assessmentquestionnaire for their intake work-ers that was tested on offendersarrested in the neighborhood forthe kinds of crimes the court wouldhandle. Even with this assessmentsystem, Feinblatt reported that thecourt made some mistakes. Theonsite services for homeless andrunaway youth were dropped after

learning that these youth are not a significant part of the court’sbusiness.

Jail SpaceHow should community court

planners cope with the commonproblem of lack of jail space?Some workshop attendees saidthey would use the enticement ofdeferred prosecution when courtorders prevented the crediblethreat of jail for offenders who donot complete their community orsocial service obligations. Feinblattchallenged that idea, pointing outthat this activity prohibited anyratcheting up of sentencing alter-natives for people who do notcomply with their sentences or whore-offend. Communities may notbe willing to accept a court thatputs offenders to work in theirneighborhoods if it is not preparedto jail them when they re-offend.

A Hempstead planner suggestedassigning a range of hours of com-munity service, permitting thecourt to increase the number ofhours for offenders who do notcomply with the initial assignment,followed by jail for repeated non-compliance. A Hartford plannersuggested using electronicallymonitored house arrest when jailcells are not available.

Tim Murray, Director of Planningand Policy for the Bureau ofJustice Assistance, argued thatcommunity court planners shouldnot assume that the jail-space



problem is insurmountable. “I havebeen listening to all of you attackthese humongous problems andtry to make some inroads,” hesaid. “But when you get to crowd-ed jails, you say, ‘Oh, we can’t doanything about that.’ The fact is,all of these jail crowding problemscan be resolved. You can find waysto save space. You are makingextraordinary progress for court-rooms and prosecutors’ offices.Why not think about doing thesame for jail space as well?”

Specialty CourtsSome workshop participants

noted that specialty courts, includ-ing drug courts, housing courts,domestic violence courts, andenvironmental courts, are nowcommon in communities acrossthe country. Specialty courts usetheir power to address the seriousunmet needs of troubled communi-ties instead of simply disposing of criminal cases. They alsoencourage the judiciary to rethinkits role. Some workshop partici-pants looked forward to setting upcommunity courts that could coor-dinate efficiently with existing spe-cialty courts, finding rational waysto share resources. An abandonedbuilding that has become a hang-out for a gang of juvenile drugdealers, for example, could be afocal point for a community court,a juvenile court, a drug court, anda housing court to work together

with prosecutors, city police, andfederal marshals.

At the same time, however, theproliferation of specialty courtscauses some court planners toworry about their uncoordinatedexpansion, with camps formingaround juvenile courts, drugcourts, and others, all with differentagendas. Because specialty courtstend to cost more than traditionalcourts, there is a real danger thatcompetition for the court system’sfinite pool of resources will restrictuseful cooperation. Also, wheresome court administrators see anopportunity for coordination andsynergy, others may see the poten-tial for wasteful duplication ofeffort. How, for example, should acommunity court and a drug courtdivide up responsibility for misde-meanor drug offenses?

At what point does a jurisdictionhave too many specialty courts?To what extent are communitycourts similar to other specialtycourts and how do they differ? Can proliferation of specialty courts ever eliminate the need fora community court? How should such issues be handled? Althoughworkshop participants did not arrive at clear answers to thesequestions, they all agreed that theyare important questions and meritcontinued discussion as the com-munity court movement expands.


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The CommunityAll of the teams recognized

that community courts will fail ifthe public sense of communityinvolvement is not genuine anddoes not continue after the court’sopening. They discussed a numberof ideas for maintaining strong tiesto the community, including:

• The court’s physical setup andoperating style should be invit-ing, not intimidating. Lobbysecurity measures should movevisitors through metal detectorsand into the courtroom withminimal hassle. The judgeshould acknowledge visitors’presence and explain the pro-ceedings. Computer terminalsshould give members of thepublic access to public areas of the court database and allowvisitors to submit queries andcomments to judges and courtadministrators. (A Hartfordjudge reported that he hadalready set up an “Ask theJudge” e-mail address.)

• Concern for the court’s ongoingrelationship with the communityshould shape the communityservice program. Communityservice sites and tasks shouldbe developed in consultationwith neighborhood groups.Community service work crewsshould wear identifying jacketsor vests. Community servicejob-site developers should look for opportunities to put

offenders to work alongsidecommunity residents on neigh-borhood projects. Attendeeswith experience managing com-munity service programs saidthat they had found thisapproach to be successful interms of compliance and posi-tive community response.

• The court should establish for-mal structures to keep the community involved. Someattendees proposed creating a full-time community liaisonposition and discussed estab-lishing community advisoryboards that would meet regular-ly with court officials to discusscrime problems in the neighbor-hood and the court’s possibleresponses to them. Workshopattendees emphasized, however,that the court may have prob-lems with these groups if therelationship is not treated care-fully. The court should inviteideas from the advisory boardon possible community servicesites and possible sanctions forcertain kinds of offenses, but itshould not give the advisoryboard the idea that it can tell a judge what sentences toimpose.

Ultimately, the success of anongoing community relationshipmay depend on the personalities ofthe court’s administrator and judgeand how they deal with communityleaders.


III. Selected Remarks of Workshop Speakers

15

During the course of the work-shop, four speakers addressed theworkshop participants. The follow-ing are summaries of their remarks.

Judith Kaye, New York StateChief Judge, proposed somethemes for the workshop. First,New York does not regard the Midtown Community Court as “the answer” for all jurisdictions. It would not be appropriate, shesaid, to take the Midtown Com-munity Court example and simplytransplant it to other jurisdictions.Instead, she hoped that attendeeswould take ideas developed in New York and adapt them to theircircumstances.

Second, she noted that Midtown’splanners do not view the court asstatic, a work that has been com-pleted. “We are constantly chal-lenging ourselves,” she said, “torevisit what we are doing, to makeit better.” In the past year, thecourt has begun providing healthcare, job training programs, andoutreach services to the homeless.

Third, she said, the idea of thecourt is an occasion for us to ques-tion the role of judges and the roleof courts and to ask ourselves

whether we can do things better.And if so, how?

Fourth, she reported that theMidtown Community Court hasalready yielded lessons that can be applied elsewhere—specifically,with domestic violence courts anddrug treatment courts. New Yorkcourt planners hope to move theMidtown Community Court modelinto the family court.

Noël Brennan, Deputy AssistantAttorney General and coordinatorfor community justice initiatives in the DOJ Office of JusticePrograms, said that communityjustice is about rethinking the crim-inal justice system and developingpractical, problem-solving modelsfor the delivery of justice. “What is most exciting,” she explained,“is that this has encouraged part-nerships between traditional andnontraditional participants inaddressing crime and promotingpublic safety.”

Creating community courts willengender partnerships and plan-ning among the local judiciary, lawenforcement personnel, prosecu-tors, public defenders, correctionsofficials, and faith-based and


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nonprofit groups engaged in thedelivery of social services andorganizations involved with sub-stance abuse and mental healthtreatment. She reminded partici-pants that Attorney General JanetReno has emphasized the impor-tance of these partnerships in howwe do our work. Through thesepartnerships, it is hoped that com-munities will continue to strategi-cally plan for the delivery andadministration of justice at thelocal level.

“You are making the concept of community justice a reality,”Brennan said, commending theefforts of the workshop partici-pants for taking the steps to de-velop community courts as aninnovative model for communityjustice in their respective cities.

Julius Lang, Director of MidtownCommunity Court, described thecourt’s new Street Outreach Serv-ices Program, in which casework-ers work with community patrolofficers in outreach teams thatseek out homeless people, prosti-tutes, and others who might benefitfrom the court’s social service pro-grams, inviting them to come intothe courthouse for help. “Some ofthese people have been arrestedbefore,” Lang said. “Some of themno doubt will be arrested again.What we are doing is trying, togeth-er with the police, to convince themto come back to the court andaccept services.”

People ask, he said, Why is acourt doing outreach? Do you nothave enough business? Accordingto Lang, while a traditional court’smission is to process the casesthat are brought in and move themon, a community court has thebroader objectives of preventingcrime and solving problems incooperation with the police and thecommunity. With these goals inmind, community court outreachmakes sense.

The Street Outreach ServicesProgram has increased contactswith police officers at all levels,which Lang believes has helped to create a strong, positive rela-tionship between the court and thepolice. The police now appreciatethe program because it enhancestheir interaction with the communi-ty as well as with the court. Atpublic meetings, Lang said, peoplein the community are asking, Whatare we doing about homelessness?The police are able to point to thisprogram.

Tim Murray, Director of Planningand Policy, Bureau of JusticeAssistance, argued that the Mid-town Community Court is at a“dangerous” point because, as itattracts attention, it inspires ill-considered imitations. “Avoid thetemptation to replicate what hasbeen shown to you as a model,”Murray said. “When you look at the model, look hard, becausewhat you’re seeing is not a

17

Selected Remarks of Workshop Speakers

courtroom in a theater district.What you’re seeing is a new way of involving partners to address problems.”

Murray told the story of a Mid-western prosecutor who learnedfrom other law enforcement offi-cials about a six-block neighbor-hood with a high incidence ofstreet robberies. He proceeded toput together a task force of local,state, and federal law enforcementgroups to deal with the robberyepidemic. When he convened ameeting of neighborhood residentsto explain the plan and enlist com-munity cooperation, he was metwith questions about used con-doms littering the streets of theneighborhood because of prostitu-tion activity. “What about the streetrobberies?” the prosecutor asked.The residents told him that theywould get to the street robberies,but first they wanted action on theprostitution problem. As a result,the prosecutor shifted strategiesand formed a task force on streetconditions, whose organization and work came to resemble acommunity court project.

“We have this huge temptation to be smart,” Murray said, “becausepublic officials think the publicexpects them to know what to do.Unfortunately that attitude oftenprevents officials from listening tothe communities they are sup-posed to serve.”

When the planners of the MidtownCommunity Court visited Miami’sdrug court, Murray recalled thatthey told him that they did notthink the work of the Miami courtaddressed the issues and concernsthey faced in Manhattan. But theystill found the visit useful.

“They didn’t see a judge dealingwith addicts to try and get themclean and sober,” Murray said.“They saw the power of the courtapplied to problem solving. Theysaw that you could get togetherwith a public defender, a prosecu-tor, a judge, and service providers,and sit down until everyone reach-ed consensus on a common goal.”

That’s the lesson of Midtown: byengaging the very people we pur-port to serve, we do a better job.


Bureau of Justice AssistanceInformation

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Callers may contact the U.S. Department of Justice Response Center for general informa-tion or specific needs, such as assistance in submitting grant applications and informationon training. To contact the Response Center, call 1–800–421–6770 or write to 1100Vermont Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20005.

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