HIDDEN ISSUES: BRINGING THE COMMUNITY INTO LAW & ORDER

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THE CENTER FOR COURT INNOVATION, leader in community justice programs,
is now celebrating its tenth anniversary. One of its projects, the Red
Hook Commnity Justice Center, has helped crime in the Brooklyn
neighborhood drop 62%. Bronx Community Solutions has placed more than
18,000 misdemeanor offenders into blended punishment-assistance
programs. An internal study finds a 71% drop in recidivism in its drug
courts. There are now some 2,500 community courts nationally and more
than a dozen in Britain and South Africa. The Center is working with
officials in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

http://www.courtinnovation.org/

[Bragging rights: Greg Berman, executive director of the CCI, was once
an intern at the Progressive Review]

BRONX COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS - "When I came to Bronx Community Solutions I
was labeled a criminal and now I am getting a trophy and being called a
champion." That's what one of the members of the Bombers said while
Bronx Community Solutions celebrated the first season of the our
basketball league. The trophies were shining and the young men were
smiling as the celebration took place: as they collected their trophies
everyone enjoyed food, drinks and praise for these young men changing
their lives. . .

"I enjoyed playing basketball instead of spending time getting in
trouble"

"I enjoyed playing against the police instead of being arrested by the
police"

"It was a lot of fun with giving back to the community . . . "

This pilot program was aimed at changing police and community youth
perceptions of each other from antagonist to comrades. Officer Warren
Thompson of the 46th Precinct received a plaque for his help in
organizing police officers for the Bronx Bombers to play against and
expressed how eager he was to participate in the next season. . .

http://changingthecourt.blogspot.com/

LOS ANGELES BUSINESS JOURNAL - In order to tackle the homelessness
problem in a more comprehensive fashion, the establishment of a
Community Court should be considered for Skid Row. This is what New York
City did in 1993 to help stop the deterioration of Times Square and the
theater district in midtown Manhattan. Such a Community Court would deal
with quality of life crimes - public intoxication, illegal panhandling,
public nuisance - committed in that area, and would link the people
committing those crimes to needed services and housing and/or offer
alternative sentences like community service to improve the area.

This unique problem-solving court was developed by the Center for Court
Innovation as a new and more effective way to deal with the special
problems in New York. It has been highly successful for a number of
reasons. First, it is located within the area where the quality of life
crimes are committed and is accessible to the defendants so they can
respond to their citations. A single judge plays a critical role in
ensuring the success of the court, so there is a more meaningful outcome
from the criminal justice system and more individual accountability and
responsibility by the defendant. The typical revolving door does not
exist.

The city or district attorney, public defender and court coordinator
work as team to determine what is in the best interests of the defendant
and the community. Justice is swift and alternative sentencing or
referral to service and treatment is made to fit the needs of the
individual person.

The city of Santa Monica and the Los County Superior Court have
established such a court in Santa Monica thanks to the help of the Los
Angeles County Board of Supervisors. In its first 10 months, the Santa
Monica Homeless Community Court has achieved the following outcomes for
70 participants: 31 (44 percent) received an emergency shelter bed; 25
(36 percent) engaged in drug/alcohol treatment; seven (10 percent)
placed in permanent housing; 13 (19 percent) accessed mental health
treatment; 34 (48 percent) had citations or warrants dismissed upon
program completion. . .

As Malcolm Gladwell reported in his 2006 New Yorker article "Million
Dollar Murray," in the early 1990s Dennis Culhane, who is now a
professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the foremost
researchers in the field, found that New York was spending at least $62
million dollars annually to shelter 2,500 chronically homeless people.
Boston Health Care for the Homeless, a leading service group for the
homeless in Boston, has tracked the medical expenses of 119 chronically
homeless people. Over five years the group, minus a few who died or were
sent to nursing homes, accounted for 18,834 emergency-room visits at a
minimum of $3,000 per visit. Researchers at the University of
California-San Diego Medical Center followed 15 chronically homeless
inebriates and found that over 18 months those 15 people ran up bills
that averaged $100,000 per person. The 10 years that Murray, a
chronically homeless man from Reno, Nev., spent on the streets cost $1
million.

http://www.communityinvestmentnetwork.org/single-news-item/
lexis-single-news-item/article/community-court-could-help-
address-la-homeless-problems/?tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=43&cHash=fc1750ff26


VANCOUVER SUN - This year we will inaugurate Vancouver's first true
community court. It is essentially a pilot program of quickstep
proceedings for nuisance inner-city offenders who pose little risk of
violence. . .

One of the biggest concerns in the criminal system for more than a
decade has been repeat offenders -- often addicted and usually homeless
-- who commit petty offences. It is positively medieval to imprison them
and you can't sentence them to house arrest since they have no address,
so what do you do?. . .

Community courts were established in the U.S. in the last century (and
they have since sprouted elsewhere in the world) to deal with criminal
matters that shouldn't be consuming expensive court and correctional
time. They have proven to work.

Under their aegis, as in the similarly designed specialized drug courts,
qualifying offenders are given more attention than normal and channeled
towards help rather than imprisonment.

They provide a quick response to offenders by and large living below the
poverty line, committing dumb property crimes to supplement welfare at
best and at worst pay for a habit.

Instead of jail and correctional officers, the offender is introduced to
the official panoply of B.C. Housing, welfare and mental health workers.

In theory, the court cuts across the independent silos of the various
government ministries to provide an integrated solution that helps
rather than punishes the offender. . .

We need a community court because our health and social programs are
inadequate, our safety net so frayed, too many people are falling
through the cracks.

http://www.vancouversun.com/digital.

TOMOS LIVINGSTONE, WESTERN MAIL, UK - Wales is to get its first
community court later this month, giving residents a say on how
offenders will be punished. The new Community Justice Court will be
based in Merthyr Tydfil, and will see magistrates and court staff
working alongside community groups to tackle anti-social behavior and
help reduce re-offending. Although sentences will still be passed by
magistrates, residents will be able to suggest suitable punishments for
minor offences.

The courts were introduced in Liverpool in 2005, inspired by successful
schemes in deprived parts of the US. Since then 10 other courts have
been set up in England. The courts look at ways to reduce re-offending,
and are intended to liaise with agencies which work to cut drug and
alcohol abuse, as well as housing and employment agencies. The judges
and magistrates involved are intended to hold regular meetings in the
community in order to gain an understanding of local problems.

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/01/05/
residents-get-a-say-on-punishments-91466-20315554/


KENNEBEC JOURNAL, ME - Two years ago, when students at the Troy A.
Howard Middle School in Belfast misbehaved, they wound up in the
detention room for an hour. The room usually held about 14 students
every Tuesday and Thursday, overseen by a teacher who shared the
after-school duty.

Today the scene at the middle school detention room is entirely
different. The room often is empty because no one has misbehaved. When
it is occupied, students and teacher sit in a circle and talk.

The changes in the detention room, school administrators say, are the
result of a program called restorative justice, which tries to teach
students the consequences of misbehavior. Not only do students openly
discuss their infractions, but they must apologize and make restitution
in some way. "It has been a huge, huge positive," Principal Kimberly
Buckheit said.
Widely used in juvenile criminal justice systems, restorative justice
practices are moving into classrooms across the country. . .

The Regional Education Alternative Learning School, an alternative
school for seventh- through 12th-graders with campuses in Windham and on
Mackworth Island, has used restorative justice techniques for the past
five years, with help from a grant from the Department of Corrections
Juvenile Justice Advisory Group.
Students may choose to attend a community resolution circle led by a
teacher.Each student must tell the other students in the circle what he
or she did.

The other students and any victim who agrees to participate discuss how
the student's misbehavior affected other people at the school. The
student must come up with a way to make restitution through some sort of
community service, such as cleaning a teacher's classroom or -- in the
case of a food-throwing incident -- helping the janitors clean the lunch
room. . .

Community circles have been incorporated into classroom instruction as
well, because the techniques give every student a turn to speak,
Buckheit said.

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/4655061.html

AUBREY FOX, GOTHAM GAZETTE -  When Emily May set up the Web site Holla
Back with six friends in October 2005, she didn't expect much response.
. . Inspired by Thao Nguyen, whose decision to snap a cellphone picture
of a subway rider masturbating led to a high-profile arrest and
prosecution, Holla Back gives visitors, mostly women, a forum to post
photographs and stories about their experiences being groped, catcalled
or otherwise sexually harassed in public.

It didn't take long for the Web site to catch fire. "It was wild," said
May. . . Little is known about the precise extent of harassment, despite
an avalanche of anecdotal information and some small-scale surveys. . .

In a rare attempt to quantify the frequency of street harassment,
Nielsen interviewed 100 subjects (including some men) in the Bay Area.
Fully 62 percent of the women reported experiencing offensive or
sexually suggestive comments "every day" or "often." An additional 28
percent said they heard comments "sometimes." Only 10 percent of the
women she interviewed said that they "never" heard comments.

http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/crime/20080124/4/2412/

HOLLA BACK
http://hollabacknyc.blogspot.com/

SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1990 - The decline of the older city is
intimately related to the problem of crime.  One need not get into a
chicken-and-egg argument to recognize that the failures of urban policy
contribute to crime and crime contributes to the failure of cities. The
question is: how to be interrupt this destructive cycle? The
conventional answers -- more police and more prisons -- not only haven't
worked they are beginning to bankrupt a number of cities.  As with the
economy and the environment, we have to engage in lateral rather than
incremental thinking if we are to come up with solutions that will
really make a difference.

There are a number of things that could be done, but none are more
important than restoring the community to the focus of our attempts to
obtain social order.  Most law and order stems from personal and
community values or peer pressure of one sort or another.  Yet our
prescription for law and order in the city tends to ignore the role of
the community, using as its surrogate vastly over-extended police
departments and courts.

There is no substitute for organic social order, as even totalitarian
countries have discovered.  To create this organic system of justice, we
must return to the community and build our justice system out from it.

Community courts and neighborhood constables are one way of re-creating
community law and order. Back in the 60s I took part in a debate with DC
public safety commissioner Patrick Murphy and a representative of the
International Chiefs of Police, making the argument that the
centralization of the local police department and deployment of officers
to squad cars was moving in the wrong direction. The police reporter for
the Washington Post  turned to the person next to him and asked, "Who is
that nut?"

Now, more and more cities are moving towards this concept, calling it
"community policing." Recently, even as mainstream a figure as Matthew
Crosson, chief administrator of New York state courts, called for the
creation of community courts in neighborhoods to handle minor crimes. It
should be noted, however, that neither the current view of community
policing nor Crosson's idea of community courts go far enough in
bringing the community into the justice system. For the system to really
work, both police and courts not only have to be in the community but of
the community as well. The power as well as the structure has to be in
the neighborhood.

SAM SMITH, GREAT AMERICAN POLITICAL REPAIR MANUAL, 1997  - What law
enforcement tool does every shopping mall and big office building have
-- but not most neighborhoods? Their own police force.

It is hard to imagine how we can restore order to our communities
without giving them some role in creating and maintaining this order.

Think, for example, about what typically happens when a kid first gets
into trouble -- minor shoplifting, vandalism, a fight. The police are
called to the scene. And what do the police do? They remove the young
person from the very community against which the crime has been
committed. The implicit message is that your sin is against the city or
the country or the state, not against your neighbors or your community.
Thus, from the very start we teach the wrong lesson.

Imagine instead that the community had its own constables -- with police
training and powers -- but who lived in the community, were known in the
community and helped the community maintain its own order. In minor
non-violent offenses, the first person on the scene would be the
constable, who could quickly bring the offender before a community
judicial board instead of waiting months for the matter to wend its way
through the normal judicial labyrinth. If found guilty, the offender
would have to provide restitution or perform community service.

Neither is the notion of community-based restorative justice untested.
Writing in The Progressive Review, David Spero described how western New
York's Genesee County found itself with overflowing jail cells. It
turned to community service sentences and to recruiting non-profits,
schools, churches and road crews to assign hard work in lieu of jail
time. As Spero noted, for the criminals working with such institutions
it "was often their first positive contact with anyone in authority."

Then the county developed a system of victim support, including
restitution from offenders. A felon diversion program allowed screened
offenders a chance to put their lives together while their case was put
on hold. Only 5% of those in the program turned out to be repeat
offenders. Spero described one case:

"An 18-year-old sniper on LSD seriously wounded two passers-by. He went
through diversion for 18 months, including victim-offender conciliation.
This conciliation helps victims heal and forces offenders to confront
the pain they have caused. The young sniper finally received a short
jail sentence plus community service and now works, pays taxes, and
raises a family in Genesee County."

Communities can get involved in other ways, as in the a victim-offender
mediation program of LA's Centinela Valley. Director Steve Goldsmith
told Spero how is works:

"First we get the victim to agree to mediation, then the young offenders
and their parents. We hold the sessions at a place convenient to the
victim, with two volunteer mediators who have gone through 40 hours of
free training. The mediators let the victim and offender work out the
solution. The important thing is the kids have to hear the consequences
of their actions on others.
Such programs take a lot of effort. There are about 200 volunteer
sponsors and victim advocates in the Genesee program and more than a 100
community agencies working with offenders. "

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