To combat domestic violence, all segments of a community have to work together to send a consistent message that violence is not acceptable. Domestic violence courts can play a critical role in raising public consciousness and convening disparate partners to improve interagency communication.

Create strong linkages with a wide range of partners. Because of its complexity, domestic violence inevitably involves a variety of local systems, agencies, and individuals. Recognizing this, domestic violence courts should aspire to expand the range of organizations that are involved in the court’s efforts. Partnerships between the domestic violence court and the many agencies that provide victim assistance/advocacy and defendant monitoring help to strengthen the message to the defendant—and to the community—that domestic violence is not tolerated.

Convene regular meetings with criminal justice and social service partners. Interagency collaboration is crucial to ensuring communication, consistency, and continuing education about the court and domestic violence. The domestic violence judge can be a catalyst, providing leadership to the collaboration. Judges should invite all of the court’s partners—representatives from the prosecutor’s office, the defense bar, court officers, victim advocates, resource coordinators, batterers intervention programs, and probation—to participate in regular meetings. The meetings create an opportunity to clarify and understand the court’s expectation of everyone’s roles. Partner meetings can also focus on strengthening outreach to underserved communities and devising preventive education models. Partners, meetings in Westchester County, for example, frequently draw representatives from as many as fifty agencies to share new strategies and form new linkages.

Provide court personnel and partners with domestic violence education and training. Domestic violence courts can continually educate and update staff and partners by scheduling regular court-sponsored trainings. In New York’s domestic violence courts, trainings have been held on a variety of topics featuring a wide range of both local and national experts. Trainings have ranged from “Domestic Violence 101” presentations held during Domestic Violence Awareness month to more in-depth day-long presentations focused on specific issues such as the overlap of child maltreatment and domestic violence. The goals of these trainings are really twofold—to provide ongoing support and reinforcement on domestic violence issues to court personnel and partners as well and to highlight the court’s commitment to handling domestic violence cases in an educated and serious manner.

To gain insight into questions about problem-solving courts and their expansion, in 2003 a Center for Court Innovation research team conducted four focus group sessions (in Burbank and San Francisco, California, and in New York City and Rochester, New York) and several individual interviews among a diverse group of judges with experience in drug courts, domestic violence courts, mental health courts, and other collaborative justice courts in those two states. In total, 35 judges participated in this exploratory research. The findings, although not necessarily representative of the general population of problem-solving court judges, provide important insights into the potential transferability of new practices to general court calendars. In the following excerpt, the question of how domestic violence courts compare to other problem-solving courts is addressed.

 

 

Focus group participants noted that there is a divide between domestic violence courts and other problem-solving court models, a divide marked by significant differences in philosophy and practice. This suggests that there may be no single, universal body of problem-solving principles and practices. It also suggests that the type of problem-solving court experience judges have had may influence how they view problem solving and what they consider to be transferable components. This fact was frequently acknowledged, both explicitly and implicitly, in exchanges among focus group participants.

Perhaps most significant for this discussion, domestic violence courts do not view defendant rehabilitation as a high-priority part of the problem-solving process. This differs sharply from most problem-solving courts (with the possible exception of community courts). Rather, the mission of domestic violence courts concentrates more on the promotion of victim safety and offender accountability. In focus groups, judges further discussed the differences between domestic violence and other problem-solving courts.

Domestic Violence Court Operations
Based on experience, one judge believed you could effectively apply all the core problem-solving court practices in a domestic violence court, except that it would be inappropriate for the courtroom to applaud defendant compliance, and you would need to tone down the use of incentives and sanctions. However, most judges articulated major differences between domestic violence court operations and those of other problem-solving courts. The primary difference concerned the basic dispositional processes in the court. In domestic violence court, unlike in most other problem-solving courts, the determination of guilt is an integral component, which often leads to an adversarial atmosphere in which defendants deny culpability and resist participation in community-based sanctions and services.

This tension persists even in post-disposition monitoring, one judge in the Rochester group noted, because domestic violence courts will not tolerate violent recidivism the way a drug court might tolerate relapse: “There is an immediate punishment for any kind of behavior like that.” As another judge in that group pointed out, domestic violence courts have really adopted only the punitive tools of behavioral modification; there are sanctions but no rewards. Explained a New York City judge, “We don’t clap when you complete a domestic violence accountability program.” Again, this view of the adversarial nature of domestic violence court operations was not universal. One judge believed a truly collaborative approach could emerge by building trust over time among the judge, district attorney, and public defender.

Another key difference is court volume. domestic violence court judges reported that they had staggering caseloads, far more than in other problem-solving courts. This left them with little time to spend either on individual interactions or on return court monitoring appearances; as a result, some judges were forced to rely on probation for monitoring.

Finally, a few judges remarked on the procedural challenges posed in domestic violence courts by evidence-based prosecution and victim recantation, both issues that rarely arise in other courts. These two issues, which can take up substantial amounts of court time, require both the judge and attorneys to have technical expertise. Indeed, one of the areas in which domestic violence courts were seen as very similar to other problem-solving courts was in the need for specialized knowledge.

Program Mandates
While drug court judges frequently stressed the need to understand the psychopharmacology of addiction, there is no equivalent concept in domestic violence. One cannot describe domestic violence in terms of a disease model, and there is no known “cure.” So while the process of placing and monitoring defendants in batterer intervention programs may seem similar to that of placing and monitoring defendants in substance abuse or mental health treatment, some judges observed that it is done with a different intention. Batterer intervention programs may be mandated as much for purposes of supervision and punishment as for rehabilitation.

Overall, domestic violence courts do share several common features with other problem-solving courts: a larger team composed of judge, attorneys, resource coordination staff, and treatment representatives; community outreach; monitoring and accountability; and extra information about defendants and their compliance. But most judges cited other features as noticeably absent: substantial time for each case; non-adversarial deliberations; and interactive, theatrical dimensions with respect to the judge-defendant-audience relationship.

 

In the fall of 2002, the New York State Unified Court System unveiled new technology designed to support an experiment in judicial problem-solving—the Harlem Juvenile Intervention Court, a community-based juvenile drug court that links delinquent youth to drug treatment and services such as counseling, tutoring and positive social activities. The goal is to give young people the structure and support they need to avoid further criminal behavior.

The Juvenile Intervention Court Application—developed by the Center for Court Innovation with support from the State Justice Institute—is a computer software program that uses Intranet technology to create an electronic workplace for the diverse group of players who participate in a juvenile drug court. Addressing the information challenges unique to a juvenile drug court, the technology enables judges, attorneys, probation officers, case managers and service providers to access information quickly and easily within the strict confidentiality guidelines of Family Court.

In developing the application, the New York State Unified Court System and the Center for Court Innovation drew on experience designing innovative technology for four other problem-solving courts: the Midtown Community Court, the Red Hook Community Justice Center, the Brooklyn Treatment Court and the Brooklyn Domestic Violence Court. These courts have all demonstrated that technology can increase a judge's ability to make informed decisions, enhance the accountability of offenders and promote collaboration among court partners.

Development of the Application
The first step was to create an advisory committee made up of court staff, service providers and community-based organizations. This committee helped identify the kinds of information the court and other players needed about each case, gave feedback about the design of screens and tested prototype versions of the application as they were developed.

Ideas came from all quarters. The judge, for instance, requested that each defendant's compliance information appear in reverse chronological order so that he could quickly review the most recent information first. Case managers wanted an assessment tool that allowed them to home in quickly on specific areas such as school information, home environment details and self-reported drug and alcohol use. The advisory committee also stressed the need to restrict access to drug-test results.

Planners decided to use Intranet technology for the application. The New York State Unified Court System's Intranet is a network accessible only by court system employees or others with formal authorization. An Intranet web site looks and acts just like any other web site, but the firewall surrounding an Intranet fends off unauthorized access. The application is easy and inexpensive to maintain because it uses software and hardware that are widely available, easy to support and familiar to many users. Unlike with older technologies, an authorized user can get online with just an Internet browser, proper security access and a network connection; there are no additional installation requirements.

Plus, since the database is accessible by web servers, the data can be utilized in other web-based applications. For example, the Juvenile Intervention Court created a companion Internet application—the Juvenile Intervention Network. Developed with support from the United States Department of Commerce's Technology Opportunities Program, the Network gives off-site partners, such as attorneys, service providers and even the young people access to communication tools and information about ongoing cases.

Easy-To-Use Application
The Juvenile Intervention Court Application is as an easy-to-use application with a point-and-click user interface and enables team members to:

• Build a profile of each participant, placing the respondent in the context of his or her family, school and peer group;
• Create a comprehensive plan of action mandated by the court;
• Share appropriate information among court partners; and
• Keep track of each participant’s progress in fulfilling a complex service plan.

The system was designed for use by all members of the Juvenile Intervention Court team, including the judge, clerks, attorneys, court-based case managers and service providers. By ensuring that all of the players at the Juvenile Intervention Court are on the same page, the system strengthens judicial decision-making, improves inter-agency coordination and promotes accountability.

Although the Juvenile Intervention Court Application was created specifically to meet the needs of Harlem, it can serve as a blueprint for any jurisdiction that is interested in developing a system for use in a juvenile drug court. It can be adapted for other specialized courts, also, such as family treatment courts and mental health courts, that involve family members and multiple service providers in complex service plans.

 

In an effort to bridge the worlds of research and practice at a critical moment in the life of drug courts, the Center for Court Innovation, working with the U.S. Department of Justice, brought together in November 2003 a select group of state administrators and drug court scholars to discuss a series of important questions: What can researchers tell state officials about drug court operations and impacts? What can’t they tell them that they need to know? Going forward, are there a handful of strategic investments in research that would reap significant dividends for the field as a whole? And how will state leaders know if their efforts to promote statewide drug court reform are successful?

One thing became quickly apparent during the conversation: as in many areas of social policy, researchers and practitioners rarely talk to one another. Indeed, the scholars at the table lamented that research had not played a particularly influential role in shaping drug court policy to date.

Why is that so? There were several reasons cited at the roundtable, but they all spoke generally to a single theme: the cultural divide between research and practice. This divide has several dimensions. One is philosophical: Urban Institute researcher Shelli Rossman summarized this neatly when she observed that “researchers start with the assumption that an intervention does not work and try to disprove it . . . . Practitioners, however, want to start from the position that they’re doing something that they already know works.”

Another dimension is practical: researchers tend to talk to one another, rather than to practitioners whose work they are studying, observed University of Pennsylvania scholar Douglas Marlowe. For Hennepin County, Minnesota Chief Judge Kevin Burke, the issue is the differing reward systems for both professions. While researchers worry about getting papers published, judges worry about getting re-elected and re-appointed.

Although research may not have been integral to drug court development to date, this may soon change. While the first phase of the drug court movement was dominated by individual judicial leaders at the grassroots level and the second phase by drug courts’ success at attracting the attention of decision makers at the federal level, the action seems to be shifting more and more to the state level. All across the country, states are increasingly assuming fiscal and programmatic authority over drug courts. Along with this new authority comes the pressure to document results—and to identify best practices, enforce quality standards and determine eligibility criteria (including whether drug courts should handle higher level offenders). Research can help  administrators make better, more informed decisions in all of these areas.

Albeit frustrated by their lack of a voice in drug court policymaking decisions to date, scholars at the roundtable did report widespread consensus in the research community that, when properly implemented, drug courts offer a powerful means for changing the behavior of addicted offenders. As Doug Marlowe said, “There’s no room for debate: the application of certain, swift and appropriately modulated sanctions and rewards improves behavior over time.”

Participants around the table identified the following elements as crucial to successful drug court implementation:

• enrolling addicted offenders into treatment quickly;
• imposing sanctions and rewards swiftly and appropriately;
• bringing high-risk offenders back before the judge regularly;
• creating effective screening mechanisms to identify eligible cases;
• graduating a significant percentage of participants; and
• ensuring that drug court participants feel they are being treated respectfully by the judge and are being listened to in the courtroom.

At the same time, researchers also acknowledged that that there was much still to be learned about what makes drug courts work. “What we know [about drug courts] is very small and what we think we know is much bigger,” said Urban Institute researcher John Roman.

For researchers, the critical question is whether drug court implementation will heed the wisdom of drug court research, or if resource constraints will force administrators to cut corners and thus decrease the effectiveness of the drug court model. For example, roundtable participants raised questions about whether drug courts with heavy caseloads could afford to schedule weekly or bi-weekly judicial status hearings with the high-risk offenders who appear to benefit most from interacting regularly with a judge. In addition to resources, other participants raised concerns about a potential “novelty effect”: the idea that drug courts, like many demonstration projects, will show less positive results over time as the novelty wears off.

Both scholars and practitioners agreed that certain aspects of the drug court model needed improvement. Treatment emerged as a critical area of concern, with several roundtable participants noting that treatment programs in the field were slow to catch up with emerging best practice standards. While University of Maryland researcher Faye Taxman suggested that one obstacle to change was that these new treatment models appear to “threaten practitioner discretion,” other roundtable participants said that drug court judges could help move the process along, arguing (in Doug Marlowe’s words) that “if anyone is going to hold the treatment system accountable, it’s the court system.”

The issue of race also came up a number of times in the discussion, mostly by practitioners looking for guidance with regard to how to work effectively with minority populations. Hennepin County, Minnesota’s chief judge, Kevin Burke, said the key to working with this population was to “build a sense of hope. . . . If there’s anything a judge can do, it’s to convey to a young person that they can be something.” Taxman concurred, pointing out that research showed that young African-American males need “positive reinforce[ment]” from authority figures to succeed. However, Burke also raised concerns about fairness, contending that drug courts needed to be careful not to put excessive pressure on African-American defendants to forego an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of an arrest in exchange for being offered drug treatment.

This roundtable was part of a series organized by the Center for Court Innovation and the Department of Justice. Previous roundtable events have addressed such topics as the reintegration of drug court graduates into their home communities, mental illness, community justice and due process in problem-solving courts.

Based on the demonstrated success of drug courts—and the enthusiastic public attention these courts have generated—a number of states have begun to take the next step, seeking not just to replicate pilot drug courts, but rather to test system-wide the viability of new approaches to the problem of addiction.

 

Perhaps no criminal justice innovation has spread as rapidly in recent years as drug courts, which offer judicially monitored treatment as an alternative to incarceration for non-violent addicts. The first drug court was launched in Dade County, Florida, in 1989. Today, there are more than 1,200 drug courts either in operation or in planning across the country. More than 226,000 defendants have participated in these programs.

Drug courts are the most prominent example of a wave of “problem-solving” innovation that has sought to change the way courts operate in this country. Alongside drug courts, domestic violence courts, community courts, family treatment courts, mental health courts, and other specialized courts are using the authority of the judicial branch in new ways—in an effort to improve outcomes for victims, communities, and defendants. These problem-solving courts employ new tools and new methods—such as requiring defendants to appear regularly before judges to report on their compliance with court orders, or adding social scientists, drug treatment counselors, and other service providers to the courtroom team.

The first generation of problem-solving courts has achieved some provocative results—none more so than drug courts. Independent research credits drug courts with reducing rates of drug use and rearrest among participants. Also, treatment retention rates—a key indicator of long-term sobriety—are twice as high for participants in drug courts as opposed to individuals who seek out treatment voluntarily.

To date, the drug court movement has largely been a grassroots phenomenon, driven by a highly motivated cadre of judges, prosecutors, and court leaders. Based on the demonstrated success of drug courts—and the enthusiastic public attention these courts have generated—a number of states have begun to take the next step, seeking not just to replicate pilot drug courts, but rather to test system-wide the viability of new approaches to the problem of addiction. Their focus is on building systems at a state level, either through special judicial branch-led efforts (as in New York), legislation (Indiana), or collaborative efforts that bring together the heads of statewide agencies like corrections, courts, and social services (Utah).

Clearly, drug courts are at the brink of moving into a new stage of development. Acknowledging this reality, in March 2002 the United States Department of Justice, working with the Center for Court Innovation, brought together a select group of judges, practitioners, and thinkers from around the country to discuss the future of drug courts. The goal of the roundtable was two-fold: first, to unearth some of the strategic, conceptual, and practical challenges that practitioners face in attempting to bring drug courts into the mainstream of court operations, and second, to provide a road map to drug court advocates in addressing those challenges.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the topic proved to be a complicated one. During a day-long conversation, court administrators, judges, legal scholars, and experts in other fields of social policy innovation grappled with a series of difficult questions. How do you “go to scale” with an idea like drug courts? Is the goal to promote continued replication of the drug court model? Or is the goal to advance drug court principles and strategies, making sure they take root in every courtroom? Most important, how do you institutionalize innovation? Will the drug court approach lose its effectiveness if it becomes business as usual?

Several key themes emerged from the discussion. Many, though not all, participants agreed that going to scale meant more than “hanging more signs on the door” (a phrase coined by University of Wisconsin law professor Michael Smith) or merely increasing the number of drug courts in existence. Instead, participants seemed eager to distill the “active ingredients” or “essence” of the drug court model—and to encourage the spread of drug court principles as opposed to expanding the number of drug courts. Adele Harrell, a researcher at the Urban Institute who has written extensively about drug courts, put it best when she suggested that success for advocates might lie in drug courts fading “out of existence as their tenets become embedded in practice.”

The desire to spread elements of the drug court approach—and not replicate drug courts per se—has some important implications. First and foremost, it means that advocates must identify which elements of the model that they wish to see incorporated into the broader court system. This is a more difficult task than it might at first appear. Participants at the roundtable articulated a number of core drug court elements. For Utah state court administrator Gary Becker, the essence of drug courts is the creation of new partnerships between courts and state treatment agencies. For law professor Smith, it is “the idea that sentencing is a responsibility of the court over a long term.” San Diego Judge James Milliken and Indianapolis prosecutor Scott Newman cited concrete goals: providing judges with more comprehensive assessments and more sophisticated management information tools to guide sentencing decisions and help track offender compliance with court orders. And for New York Deputy Chief Adminstrative Judge Joseph Traficanti, who’s leading an ambitious statewide effort to create drug courts in each of New York’s 62 counties, the goal is to make it possible “for any defendant, in any jurisdiction, to go into treatment.” The fact that participants in the roundtable (most of them drug court proponents) were unable to reach consensus on the core elements of the drug court approach suggests that more work has to be done before advocates attempt to mainstream them.

In addition to tackling conceptual problems, participants also addressed strategy questions. Participants returned again and again to the challenge of institutionalizing the drug court model without dampening the spirit of innovation that led to their creation in the first place. “[P]eople don’t respond well to being told, ‘You have to do this,’” said Lisbeth Schorr, an expert on social policy innovation based at Harvard University. She added: “You can’t mandate belief in a program.” Indianapolis prosecutor Scott Newman agreed, arguing that key leaders must have “[t]ransformative personal experiences” if they are to buy into the drug court idea.

Roundtable participants repeatedly articulated the tension between the need to ensure quality control as an idea goes to scale and the imperative to preserve local flexibility. One way this was expressed was the effort to distinguish “institutionalization” from “bureaucratization.”
“Bureaucracy creates a coercive style of leadership that forces other people to act in a certain way,” Scott Newman said, while “institutionalization is a motivational style of leadership which gets people inspired.” Many participants argued that the best way to promote institutionalization without bureaucratization was to create an intermediary entity that would provide the technical assistance and support necessary to ensure the quality of implementation at individual sites.
This would help drug courts “move from a system based on charisma to one based on standards and principles,” without sacrificing local control, according to Columbia University law professor Michael Dorf.

Participants also highlighted the need for drug courts to create new partnerships or strengthen existing ones as they mature. One example cited was the need to work with state drug and alcohol agencies, which not only manage large sums of money (from federal health and human service grants) but also have responsibility for guaranteeing the quality of treatment services. Going to scale will be “next to impossible” without involving the commissioners of state alcohol and drug agencies, said Valerie Raine of the Center for Court Innovation.

A second area for potential collaboration are state legislatures, which in many places are eager to create a statutory framework (and provide funding) for drug courts. Partnerships with state legislatures can either help or hinder drug courts, as the examples of Utah and Indiana suggest. While Utah provided a statutory framework that allowed federal treatment resources to be redirected to drug courts—clearly a positive development —in Indiana, pending legislation seeks to codify how drug courts are defined, a development that many feared would severely limit local flexibility. This suggests that drug court advocates will have to proceed cautiously in working with legislatures.

In addition to airing out conceptual and strategic challenges, participants shared their reservations about institutionalization—and in particular its potential unintended consequences. “Today’s innovation is tomorrow’s conventional wisdom,” warned Michael Smith. “I think we need to find a way to go to scale that’s open to constant change, revision and discovery. Otherwise, you just make it more difficult for the next innovator.” In that vein, Adele Harrell cautioned against “overselling the promise” of drug courts, a shortcoming of past criminal justice innovations that have come and gone.

Despite these reservations, participants were cautiously optimistic about the prospects for institutionalization, pointing out that drug courts have already made significant strides forward. Perhaps the most heartening news of the day came from Lisbeth Schorr. Schorr, who has spent the greater part of her professional life thinking about government innovation, remarked that in discussing drug court institutionalization, participants had already reached an unusual level of sophistication. “[T]his is a far better, more rigorous discussion than I am used to hearing,” she said.

 

What remains for drug courts is to determine how to make a difference in the next chapter of participants’ lives: the return to independent community living after graduation from drug court. After all, the ultimate test for drug courts is not whether their clients graduate, but whether they are able to live drug-free and become law-abiding members of society.

In little more than a decade, drug courts have become a standard feature of the judicial landscape in this country. Every state has at least one, and some, such as New York and California, have dozens. The rapid proliferation of drug courts has been driven by research that suggests that drug courts have succeeded in reducing drug use, improving recidivism rates, and generating significant cost savings. In the process, the judges and lawyers who have spearheaded the drug court movement have encouraged courts to change the way they do business, adopting a problem-solving approach to cases fueled by addiction and building unprecedented partnerships with government and non-profit treatment providers. These are not insignificant accomplishments, to be sure.

These achievements do not mean that the drug court story is finished, however. What remains for drug courts is to determine how to make a difference in the next chapter of participants’ lives: the return to independent community living after graduation from drug court. After all, the ultimate test for drug courts is not whether their clients graduate, but whether they are able to live drug-free and become law-abiding members of society.

The obstacles to accomplishing this goal are substantial. Drug court graduates often leave treatment without jobs, without education, and without prospects. At the same time, many must find housing, avoid old habits and acquaintances, and mend broken connections with loved ones. They need, in short, to build new lives for themselves.

This raises some difficult questions for drug courts. What responsibilities do drug courts have to participants after they leave the court? Is it possible to ease their reintegration into the community? What tools and resources would be most helpful to drug court graduates in managing the transition? What role should drug courts play in the process? If drug courts are to take on this challenge, do they need to change the way they are structured? And what are the boundaries? When should the job of a drug court end?

To explore these and other questions related to community reintegration, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Drug Courts Program Office, in collaboration with the Center for Court Innovation, convened a small group of drug court judges, treatment providers, policymakers, and academics for a day-long roundtable. The conversation, which was held in Washington, DC, in November 2000, was a wide-ranging one. Along the way, participants discussed the key elements of reintegration, the relationship between courts and communities, the limits of a court’s coercive authority, and the ethical and legal challenges posed by reintegration.

Needless to say, these are topics that do not lend themselves to silver bullets or simple answers. Consensus was hard to reach. The participants did, however, share a general enthusiasm for involving drug courts in the reintegration process. “I think the community wants courts to be in the business of reintegration,” said Judge John Schwartz of Rochester, NY. Participants pointed to a range of services that, based on experience, they had identified as particularly helpful to graduates, including employment, education, health, and housing.

The enthusiasm for drug courts taking on reintegration was, however, severely tested when several participants broached the idea of adding new requirements for drug court graduation or lengthening the period of court supervision. The most heated exchanges of the day were devoted to the use of coercion to facilitate reintegration. “Do you put someone in jail because he doesn’t get a GED? Do you require him to get a good job? … Where do you draw the line?” asked Valerie Raine, the former coordinator of the Brooklyn Treatment Court. “Parole and probation periods expire,” remarked John Marr, the director of Choices Group, Inc., a treatment program based in Nevada. “We can’t say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Because you have a disease that you’re going to deal with for the rest of your life, the court is going to continue to hold you for the rest of your life.’”

These concerns led many participants to nominate another role for drug courts in reintegration—relying on their symbolic authority to “provide leadership,” “marshal resources,” and “generate support” for program graduates. Drug courts could “use their leadership to empower external agencies to do a better job,” said Foster Cook, associate professor and director of substance abuse programs at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “That includes identifying programs, bringing resources into the court, and strengthening the resources that are available when people go out.” Several participants asserted that drug courts could improve the accountability and effectiveness of treatment providers, requiring them to do better discharge planning and employment training as a standard component of drug treatment. According to Elizabeth Peyton, a consultant specializing in strategies for integrating substance abuse and criminal justice services, “Judges have had to be very demanding in terms of what they expect treatment providers to do.”

Not all participants were as eager to encourage drug courts to play a more active leadership role. Several pointed out that drug courts are designed to hear cases, not engage in community organizing. Participants also cautioned against “romanticizing what courts can do.” As Queens County, NY, Supreme Court Judge Leslie Leach said, “I think the task of trying to create better neighborhoods is too great for drug courts to take on.”

Nevertheless, after a day’s worth of discussion, a tentative consensus emerged: that while drug courts should be cautious about expanding their requirements, they should be creative in employing their symbolic authority to ease the transition of program graduates back into community life. “I think drug courts will sound and feel different as we move forward,” asserted Delaware Superior Court Judge Richard Gebelein. “The questions that the judge asks are going to be different. We won’t just be asking the defendant: ‘How many clean urines have you had?’ … We’ll be asking: ‘Where are you in getting some community help? Are you involved with any kind of organizations? What have you done to implement your discharge plan? Have you made the contacts the plan calls for? Do you have your sponsor?’ And we’ll be expecting the treatment providers to show what they are doing to help implement the discharge plan.”

What is a community court? It can take many forms, but at its core, a community court is about partnership and problem-solving.  It's about creating new relationships, both within the justice system and with outside stakeholders such as residents, merchants, churches and schools.  And it's about testing new and aggressive approaches to public safety rather than merely responding to crime after it has occurred.

Here are six principles, derived from the experience of the Midtown Community Court, to keep in mind as you plan a community court:

Restoring the Community

Recognize that communities are victims, too.
Quality-of-life crime damages communities, often more so than individuals. If left unaddressed, low-level offenses erode communal order, leading to disinvestment and neighborhood decay and creating an atmosphere where more serious crime can flourish. A community court acknowledges this reality.

Use punishment to pay back the community.
Standard sentences—jail, fines, probation—may punish offenders, but they do little to restore the damage caused by crime. A community court requires offenders to compensate neighborhoods through community service.

Combine punishment with help.
Encouraging offenders to deal with their individual problems honors a community's ethical obligation to people who break its laws because they have lost control of their lives. Social service programs also have practical crime control value as they can permanently alter the behavior of chronic offenders.

Give the community a voice in shaping restorative sanctions.
A community court can open a dialogue with its neighbors, enlisting them in the effort to develop appropriate community service projects. A community advisory board can offer residents an institutionalized mechanism for interacting with the judge and court administrators.

Make social services at the court open to residents.
Defendants are not the only ones in a community who could benefit from educational, job training and counseling programs. A community court can be a resource for anybody who needs assistance, opening its doors for Alcoholics Anonymous groups or English-as-a-second-language classes, for example.

Bridging the Gap Between Communities and Courts

Make justice visible.
A community court puts offenders to work in places where neighbors can see what they are doing, outfitting them in ways that identify them as offenders performing community service. The court also publicizes its social service and treatment success stories. These efforts give community residents and organizations visible and tangible evidence that the criminal justice system is accountable to the community.

Make justice accessible.
A community court welcomes observers and visitors. Calendars and other information about activities in the courtroom are available to the public on computer terminals in the lobby. The courthouse staff is prepared to answer questions and give tours. Community members are thus able to directly see justice in action.

Make justice proactive.
Court administrators monitor crime conditions in the community and look for opportunities to involve the community in addressing crime-related problems as they develop. Mediators attempt to solve simmering community disputes before they erupt into criminal matters.

Reach out to victims.
A community court can be a safe haven for victims, offering them both assistance and a voice in the criminal justice process. Because it is based in the neighborhood where victims live, a community court may be able to provide access to services quicker and in a less intimidating setting than larger, centralized courts.

Knitting Together A Fractured Criminal Justice System

Use the authority of the court to link criminal justice agencies.
Too often, criminal justice agencies work in isolation, moving cases from street to court to cell and back again without communicating with one another or taking the time to problem-solve. Because of its role as a central hub in the justice process, a community court can play an important coordinating function.

Don't reinvent the wheel.
Courts cannot be expected to solve difficult neighborhood problems by themselves. As courts look to play a more aggressive role in addressing complicated issues like quality-of-life crime, they must also look for new partners. Social service providers—both non-profits and government agencies—can bring valuable expertise to the table, including counseling, job training, drug treatment and mediation skills.

Make social service providers and criminal justice professionals work together.
Judges in a community courthouse can consult with treatment professionals on individual cases. Police can alert counselors to defendants who may be open to receiving help. Clerks can help link individual victims to assistance. Physical proximity makes possible closer and more coordinated working relationships.

Explore crossing jurisdictional lines.
The problems faced by citizens often do not conform to the narrow jurisdictional boundaries imposed by modern court systems. Criminal defendants may also be involved in a landlord-tenant dispute or a small claims matter. Handling all of these cases in the same place may enhance the court's ability to address a defendant's underlying problems.

Helping Offenders Deal with Problems that Lead to Crime

Put problems first.
Beyond focusing on case processing and punishment, a community court looks for ways that sentences can help defendants change their lives. Drug treatment, medical services, educational programs, and counseling all can be incorporated into sentences.

Use the court as a gateway to treatment.
The crisis of arrest may prompt a defendant to seek help. A court can use its coercive power to reinforce that impulse.

Remain involved beyond disposition of the immediate case.
The judge can monitor offenders' experiences in treatment, using the court's authority to reward progress and impose new sanctions for failure.

Providing Better Information

Make as much information as possible available at the defendant's first appearance.
This allows the judge to act as a practical problem-solver as well as an imposer of sanctions, matching the defendant's needs with available treatment or community service programs.

Make information available to everyone at the same time.
Entering new data into a central database simultaneously accessible by the judge, prosecutors, defense attorneys and social service staff allows all parties to share information as soon as it is available. Simultaneous access helps disparate agencies work together and limits "gaming" of the system by attorneys who take advantage of information delays.

Use current information to enhance accountability.
Updates on a defendant's progress allow the court to monitor compliance with sentences. They also permit early recognition of problems and rapid responses to remedy them.

Designing the Courthouse

The courthouse should be a physical expression of the court's goals and values.
A community court should communicate its mission in every facet of its design. All elements of the courthouse—holding cells, public entryways, and office space—should reflect a sense of fundamental respect for the legal process and for all who participate in it, including defendants, victims and the general public.

A community court should be more than just a courtroom.
Beyond holding pens, a courtroom, judge's chambers and a clerk's office, it must accommodate social service workers, victim advocates and community service managers; it also needs room to house community service workshops and provide conference rooms for treatment sessions and classes. After hours, the courthouse can become a community resource for tenant groups, block associations and others who want to hold public meetings.

Put everything under one roof.
Locating social services side by side with the legal process serves the needs of the community court by making it easier for a judge to craft sentences that combine punishment and help. It also serves the needs of social work and public health by bringing services to a center of need.

Engaging the community should be a top priority in a project’s early stages—above staffing, fundraising, even program planning. Why? Community justice is about partnerships and creating a true sense of partnership between criminal justice agencies and communities takes time. And hard work.

The first task at hand is to identify the most pressing issues in a neighborhood. This job can be done best by the people who live and work there. They know the neighborhood’s history, its assets and its strengths. They also know its limitations and its weaknesses. No community justice project will succeed if it doesn’t target the needs of its community. Also, from a pragmatic perspective, community justice projects need all the political, financial and material support they can muster, and having the community on your side is an essential ingredient to securing this support. Beware of taking this support for granted. Remember that many communities are alienated and distrustful of government. The only way to overcome this is by proving your sincerity and commitment over the long haul, and by delivering on your promises.

Finally, through engaging the community, planners and community members have an opportunity for mutual education. Planners get to learn about the real neighborhood problems and community members get to learn and participate in creating potential solutions that will provide real and lasting improvement to the neighborhood’s quality of life.

Strategies for engaging the community include:

1. Interview Stakeholders

Purpose: 
To gain an understanding of how the neighborhood works, its strengths and weaknesses, its assets and concerns; and to establish relationships with local decision-makers.

How to do it: 
Meet with all the recognized leaders in the neighborhood (elected officials, local police, clergy, school officials, block association representatives, social service providers, merchants, social & civic groups, etc). Some questions to ask are: What do you think about the quality of life in the neighborhood? What are the community’s strengths? What issues are chronic problems? What do you expect from the criminal justice system? Who else should we be speaking with?

2. Attend Neighborhood Meetings

Purpose: 
To show respect for the existing neighborhood infrastructure.

How to do it: 
Attend as many community meetings as possible, including meetings of the parent-teachers association, Lion’s Club, block associations and others. Go just to listen—it sends the message that you aren’t just there to sell an idea. When appropriate, make a five to 10 minute presentation about your project. Explain how the idea came together and who supports it. Answer questions as clearly and honestly as possible. Don’t be afraid to admit when you don’t know an answer or don’t have the authority to make a decision.

3. Convene Focus Groups

Purpose: 
To get input from people who are not in leadership positions, including those who reside or work in the community, raise children there, own or rent property, and use its streets, schools, and parks. To ensure that the official leaders of the community accurately reflect the opinions and concerns of their constituents.

How to do it: 
Assemble groups of about 10 people each and meet with them for an hour or two. Choose a setting that will be comfortable and convenient for participants. You might ask a local minister to invite a group of parishioners to a conversation at the church or the head of the parent-teacher's association to assemble a group of school parents. Ask an independent facilitator to run the group if you don’t feel comfortable doing so. Begin each focus group with an explanation of why you have assembled the group. Prepare a few questions. Try not to lead the participants. For example, instead of saying "does drug dealing make you feel unsafe?" ask, "Do you feel safe at night in the neighborhood?" "If not, why?" Emphasize that you are there to learn, not dictate.

4. Create a Mechanism for Ongoing Community Involvement

Purpose: 
To provide local stakeholders with an opportunity to participate in your project as it moves from concept to implementation.

How to do it: 
Your relationship with the community will always be a work in progress rather than a finished product. Be prepared to carve out an operational role for local citizens. Some projects take a limited approach to engaging local stakeholders in identifying local problems. Others use a broader strategy, allowing citizens to set priorities and help run the project as well. Whatever course you choose, be sure to clearly articulate the responsibilities and limitations of civic engagement in your initiative. Possible avenues for community involvement include advisory boards, community impact panels, and community justice councils.

5. Reach Out to Government Agencies

Purpose: 
To get a clear picture of "business as usual" and to tap into the creative energies of the people who know the system best.

How to do it: 
Start meeting with other criminal justice agencies—police, probation, parole, prosecutors, corrections and courts. Expand your scope to include any agency that is even remotely related to neighborhood problems, including those responsible for housing, health, welfare, and education. Gear your presentation to the audience: remember different listeners will be interested in different elements of what you are trying to do. Some questions to ask are: How is the government currently responding to the neighborhood’s problems? In a more perfect world, what could the criminal justice system be doing better?

Developing a community court is a complex undertaking. By definition, community courts embrace a variety of stakeholders. These include not only the usual suspects like judges, police and prosecutors, but also tenant groups, victims organizations, businesses, schools and block associations. Reaching outside the walls of the justice system to involve new players and create new partnerships complicates both planning and implementation. Among the obstacles that developers of a community court are likely to encounter are:

Neighborhood Issues
Shifting the focus of criminal justice from case processing to community-mending is easier said than done. While a community's quality of life is eroded by waves of smaller offenses, the justice system does its work one case at a time. That tends to obscure neighborhood-specific patterns. Furthermore, communities are understandably reluctant to accept arrested offenders back onto their streets. While supporting the benefits of community service, neighbors worry that an impersonal justice system won't be sensitive to their concerns about supervision.

Discomfort With New Roles
While the need to bridge the gap between communities and courts seems obvious, some judges, attorneys and police may believe that greater involvement with the community will compromise their objectivity. In an effort to maintain impartiality, judges have traditionally insulated themselves from the communities and victims affected by the issues they adjudicate, while prosecutors and police have restricted the discretion of front-line attorneys and officers on the beat. In addition, most criminal justice professionals feel too overwhelmed by the daily pressures of their jobs to reach out to the community. They are reluctant to take on new responsibilities when they are unsure they will receive the tools they need to get the job done.

Reconciling Disparate Philosophies
The underlying assumptions and guiding philosophies of law enforcement and social service differ in fundamental ways. Criminal justice professionals are used to a system of escalating sanctions in which defendants are punished more severely each time they fail; criminal courts are not comfortable giving offenders a second chance. Treatment professionals, on the other hand, expect relapses and consider it critical that clients remain in treatment regardless. Addicts may have to hear the same message several times over before it finally sinks in. The community court's approach can work only if criminal justice and social service professionals are willing to adjust their outlooks and work in a coordinated way.

Information Roadblocks
Providing timely and accurate information may also prove problematic. Although many criminal justice agencies are automated, their computers are rarely designed for courtroom use. Information managers typically organize and track transactions after they occur, rather than using information to improve the quality of decision-making as it takes place. Also, courtroom decisions often hinge on information maintained by several different agencies—police, the probation department, social service providers, the court—whose computer hardware and software may not be compatible. Finally, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, court clerks, and social service staff each need different sets of information, yet they must all be able to get it from the same system. To make matters worse, criminal justice staff rotate frequently, meaning that any system will constantly confront new users. There is a real need to encourage a greater level of comfort with technology—and a greater sense of community—among the diverse professionals who comprise the criminal justice system.

New Family-Related Concerns
Architectural innovation doesn't come easily. The space needs of the various criminal justice agencies are often in conflict; correction authorities, police, attorneys, court officers, and judges each have special needs for physical space. The planning of new courthouse space is sure to enliven these ongoing conflicts. And the need to accommodate outsiders, such as community groups and treatment and education professionals, further complicates the process.

While obstacles shouldn't be minimized, they can be overcome if all parties have a commitment to the process and share an understanding of goals and principles. The experiences of the Midtown Community Court, Red Hook Community Justice Center, and Harlem Community Justice Center suggest a number of practical strategies that can assist in the development of any community court project.

Early Planning For Community Involvement
Before launching the Court, organizers met with scores of block associations, business groups, local political leaders and police officers. These early meetings made it possible for Court planners to identify stakeholders, define existing quality-of-life problems in the neighborhood and articulate specific goals.

From these early meetings, organizers built a corps of supporters willing to donate resources including community service supervision, social service staff time and supplies like paint and plantings. The early outreach also made it possible to recruit the Court's community advisory board, which helps identify crime patterns in the neighborhood and potential community service projects while providing feedback on the Court's relationship with the neighborhood.

Understanding Victim Concerns
Victims expect a lot from courts. They want to see justice done, but what this means depends upon the individual victim. For some, "justice" may mean having their pain acknowledged by the offender, the court system or the community. Others may want courts to rehabilitate the offender and make a concentrated effort to improve the neighborhood conditions that lead to crime. Still others may want offenders to express remorse and take responsibility for the harm they have caused. And some victims will want all of these things. Community court planners will want to make special efforts to understand victim issues. In so doing, they can insure that the community court provides constructive channels for victim involvement and that it offers victims both information and services.

Identifying Key Political and Financial Stakeholders
A community court project won't get very far without enthusiastic support at the highest levels of both the executive and judicial branches of state and local government. The court's planners can expect to invest significant time and energy explaining the idea and its merits to the governor's office and leaders of the state court system, to the mayor's office, to the local district attorney and the head of the public defenders' office, as well as to judges and the local bar association.

Fundraising efforts for the court should take advantage of its capacity to make a visible difference in community life, appealing to local businesses and non-profit groups who stand to benefit directly. Foundations might also welcome the opportunity to help a promising program likely to demonstrate the value of innovation.

In addition, community courts are capable of attracting a new audience of potential funders: those interested in economic development. After all, meaningful and lasting economic development rarely takes place in areas where residents, merchants and employees fear for their safety. By addressing neighborhood blight, improving public safety and providing social services, a community court can be a valuable addition to economic development efforts. Businesses, government agencies and foundations with a stake in neighborhood economic development can be a crucial constituency for community court planners.

Risk Minimization
Communities won't be comfortable with community service, and judges and prosecutors won't utilize it, without some attention to risk assessment. Common sense dictates that violent felony offenders are probably not good candidates for community service. At the Midtown Community Court, only misdemeanor offenders are sentenced to community service. Work projects are classified as high, medium or low supervision. Each offender is matched to the appropriate level of supervision based on a review of his or her criminal history, background and crime of arrest. Offenders with more extensive criminal histories and those considered less likely to complete their sentences are assigned to projects that take place in the courthouse (building maintenance, staffing a bulk mailing operation); those considered lesser risks are assigned to more visible outdoor projects (cleaning graffiti, painting fire hydrants and streetlights).

Short-term Interventions
A community court's social service program necessarily involves more than placements in long-term drug treatment. Since many criminal court defendants are low-level offenders who face little or no jail time, the court must set up punishments that are proportional to the defendant's record and crime. The Midtown Community Court created an array of short-term interventions that take place in the courthouse itself. They include:

• A four day treatment readiness group that introduces defendants without serious records to drug treatment and prepares them for long-term help.
• Counseling group sessions for prostitutes; the short course includes basic health screening and a meeting with an outreach counselor who offers support for women who want to escape their pimps and life on the streets.
• Job readiness sessions that put chronically unemployed defendants together with employment counselors who make them aware of job training or placement programs.
  While the immediate goals of these short-term interventions are modest, the Court has already seen hundreds of defendants use them as stepping stones toward changing their lives, many of them returning voluntarily for continued counseling after completing their sentences.

Beyond the Courtroom
Many quality-of-life problems in a community are not violations of the law and do not come to the attention of the police or courts. The Midtown Community Court has sought to address these problems in three ways:

First, it established a mediation service to resolve neighborhood disputes—for example, the opening of an adult movie house or the operation of a noisy repair shop—before they escalated to legal battles. In addition to helping the community deal with such problems, the service conveys the Court's commitment to the community and its quality of life.

Second, the Court set up a street outreach unit—staffed by police officers and case workers from the court—to enroll potential clients in court-based social service programs before they get into trouble with the law. Four mornings a week, the outreach teams scour the neighborhood, engaging likely clients—prostitutes, substance abusers, the homeless—in conversation and encouraging them to come in for help voluntarily.

Finally, the Court launched Times Square Ink, an on-the-job training program for ex-offenders who have "graduated" from community service. Participants in the program learn job skills by staffing a copy center that does copying work for local businesses and non-profits. By providing ex-offenders with job training and assisting them in finding jobs, Times Square Ink. seeks to address the related problems of unemployment and crime.

Research and Publicity
Police and community groups lose heart in fighting low-level crime when they lack any reliable way to measure progress. A community court should deploy researchers, compile results, and publicize success.

Besides the traditional work of caseload and sentencing outcome analysis, research staff at the Midtown Community Court study problems raised by neighbors. The Court's researchers monitor patterns of prostitution and drug-dealing, as well as street sanitation. They have developed neighborhood-specific computer software to map arrests, complaints, and other quality-of-life indicators; the mapping helps neighbors and police target resources.

Where the research confirms success, a community court should be ready to make it known. A court can create its own newsletter and Internet web site. It can also promote media coverage to ensure a regular flow of feedback to the community.

Staffing
A community court necessarily requires a larger, more diverse staff than a traditional courthouse. In addition to clerks and security officers, community courts may need social workers, victim advocates, job developers and managers for community service work projects, along with additional research and public information officers. For example, community outreach—introducing the court to local merchants, community groups and elected officials and managing the court's on-going relationships with its community service partners—may require a full-time ombudsman. A court that installs a computerized data sharing system may need a technician to install the necessary hardware and software and adapt them for the court's particular needs. A mediation service, should the court decide to offer one, would require a staff of its own. The court's need for current information about a defendant's legal and social service status requires a staff of interviewers who are able to compile basic data quickly.

These new staff people need not be court employees, however. At Midtown, planners convinced several social service providers—both non-profit organizations and government agencies—to out-station personnel at the courthouse. The reasoning was simple: service providers should bring resources to where the problem is, rather than vice versa. Everyday, the court has physical custody of dozens of people who are in dire need of services. These are the same people who drug treatment providers, adult education programs and health care providers aim to serve.

The Midtown Community Court also grew to depend on a new party to the legal process: the resource coordinator. His job is to keep track of the range of available sentencing options and help the judge and attorneys match each defendant with the right program. The resource coordinator binds criminal justice and social service professionals together. Sitting in the well of the courtroom, he is integrated into the case processing system. At the same time, he is part of the Court's clinical team, aware of treatment issues and the risks of success and failure. Over time, lawyers and judges have come to rely on the resource coordinator and trust his recommendations.