A Community Court Takes Washington D.C.: Expanding the Model in the Nation's Capital

The following is a transcript of the recording:

Robert V. WOLF:
I'm Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation. And I'm in Washington, DC at Community Justice 2012, which is the international conference of community courts. And I'm speaking with Dan Cipullo, who's the director of the Criminal Division of the Superior Court in Washington, DC. And I wanted to talk to you, Dan, a little bit about the East of the River Community Court and plans for expanding it.

Dan CIPULLO:
Sure.

WOLF:
Maybe you could just start off by describing the East of the River Community Court, when it started and just a little bit about it.

CIPULLO:
Yeah, the East of the River Community Court started in the early 2000s. We were actually experiencing problems in DC. We had a zero-tolerance policy in DC, so we were inundated with large number of misdemeanor arrests. We went up about 30% in our misdemeanor arrests, which led to a lot of delays in processing cases, and a lot of police overtime.

So police overtime was the initial impetus of looking at community courts. We work with the Justice Management Institute with Dick Hoffman there and Barry Mahoney, and Barry had heard about the community court concept from New York. And we got a group together, we went up to see Midtown. We went out to see the community court in Minneapolis and in Portland. And we brought those ideas back to our city and we said, "How do we implement it here?" The first community court concept really was more of a citywide on the really low-level quality of life crimes.

Judge Mingal did it in our DC misdemeanor court. And then we looked at the East of the River community, which is a primarily underserved area where high poverty rates, high crime rates, and generally just underserved in social services. And we decided to make that our project, to start out there and Judge Noel Kramer, wonderful, wonderful judge, and I went out there and we started at first in the 6th Police District, which comprised the Northern half of the Anacostia neighborhood. And then the 7th Police District to Chicago was the second side of Anacostia.

And we expanded, we really started with no services, with no real idea other than to go out there and try to make it better. And we did a good job, we really linked with our city agencies, the pretrial service agency, some city agencies to bring some social services. And Judge Kramer was just an unending champion of the community court movement out there. So we had that running since 2003. In 2010, we actually were able to find some money and do our first evaluation of the program. And we really looked at to see whether it was reducing recidivism in the community.

WOLF:
So, what did you find?

CIPULLO:
Well we work with a group, Westat. They came in and did an independent survey for us and they found that a statistically significant reduction in recidivism, people went to the East of the River Community Court, as opposed to people who had gone through just the regular traditional system.

WOLF:
I understand right now there are plans for expanding it, or that you're in the process of expanding it.

CIPULLO:
We all knew that there was a little bit of unfairness in the city because the only people who really got diversion opportunities were people coming out of the East of the River Community Court. The prosecutor was not offering the same treatment and diversion opportunities to everybody else across the court. And Judge Russell Canan and Judge Robert Morin, our presiding and deputy presiding judge, had been very, very concerned about that and really want to expand that and make it more fair to every defendant coming into the court. And we decided that beginning of 2012, we were going to expand it to citywide.

WOLF:
And so, what would that model actually look like?

CIPULLO:
Well, we created six misdemeanor courts where the judges will be taking the cases from their own individual police districts. So we started in December with community engagement, trying to get the judges out to the community, to work with those civic associations, with those neighborhood commissioners and start talking about the program. We've worked with the prosecutors and defense attorneys to kind of align it. We've taken the court, took over actually the community service program too, which was a big change for us because prior to that, part of it had run by the pretrial service agency for the East of the River people, and then just small amount done by the US Attorney's Office directly, and now the court's taken that over.

So it's been a big change for us in how we handle that community service. But, right now we're just in the process of trying to line up some of the other social services we need, but we do run a really good drug court. We do run a really good mental health court. So anybody coming into the community courts who need those services will be referred to those courts. So, we'll be looking at the lower level of drug users and hopefully lower level of mental health people. So, really trying to find services that fit them and their needs.

WOLF:
Was it a tough sell, this decision to take the community court that had previously just been focused in the Anacostia neighborhood to the entire city?

CIPULLO:
Our Chief Judge was so supportive, Chief Judge Satterfield has been very, very, very supportive of the idea and of the problem-solving courts. It's been a little challenge with our judges because really, in the past, a community court judge did not do any trials. It was really just a problem-solving court and that's our model for our drug court and our mental health court. So the judges have been very concerned about how can I be a problem solver and still do trials. So that's been one of our biggest sells and we're really working with our judges on that.

We're also really looking, the community seems very receptive. We've been out to all the community meetings. We've had judges up for a couple of months now getting to most of the committee meetings we can find, and the community is really, really embracing it. The prosecutors have been our great partners in that, the pre-trial service agencies have been great partners, so the whole criminal justice system is really embracing it. We're actually cooperating with the city and they're going to give us a, hopefully, a personnel to help us in our community service program, too. So it's been a great cooperative effort, so far.

WOLF:
And, I suppose it's correct to say that the experience you had in the East of the River Community Court acclimated all these agencies, the US Attorney's Office, who serves as the prosecutor in DC, the defense bar, even the court system itself, to some extent had exposure with it, so you could point to that positive example when you're expanding it.

CIPULLO:
Yeah, it's just been really great, the whole thing. When we first started a community court, the public defender service was not a big fan of the community court. They really believed in the adversarial process and it took a long time to convince some of them that actually we can do really good justice and not lose the adversarial process. One of the great things about our court is, too, that we have been doing most of our community court diversions pre-trial, so that if you fail in it, you still have the right to trial, which is something that our public defender has appreciated our CJA bar has really appreciated it, too. So some of the challenge we've had, but overall it's been a great partnership with all the agencies.

WOLF:
Give me a sense of what the expansion means in terms of how many cases does the East of the River Community Court handle annually, and going forward.

CIPULLO:
Yeah, the East of the River Community Court was handling two police districts, so around about 3,000 cases a year, a little bit give or take. Some people opted out of that community court, they wanted to go to trial instead, and that still obviously option. But as we expand it citywide, we'll be affecting over 13,000 cases. The prosecutors estimated that about 70% of the defendants coming in will be eligible for some kind of diversion, either mental health court, drug court, or community court.

WOLF:
And tell me, are there any extra costs or are you hoping to save money through the change?

CIPULLO:
I don't think we'll save any money, but right now we're not incurring additional costs because there's just not money there. The big challenge is how do we line up? How do we do the assessment for people's social service needs? How do we provide those social service needs? So that's one of the big areas we're looking at, how do we, we're going to send our serious drug abusers to our drug court, people with serious mental illness to our mental health court, but of course you'll have other offenders whose problems aren't quite so severe, who still need that treatment, who still need that help.

And we're really looking at that right now, how do we deal with that? Unemployment's a big issue in DC, too, so we're really working with our Department of Employment Services to bring employment services into the courthouse. We're really blessed, we actually have a mental health clinic in our courthouse. So anybody who's showing signs of mental illness, we can send right down, we have a doctor there who could start medication and start treatment immediately. So we're really blessed in some regards, but we really need to expand our resources to be able to meet the needs of the population we're serving.

WOLF:
And one final question; did your experience planning the East of the River Community Court originally, in any way inform or help you as you're doing the expansion? I mean, the lessons you've learned, has it made it easier?

CIPULLO:
Yes, so much easier because when we really started East of the River, we started with no resources, no real plan, but we had seen the other programs. We thought it was great and the time was right. We had a very supportive Chief Judge and we had an opportunity to move forward. And we just did, by the end, kind of built it by the seat of our pants. So, actually seeing what we did over the years, having worked with our partners over the years, how we saw the recidivism changing, we thought it was a great opportunity to move forward. And that experience has really helped guide us as we're trying to expend citywide.

WOLF:
Great. Well, listen, I really appreciate your taking the time, Dan.

CIPULLO:
Sure.

WOLF:
I've been talking to Dan Cipullo, who's the Director of the Criminal Division of the Superior Court in Washington, DC. And we've been talking about the community courts here in Washington, DC, starting with the East of the River Community Court and the plan's going forward now to expand the model to the entire city. So good luck to you, and thank you.

CIPULLO:
Great, thank you.

WOLF:
I'm Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation, thanks for listening.