Judith S. Kaye served as chief judge of the State of New York from 1993 to 2008. She was the first woman to serve on New York State's highest court when Governor Cuomo appointed her Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals on September 12, 1983. Before her retirement, Judge Kaye talked about the Midtown Community Court and the Center for Court Innovation.
"The New York State court system is among the busiest in the nation, with well over three million new cases filed every year. Given this staggering caseload, the challenge that we face every day is to ensure that we make every case count rather than simply counting cases. The Midtown Community Court, located near Times Square in Manhattan, is a giant step in the right direction. Midtown is an innovative effort to use the coercive power of the courts to change outcomes and help end the recycling of human beings through the criminal justice system. No court can do all of this by itself, of course it takes collaboration among all parts of the system, from law enforcement to drug treatment to community mediators. By taking a leadership role in bringing all these parts together, the Midtown Court has helped turn back the erosive tide of low-level quality-of-life crime in Midtown Manhattan.
"The Midtown Community Court is not the end of the story in New York, however. To build on the work pioneered at Midtown, we have created a new public-private partnership dedicated to promoting innovation. The Center for Court Innovation works to improve public confidence in courts by nurturing and sustaining new experiments in the delivery of justice. Often, this means conceiving and building model courts from scratch. In addition to Midtown, the Center's small team of planners has played a major role in conceiving, developing and implementing projects like the Brooklyn Treatment Court, the Brooklyn Domestic Violence Court, the Manhattan Family Treatment Court, the Bronx Domestic Violence Court and the community justice centers of Harlem and Red Hook, Brooklyn.
"On other occasions, our Center's role is to recognize and nurture the good ideas of others, facilitating the planning efforts of judges, attorneys and court administrators across the state. The reverberations of the Center's work are felt throughout the court system. Through projects like the Center for Court Innovation, we are changing the culture of our court system, creating an atmosphere that encourages creativity and facilitates new thinking. But don't take my word for it: I invite you to come see us in action next time you're in New York."