Sarah Thompson, Therapeutic Court Coordinator of Spokane Municipal Court in Washington, discusses the administration of the CCAT by Spokane's 4-member therapeutic team to identify an individual's risk and need levels. Assessed risk and need levels then help determine how staff can most appropriately respond. In addition, Sarah explains how the CCAT interview is also a place to holistically hear from an individual, guiding staff as they identify more acute or more specific needs that staff can then work to directly address.
Oregon broke with the War on Drugs three years ago, decriminalizing the possession of most illicit drugs. The measure promised instead a "health-based approach." But the state has just ended the short-lived experiment. The law faced stiff headwinds from the start: from fentanyl's arrival to a relentless opposition campaign. But part of what went wrong was a challenge for any legislation: implementation. How do you make a sweeping new approach work on the ground?
This guide on Risk-Need-Responsivity: Response Recommendations for Community Courts provides best practices for court practitioners in alignment with evidence-based RNR findings, including advice on incentives and sanctions and a response matrix template.
In partnership with the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office, this study looks at the potential for offering meaningful alternatives to traditional prosecution for people accused of felony offenses in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, laying out key aspects of planning a successful diversion program.
In a joint effort to boost the fairness and efficiency of Connecticut’s legal system, the Center worked with the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice to develop Moving Justice Forward—a step-by-step blueprint for meaningful change within the state’s prosecutors’ offices.
Community safety is multidimensional. Yet efforts to build community safety outside of the criminal legal system are often evaluated only using data generated by that same system. This means effective strategies of crime and violence prevention can be overlooked by policymakers and funders. We make an urgent case for a new paradigm.
The Brooklyn Mental Health Court (BMHC) seeks to address the overrepresentation of individuals with mental illness in the criminal legal system while maintaining public safety. Prior research has suggested that mental health court participation, and especially successful completion, reduces future system contact; this study expands our understanding of the model by identifying specific in-program events and other factors that contribute to unsuccessful program outcomes.
In 2019, the Center for Court Innovation received funding from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to assist five states in the development and implementation of statewide strategic plans for their Veterans Treatment Courts (VTC). The selected states were California, Maine, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Each state participated in a needs assessment process that included a document analysis and stakeholder interviews.
Efforts to reform the justice system—including our own—often tout they're "evidence-based" or "data-driven." But at a moment when a pandemic-era spike in crime seems to have put the reform movement on its heels, New Thinking asks: why do arguments based on data rarely seem to win the day? Christina Greer and John Pfaff—two scholars working at the intersection of data and politics—explain.
A Coordinated Community Response brings together a diverse group of community partners to develop a shared vision to collectively and consistently address the widespread impact of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking and provide multiple pathways to support, healing, and accountability for families.
