Community courts, which offer creative responses to low-level crime, have traditionally been thought of as neighborhood courts. But the core principles of community courts—promoting alternatives to incarceration, encouraging respectful treatment of defendants, engaging the public in doing justice—can work just as effectively when handling cases from an entire town, city, or county. This paper looks at three jurisdictions that have successfully adapted the community court model beyond single neighborhoods.
The results of a 2010 community survey in Brownsville, Brooklyn focusing on perceptions of neighborhood quality of life, youth issues, public safety, and criminal justice agencies.
This report, published by the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, recommends actions prosecutors can take to harness science and new technologies more effectively and better understand the work of crime labs and forensic practitioners. Better knowledge of scientific principles and practices strengthens a prosecutor's ability to make communities safe by strengthening investigations, identifying the guilty, exonerating the innocent, and presenting solid cases in court.
As part of a national effort to understand the factors that contribute to medical malpractice costs and to understand how the handling of malpractice cases might be improved in the civil justice system, the Center for Court Innovation examined medical malpractice cases in three New York City counties between 2002 and 2010. The findings indicated that an array of factors contribute to malpractice case outcomes in court. Injury severity had a particularly strong relationship both to case outcomes and the size of any resulting monetary award.
Drug courts are the oldest, most prolific, and most studied of the major alternative court models, which also include domestic violence, mental health, community, and reentry courts. What distinguishes drug courts is their focus on cases involving an underlying drug addiction. This article, authored by a Center for Court Innovation researcher and published in the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Eds. Gerben Bruinsma and David Weisburd, 2014, pp.
A community court, often called a neighborhood or community justice center, is a neighborhood-focused court that applies a problem-solving approach to local crime and safety concerns. This article, authored by a Center for Court Innovation researcher and published in the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Eds. Gerben Bruinsma and David Weisburd, 2014, pp. 408-416), provides an accessible overview of the community court model, relevant research, and related controversies.
David Marshall, editor of The International Rule of Law Movement: A Crisis of Legitimacy and the Way Forward, discusses the international rule of law as an industry--one that has been promoted as offering solutions in post-conflict and fragile states and that too often fails. Marshall discusses some of the reasons for these failures and outlines some alternative approaches to interventions in fragile states. (September 2014)
Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell discusses how law enforcement leadership can promote new “smart” strategies–including community engagement and prevention-oriented diversion approaches–that can effectively and efficiently keep communities safe, address the symptoms and causes of criminal activity, and alleviate prison overcrowding. (August 2014)
In keynote remarks at Community Justice 2014, California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom draws a parallel between community justice and internet innovations like Craig's List and Uber, praising them for their the bottom-up, customized approaches to doing business.
