In his appearance at the International Conference of Community Courts, R. Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the National Office of Drug Control Policy, discusses the role community courts are playing in efforts to reduce substance abuse and drug-fueled crime. Read the prepared remarks.
Assistant Attorney General Laurie O. Robinson addresses the audience at Community Justice 2012: the International Conference of Community Courts in Washington, D.C.
This report outlines some of the challenges of responding to retail theft and highlights several promising approaches that provide an alternative to the traditional justice system—whether via streamlined processing or by an alternative intervention for the offender. The report concludes with a guide for jurisdictions interested in piloting a program in their community to improve the response to retail theft.
Queens County (NY) Judge Fernando Camacho discusses why he created a prostitution diversion court that helps victims leave a life of prostitution by linking them to counseling and social services instead of sentencing them to jail time.
This report provides a profile of parolees released from upstate prisons to New York City between 2001 and 2008. Findings include a three-year re-arrest rate of 53% and a three-year return to prison rate of 29%. As context, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that nationwide, approximately one-third of formerly incarcerated persons on community supervision are returned to prison.
While on a visit to observe practices in New York City, Heather Munro, the chief executive of the London Probation Trust, takes a break to discuss the challenges facing probation in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom and new initiatives, including experiments in England and Wales with high-intensity community sentence projects (which is also the subject of a monograph by Centre for Justice Innovation's director Phil Bowen). November 2012
This time lapse-video, produced by the Center for Court Innovation, shows a team of court-mandated offenders cleaning a site along the West Side Highway in Manhattan as part of NYC Community Cleanup. The cleanup shown here took place August 11, 2011. For more information about this particular cleanup event, read this article in the Manhattan Times.
