An examination of factors associated with program compliance and recidivism in the Brooklyn Mental Health Court, this report documents that prior criminal history and having a co-occurring substance disorder predict noncompliance, mental health court failure, and re-arrest.
Small Sanities, released through the Centre for Justice Innovation in the United Kingdom, outlines crime control lessons learned in New York, highlighting three areas that have been the focus of criminal justice reformers in New York in recent years: people, places, and process.
This essay from The Judges' Journal seeks to articulate lessons from drug courts that are applicable in all criminal courts. It includes concrete recommendations for judges on improving courtroom communication.
One of the enduring critiques of community courts is that they undermine the defense bar and erode due process protections. This essay in The Judges' Journal contends that community courts can actually enhance defense practice by providing opportunities for heightened advocacy and individualized case resolutions.
This article discusses the Staten Island Youth Justice Center's efforts to reduce the number of youth in preventive detention, detailed case studies of youths who have gone through the program, and some of the challenges of and lessons learned from putting this model into practice. Published in the New York Law School Law Review.
This article reports findings from the National Institute of Justice's Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation concerning the impact of drug courts on crime and incarceration. The study found that drug courts reduced the number of criminal acts by more than half over an 18-month tracking period. Published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology, Volume 8, Number 2 (2012), and available from SpringerLink online at http://www.springerlink.com/content/q555w562154l4011/.
This study reports the results of a survey of 1,002 adult residents of New York State concerning their perceptions of the courts. The study found that New Yorkers have high levels of trust and confidence in the courts in general, although racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African-Americans, are far less supportive than are whites. The study also determined that most New Yorkers have little knowledge of how their local courts work.
There are dozens of community courts in the U.S. and around the world. This paper explains how they've adapted key principles of problem-solving justice—such as enhanced information, community engagement, collaboration, and accountability—to local conditions.
This paper--a joint project of Policy Exchange and the Centre for Justice Innovation--summarizes the experiences of 10 innovative criminal justice projects across the United Kingdom and the United States.
