Jordan Dressler, the director of the recently created New York City Office of Civil Justice, discusses Mayor Bill de Blasio's ambitious five-year plan to provide free or low-cost legal assistance to every low-income New Yorker facing eviction, deportation, or other potentially life-altering civil proceedings.
This document describes the Native American method of peacemaking—a non-adversarial form of justice focusing on restoration and the long-term healing of relationships—and offers detailed guidelines for implementation by state courts.
This two-page handout is designed for courts that include programming for abusive partners in their case dispositions. It lists the 10 most important questions court staff should ask as they consider making referrals and provides general information on national best practices.
This study suggests relying on summary risk scores alone to decide on treatment options for an important, hitherto under-emphasized, subpopulation of drug court participants may be leading to counter-productive outcomes.
This study documents perceptions of intimate partner violence in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Using community surveys and focus groups, researchers found just over a third of community members surveyed perceived intimate partner violence to be a major problem in the community. The study also examines some residents’ conflicting feelings about calling for police intervention and the perceived absence of alternatives.
Programs that work with perpetrators of intimate partner violence are changing as practitioners across the United States employ new strategies to improve outcomes for both offenders and survivors. Courts and judges have an opportunity to build on this exciting time of change. This document describes the innovative approaches to risk assessment, treatment modality, compliance, and procedural fairness that intervention programs for abusive partners are using to enhance victim safety and offender accountability.
Court observation programs around the country send volunteers into courts to observe, collect data, and sometimes issue reports about what they've seen. Their goals include keeping courts accountable to the public and improving transparency, but not all courts are eager to receive public feedback. Court Watch of King County, Washington, has worked closely with its local courts since the program's founding, trying to build a relationship that is more collaborative than adversarial.
