Module 2. Hearing from the Bench: Judicial Roundtable

Community courts across the country divert people experiencing homelessness from the justice system. Judicial and court partners can be strong allies for police working with this population, as they often have priority access to needed services and resources. Police and courts are partners in this work, as each can offer a person experiencing homelessness the chance to receive services instead of a sentence. In this video, a panel of specialty court judges talks about work taking place in their communities and provides recommendations on how police can partner with similar programs in their home communities.

Panel Members

Hon. Scott K. Ahlf
Olympia Municipal Court Judge
Olympia, Washington

Hon. Linda Cooke
Presiding Judge for the Boulder Municipal Court
Boulder, Colorado

Hon. Marcia P. Hirsch
Presiding Judge of the Queens Drug Treatment Court, the DWI Treatment Court, the Mental Health Court, the Veterans Court, and the Drug Diversion Court
Queens, New York

Hon. Cylenthia LaToye Miller
Judge, Third Judicial Circuit Court
Family Division, Juvenile Section
Detroit, Michigan

Hon. Mary C. Logan
Spokane Municipal Court Judge
Spokane, Washington

Hon. Andra D. Sparks
Presiding Judge
Municipal Court
City of Birmingham, Alabama

Panel Facilitated by Chief Craig Meidl
Chief of Police
Spokane Police Department, Washington

Five Recommendations from the Panel

  1. Collaborate with system partners to identify frequent service users. Many times, a small group of people are responsible for a significant part of outreach and services. These ‘high utilizers’ can be identified by police, court, jail, housing, and health partners sharing data and solutions. Once identified, community partners can work with a high utilizer, perhaps through a community court model, to create a comprehensive case plan that will help the person achieve their goals and address their needs. By coming together to identify high utilizers, community stakeholders save resources and time. Stakeholder meetings should take place often to identify not only these individuals but also other community needs or available resources.
  2. Be open to learning new ideas and sharing your expertise. Police and court partners often change and adapt their practices—indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that we sometimes need to change our practices and our settings, in accordance with new science and new understandings, to stay healthy and safe.  An open mind and a willingness to learn are necessary to the communication and flexibility any collaborative effort requires to succeed.
  3. Create a program that reflects local needs and uses local resources. Community Courts are a specialty court approach that often serve individuals experiencing homelessness. These courts should reflect the needs of the community—and every community is unique. Police are integral partners with specialty court staff in many jurisdictions around the country; seeing how police-court partnerships work in different communities can be a great learning opportunity for you and your team. Visiting different specialty courts will give you a chance to learn what programs could work for your home community, as well as what partners can come to the table to help make the work successful. Plan and implement your program according to best practices, but modify it to reflect local needs and local solutions.
  4. Offer the opportunity for your local partners to meet and learn from others in the field. Peer-to-peer learning is perhaps the most powerful of all learning methods. Often your local partners can benefit from meeting with their peers in other jurisdictions to learn promising practices and how to bring them into their own programs. Foster connections among community court judges, police leaders, housing providers, and behavioral health experts. These connections and conversations have the potential to lead to positive and sustained police-court partnerships supporting people experiencing homelessness. Connect with people who can come in and tell the story.
  5. Identify your champion. Every initiative needs a leader or champion to advocate for the work. This person should have political and social influence as well as a passion for diverting people experiencing homelessness from the justice system. Your champion should have the power to bring leaders to the table and the commitment to work with them to develop new systems and programs for this population. Don’t give up on finding your champion—it might be your chief of police, your presiding judge, a local official, or you.

Resources

View the full Sharing the Solutions: Police-Court Partnerships to Address Homelessness multimedia toolkit.