How community courts work

Christian Science Monitor -  The community court system is designed to get a defendant into and out of court as soon as possible, minimizing costs in the short run and, ideally, the long run as well. Police officers can issue court summonses for quality-of-life crimes on the spot, and the defendant has to show up at the court within two days. Most defendants receive a day of community service, but punishment can range from multiple days of community service to jail time, especially if the individual has past offenses.

Most of the cases are eventually dismissed after the defendant has fulfilled his or her obligations. Any violent crimes go straight to the city’s criminal court...

Community courts started to appear in the early to mid-1990s, according to Greg Berman, director of the Center for Court Innovation in New York. Mr. Berman was part of the team that set up America’s first community court in Midtown Manhattan.

Community courts fell out of favor in the late ’90s, Berman says, as “tough on crime” measures became popular. But with US prisons now more crowded than ever and weighing heavily on state budgets, community courts seem to be back in vogue. Today there are at least 40 community courts in 14 states and Washington, D.C.

“When we started doing these things, we were really swimming against the tide. Everything in the ’90s was really about getting tough on crime,” Berman says. But now, “I think the community justice idea is going to have another moment in the sun.”

Success can be hard to measure in community courts. The most common criticism leveled against the community court system is that it is often unable to prevent relapses into criminal behavior, known as recidivism.

Criminal-justice researchers are trying to put together solid statistical evidence of how community courts are performing. Some of the early returns are encouraging. A 2014 study from the RAND Corp. looked at the community court in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. It analyzed the nearly 10,000 cases involving 6,000 defendants that the court heard from March 2009, when the court opened, through December 2013. After examining recidivism rates for defendants, the researchers concluded that those tried in the Tenderloin Community Justice Center were 8.9 to 10.3 percent less likely to be rearrested within a year.