Towards better policing: Principles of community courts

Center for Court Innovation

Community Engagement

Community courts seek to offer citizens and neighborhood groups an active voice in doing justice. Local residents have an important role to play in helping the justice system identify, prioritize, and solve local problems.

The operating theory behind community courts is that actively engaging citizens helps improve public trust in the justice system. And, as Professor Tom Tyler has documented in his seminal book Why People Obey the Law, people are more likely to obey the law if they believe it is legitimate. In an effort to help people feel safer, foster law-abiding behavior, and make members of the public more willing to cooperate as witnesses and jury members, community courts have sought to:

• Make justice visible. A community court puts offenders to work in places where neighbors can see what they are doing, outfitting them in ways that identify them as offenders performing community service.

• Make justice accessible. A community court welcomes observers and visitors. Calendars and other information about courtroom activities are easily accessible to the public. The courthouse staff is prepared to answer questions and give tours. Community members are thus able to see justice in action.

• Make justice proactive. Court administrators monitor crime conditions in the community and look for opportunities to involve the community in addressing crime-related problems as they develop. Mediators attempt to solve simmering community disputes before they erupt into criminal matters.

 A community court can open a dialogue with its neighbors, enlisting them in the effort to improve the local quality of life. At San Diego’s Beach Area Community Court, for example, volunteers participate in community impact panels in which citizens discuss with low-level offenders the impact of their offenses on neighborhood quality of life. From hosting community events, to conducting door-to-door surveys, to convening a neighborhood advisory board, community courts can offer local residents a variety of mechanisms for interacting with the judge and court administrators.

Collaboration

Community courts are uniquely positioned to engage a diverse range of people, government agencies, and community organizations in collaborative efforts to improve public safety. By bringing together justice partners (e.g., judges, prosecutors, attorneys, probation officers, court managers) and reaching out to potential stakeholders beyond the courthouse (e.g., social service providers, victims groups, schools), community courts can improve inter-agency communication, encourage greater trust between citizens and government, and foster new responses to public safety problems. For example, the Seattle Community Court has an advisory board that brings government and non-profit partners together to offer feedback and share ideas. Community court staff also regularly attend community meetings and keep partners updated through regular newsletters.

Too often, criminal justice agencies work in isolation, moving cases from street to court to cell and back again without communicating with one another or taking the time to problem-solve. Because of its role as a central hub in the justice process, a community court can play an important communication and coordination function, helping to reduce this phenomenon.

Even if the justice system works harmoniously, it cannot be expected to solve difficult neighborhood problems by itself. As criminal justice agencies look to play a more aggressive role in addressing complicated issues such as quality-of-life crime, they must also seek out new partners. Social service providers—both community-based organizations and government agencies—can provide valuable expertise, including counseling, job training, drug treatment, and mediation skills.

By locating representatives of multiple agencies under a single roof, community courts encourage social service providers and criminal justice professionals to work together. Judges in a community courthouse can consult with treatment professionals on individual cases. Police can alert counselors to defendants who may be open to receiving help. Clerks can help link individual victims to assistance. Physical proximity makes possible closer and more coordinated working relationships.

Individualized Justice

Standard sentencing in low-level cases—short-term jail, fines, conditional discharges without any meaningful conditions—does little to restore the damage caused by crime. Nor does it do much to prevent an individual from returning to court again as a chronic offender.

Instead of simply reproducing business as usual, community courts seek to combine punishment and help.

The focus of community courts is on linking defendants to individually tailored, community-based sanctions such as community restitution, job training, and drug treatment. Encouraging individual defendants to deal with their underlying problems (addiction, mental illness, joblessness) has a practical crime-control value: positive changes in offender behavior is directly linked to reducing crime (see, for example, research on drug courts which shows that reduced substance abuse leads to reduced recidivism).

Community courts look for ways that sentences can help defendants change their lives. Drug treatment, medical services, educational programs, and counseling can all be incorporated into sentences and court orders. In many respects, community courts seek to use a court appearance as a gateway to treatment. The crisis of arrest may prompt a defendant to seek help. A court can use its coercive power and knowledge of available resources to reinforce that impulse.

In attempting to tailor sentences to each defendant and in emphasizing alternatives to incarceration, community courts seek to help reduce recidivism, improve community safety, and enhance confidence in justice.

Accountability

Community courts seek to send the message that all criminal behavior, even quality-of-life crimes, have an impact on community safety—and that there are consequences for breaking the law. For example, the Atlanta Community Court holds low-level quality-of-life offenders accountable by requiring them to perform community service—such as neighborhood clean-ups, graffiti removal, and office tasks—in the neighborhood where the offense occurred.

By insisting on regular and rigorous compliance monitoring and clear consequences for non-compliance, community courts work to improve the accountability of low-level offenders. One of the most basic tools in a community court judge’s arsenal is requiring defendants to come back to court to provide updates on their progress in alternative sanctions. Regular reports can also improve the accountability of service providers, who know that their work will be under public scrutiny. Compliance appearances allow the judge to recognize problems as they develop—and to move aggressively to address them. They also send a message—both to other defendants and the members of the general public who attend court—that community court sanctions are meaningful.

As in drug courts, judges in community court use both positive reinforcement and threat of punishment to motivate defendant compliance. Positively acknowledging compliance is as important as punishing failure.

Graduation ceremonies in the courtroom or even a simple handshake from the judge can be a powerful motivator to defendants as they attempt to get their lives on track.

Outcomes

At a community court, the active collection and analysis of data—measuring outcomes and process, costs and benefits—are crucial tools for evaluating the effectiveness of operations and encouraging continuous improvement.

For example, Bronx Community Solutions has a researcher who measures compliance rates and other variables, providing regular feedback to staff. In one instance, the researcher found that approximately 15 percent of individuals sentenced to perform alternative sanctions never made it from the courtroom to the intake office.

Based on this information, program administrators instituted an escort system that relies on AmeriCorps members to walk participants from the courtroom to the intake office.

A community court seeks to move beyond the standard units of measurement used to assess court performance.

In all too many places, courts are asked only to report on volume and speed: how many cases were processed and how quickly? While these results are important and should be tracked, community courts seek to add additional questions to the list, including: 

• What impact did the court have on local quality of life? 

• Do defendants think that their cases were handled fairly? 

• How do local residents perceive the court? Community courts’ use of research is based on a simple premise: by changing the questions asked of the justice system, it is often possible to change the behavior of those who work within the system.

Public dissemination of community court research can be a valuable symbol of public accountability, offering tangible evidence to local residents that the justice system is attempting to address their concerns and solve public safety problems.