As concerns grow over the ethics of our nation’s police forces, there’s been talk alternatives to the current approach. One of those alternatives is a concept called “community justice.” But can community justice actually bring change and provide alternative solutions to traditional policing methods? Read on to learn about community policing and the court, and what these practices can bring to the table.

What is community justice?

Community justice is a broad term that includes practices for combating crime that directly or indirectly involve the community. The main goal is to enhance community life through problem-solving strategies, restore victims’ quality of life, reintegrate offenders, and strengthen normative standards in the community.

Community justice can be seen as a non-traditional model to deal with crime and disorder, as it creates a dialogue between citizens, community organizations, and criminal justice agencies. The focus is on the outcome for the community as a whole, not on individual cases. According to this perspective, crime is a community issue, and therefore, residents’ engagement is paramount in addressing it. Community justice advocates argue that stability can be achieved through partnership between the citizenry and law enforcement, or even through autonomous efforts of community residents.

Community justice is more of a theoretical concept than a practical tool, which gives practitioners a broad range of options when developing and implementing community justice practices. Generally, there are five avenues to pursue community justice initiatives: crime prevention, policing, prosecution, adjudication, and corrections. Some practices can fall into several categories simultaneously. As of now, community policing and community courts are two of the most widespread practices.

What is community policing and how does it work? 

Community policing, sometimes called problem-oriented policing, emphasizes crime prevention through active engagement between communities and police officers. Community policing focuses on crime issues specific to a certain neighborhood. The issues can range from the presence of habitual offenders to violent youth gangs or open drug markets. Sometimes community policing focuses on tackling issues such as vandalism, loitering, drunk driving, unwanted noise, litter, or abandoned vehicles.

Community policing uses non-enforcement and trust-building tactics to engage residents, including youth, to partner with law enforcement in tackling local public safety issues. The practices can vary greatly, but the most common include:

• Neighborhood meetings with police officers present and actively participating;
• The development of collaborative action plans where police officers and citizens work together to resolve local safety issues;
• Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED). This means rebuilding neighborhoods by employing designs that fit the needs of a specific community and take into consideration its safety concerns;
• Assignment of officers to fixed locations and shifts so they can establish more personal relationships with community residents; and,
• Police engagement with public schools through direct instructions from an officer, or in the form of a school resource officer who is constantly present in the vicinity.

Watch the video below to learn about community policing in Long Beach, California.

Building trust, is perhaps the most important goal of community policing, as it creates a different dynamic in the neighborhood. Advocates believe that traditional policing often just creates fear. It’s believed that the active participation of community residents legitimizes police work and helps to maintain trust and reduce crime at the same time. In the long run, it can alter criminal justice policies and establish new professional norms in police departments across the country.

History of Community Policing

The inception of community policing can be traced to the 1800s when Sir Robert Peel pioneered the practice in one of London’s Police Departments. The United States took up the innovative approach and adhered to it until the beginning of the 20th century. However, with changes to technology like police cars and mobile phones, policies changed too. Slower paced and labor-intensive community policing was abandoned.

Its revival began in the 1970s, when several police departments employed more progressive practices, some of which contained elements of community policing, such as building public support and engaging citizenry. Since that time, community policing unequivocally has become a more common modus operandi in police departments across the country. Many state jurisdictions have either community policing units or employ community-oriented practices as strategies to maintain public safety and fight crime. Practices vary greatly, but all involve public outreach in one way or another. Since its inception, community policing in the United States has been supported by non-profit organizations, government agencies, and rendered various partnerships. Among the most important are the following.

• The Community Policing Consortium (CPC) was an early initiative to establish community policing as a legitimate practice. The CPC was founded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and is essentially a five-way partnership between the leading police associations and forums in the country. Its focus is to provide technical assistance and training materials to police departments.
• The Center for Problem Oriented Policing (POP) was established in 1999, and played a leading role in cultivating community policing practices in the United States. It is comprised of researchers, police practitioners, and academics.
• Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) is a federal agency that operates under the Department of Justice. COPS assists with grants and with practical implementation of community policing practices. COPS’ initiatives include Making Officer Deployment Effective; Distressed Neighborhoods; Problem Solving Partnerships; Tribal Government Resource Grants; Domestic Violence Grants; Meth-amphetamine Initiatives; Technology Adoption; Justice-Based After School Activities; and Anti-Gang Initiatives.

In March 2015, Attorney General Eric Holder announced  a $4.75 million pilot community policing initiative. The project will be called the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, and will run in Birmingham, Alabama; Fort Worth, Texas; Gary, Indiana; Minneapolis; Pittsburgh; and Stockton, California.

What are the benefits of community policing?

Community policing is a completely different approach to criminal decisions and the actors involved. It rethinks the role of law enforcement, fundamentally changing the outcome of an everyday police encounter by building trust and respect between police officers and citizens. Community policing in a way is a crime prevention tool as it targets the root of the problem and heals the wounds of the community by creating an atmosphere of trust and support, not fear and retribution.

What are community courts and how do they work?

Community courts are neighborhood-centered courts that address problems of a specific community. All community courts are official arms of the justice system, with the appropriate jurisdiction to handle certain types of crime. Community courts can be multi-jurisdictional, have just one jurisdiction, or  act as specialized courts that focus on issues such as drugs, domestic violence, and mental health. Community courts often involve local organizations, churches, businesses, social service providers, criminal justice agencies, and community members to create new and innovative approaches to deal with local crime issues.

Community courts mostly deal with low-level habitual offenders, the so-called frequent flyers, who are responsible for quality-of-life crimes that are non-violent and low-level offenses. These can include loitering, panhandling, shoplifting, and trespassing. Frequent flyers usually reoffend because there are no mechanisms in place to help solve their problems. They cycle in and out of the system, breeding poverty and more crime.

The purpose of community courts is to break this cycle of crime in the community, aid victims, and rehabilitate offenders. To reach these goals, community courts use a mixture of traditional and non-traditional practices. Instead of putting offenders back into the prison system without offering aid, community courts provide a helpful alternative, often through drug treatment or job-readiness programs. Some community courts use mediation, job training and placement, drug treatment, homeless outreach, substance abuse, HIV prevention, and tutoring programs for youth. As a result, offenders pay back the community by working in the neighborhood in partnership with local organizations. This allows for better integration of offenders into the community. If an offender complies, he receives the benefit of social services, while if he fails, he will be brought back to the traditional court system for adjudication. By sentencing fewer people to incarceration and increasing the numbers of those who can remain within communities, community courts are building up mutual trust, which in turn can result in solving crime problems in that specific neighborhood.

History of Community Courts

Community courts are a later phenomenon than community policing. The first community courts in the country can be traced  to the early-to-mid 1990s, but they stalled due to the nation’s “tough on crime” policies. Recently, community courts were revived as an alternative to traditional adjudication practices, mostly due to the negative effects of the “tough on crime” era, and the overcrowding of American prisons.  As of 2014, there were 40 community courts in 14 states, including Minnesota, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. New York City is the leader in the number of community courts, hosting six within its borders.

No two community courts are alike as each is unique in its structure and the programs it provides. Among the most prominent and effective are the following.

• The Midtown Community Court was established in 1993, and was the first court of its kind. It played a pivotal pole in cleaning up Times Square, which was at the time a frequent meeting place for prostitutes and drug dealers. Midtown Community Court heard more than 21,000 cases in 2013 alone, and yearly saves New York City $1.2 million by handling low-level offenders.
• The Hartford Community Court was created in 1998, and was the first program designed to apply to the entire city, including urban and suburban communities. It has a community service hot line, and even offers a quarterly newsletter through which offenders report back to the community about their successes.
• Launched in 2000, the Red Hook Community Justice Center was the first multi-jurisdictional community court in the United States. It also has a youth court, where teenagers resolve cases pertaining to their peers. Watch the video below to learn more about the community court in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

• Started in 2008, the Orange County Community Court is comprised of a veterans court, drug court, mental health court, DUI court, and homeless outreach court. All these specialized courts are housed in the same facility, making it convenient to screen and refer offenders to appropriate social services and treatment programs.
• The San Francisco Community Justice Center, launched in 2009, adjudicates misdemeanor and non-violent felony cases in four neighborhoods: Tenderloin, South of Market, Union Square, and Civic Center. It provides drug and mental health treatment, support groups, counseling, career development, and job training. .

Watch the video below to learn more about other community courts and their innovative approaches.

What are the benefits of community courts?

Community courts improve the quality of life in a neighborhood and reshape social norms of those community members who have committed crimes. They build up trust between community members and the justice system, reduce fear, and contribute toward more fair and accountable adjudication practices.

Community courts also provide quicker and cheaper alternatives to the traditional court system as they uses judges, not juries. At a community court, a defendant can see a judge, receive punishment, and connect with a social worker all in one day.

These programs can free traditional courts from dealing with petty crimes, allowing them to focus on serious offenders instead. As a result, the prison population and costs associated with incarceration and the adjudication process decrease. It’s hard to assess if community courts are the cause of reductions to recidivism and crime rates, but the overall compliance with court practices is high, and the public tends to support community courts even if it means higher taxes. As an example, while Red Hook Community Court sent only one percent of all defendants to jail, its traditional counterpart, Brooklyn Criminal Court, incarcerated 15 percent of its defendants. Even if 78 percent of guilty defendants in the Red Hook Community Court receive ongoing supervision through mental health and drug treatment, it’s still a cheaper option than sending them to correction facilities.

Conclusion

Community justice is already fostering positive changes. Can it be a solution to the growing incarceration rates and police discontent? It certainly seems possible, as community justice successes continue to spring up. Each community has its unique concerns and crime problems, thus, a community justice approach can be a good fit to serve the needs of individual neighborhoods better than any sort of one-size-fits-all approach. By imposing meaningful sanctions on offenders, building trust between police and residents, and forming genuine problem-solving alliances, our criminal justice system may have the opportunity to change for the better.

Resources

Primary

National Criminal Justice Reference Service: Community Justice: A Conceptual Framework

New York Courts: Problem-Solving Courts

Additional

Central Valley Business Times: Stockton Picked For Unique Community Justice Program

Center for Court Innovations: Community Courts

Center For Court Innovations: Midtown Community Court

Center For Court Innovations: Red Hook Community Justice Center

Center for Court Innovations: Mentor Courts

Center for Court Innovations: Hartford Community Court: Origins, Expectations and Implementation

Daily News: Red Hook Community Court is a Success for Defendants and Taxpayers

Pacific Standard: Community Courts Across the Country are Fighting Judicial Backlog and Lowering Re-arrest Rates

Big Story: Novel Courts Handle Low-Level Crimes Across U.S

Christian Science Monitor: Community Courts Let the Punishment Fit the Crime, Compassionately

Wall Street Journal: What to Know About Community Policing

What-When-How: Community-Oriented Policing

USA Today: Alternative Courts Gain Ground For Petty Criminals

Valeriya Metla

Valeriya Metla is a young professional, passionate about international relations, immigration issues, and social and criminal justice. She holds two Bachelor Degrees in regional studies and international criminal justice. Contact Valeriya at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Community Justice: Can It Improve America’s Criminal System? appeared first on Law Street.

Paterson, New Jersey erupted last month after a 12-year-old girl was shot and killed. People rallied for an end to the recent violence, demanding a safer city in the wake of Genesis Rincon’s death. The tragedy comes shortly after Jerry Speziale was appointed as the new police director. Advocating community policing, Speziale and Mayor Jose Torres think that dynamic approaches can help with the crime problem in Paterson. This may seem like a interesting new strategy for fighting local crime and violence, but successful community policing programs were successfully used in Paterson not that long ago.

One such community policing program, the Village Initiative, operated from 1998 to around 2010 and had some measurable benefits for local youth. What did the Village Initiative accomplish, can community policing prevent further deaths like Rincon’s, and what can other cities learn from Paterson?

Paterson has long been plagued by high crime rates. The year that the Village Initiative launched, its violent crime rate per 100,000 inhabitants was roughly 67 percent higher than the national average. The Village Initiative responded to the crime problem in Paterson by bringing the community to at-risk juvenile probationers, making them responsible for their court orders, and reducing their chances of committing a crime again.

In an interview, Dr. James Pruden said that it’s important “for [juveniles] to see the government functioning positively in their lives.” An emergency medical specialist at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson, Pruden was an active contributor to the Village Initiative who rode along with officers to visit at-risk probationers. Along with police, teachers, and other community leaders, he saw the program in action and witnessed its effects firsthand.

The Village Initiative

The Village Initiative offered important opportunities to minors such as vocational courses; from business training to cosmetology and automotive repair, the courses gave them opportunities to build marketable skills. In addition, there were components that set juveniles up for part-time jobs. These are no longer available, though. Around 2010, the Village Initiative lost much of its funding, likely related to the city’s other budget cuts during the midst of the national recession. Fortunately, the “ride along with a medical evaluation” that Pruden participated in continued after the funding stopped, along with a few other pieces of the program.

“They had this educational piece, they had the medical piece, they had the business piece, all designed to turn these kids in a different direction and to show them that the interest in them was not only because they were misbehaving,” said Pruden. The community was not simply responding to the negativity surrounding the juveniles’ lives, it was about instilling something positive in them. This should be the central tenant of all community policing initiatives.

“It’s not like I’m providing much of a medical service. What I would do was go to the house, find out what was going on, talk to them about their health issues… At the end of it, I would go back with the data the next day and talk to a case manager at the hospital. She would call them up and make sure they made their cardiology appointment, or she would cut through the red tape to facilitate their entry to the teen pregnancy program. And we would do this not only for patients that came to our hospital, we do this for people who go to free-standing clinics or to other hospitals.”

– Dr. James Pruden

The Results

St. Joseph’s Hospital sometimes treats rival gang members simultaneously, and the hospital could become a spot for continued dispute between them. As that conflict can be detrimental to the doctors and families there, Pruden was tasked with making the hospital a neutral zone. Through the social infrastructure of the Village Initiative, he reached out to community leaders to establish correspondence and set up meetings with gang members. After eight months of work,Pruden succeeded in negotiating with the gangs so that St. Joseph’s would be a safer space.

Anecdotes like that help illustrate the positive community relationships formed by the Village Initiative. But what do statistics tell us about its effects? Despite sharing some criticism about how data on the program was collected, Dr. Pruden said that the available information shows impressive results. Prior to the Village initiative, juveniles with first-time probation had a 37 percent recidivism rate; however, kids involved in the Village Initiative had recidivism rates of only 5 percent. But, he reminded me, “then the funding went away!”

As Pruden says, maybe the effects of the Village Initiative could be judged solely by the difference between a 37 percent and five percent recidivism rate. Maybe it could have only made changes in the lives of the specific juveniles who were involved in the program. But it could also be judged by the potential, immeasurable impact that ripples throughout the community, starting with those juveniles.

Lessons from the Village Initiative

From local advocates to national movements, community policing is in high demand now. For instance, more cops are patrolling neighborhoods on bicycles as a part of a community policing initiative in Lowell, Massachusetts. Nationally, the Obama Administration has ramped up the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office under the Department of Justice. A COPS report, Community Policing Defined, states that the approach “promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques.”

However, COPS is sometimes criticized for pushing policing in the opposite direction; reporter and author Radley Balko said that COPS supports many police chiefs who consider SWAT raids “to be a core part of a community policing strategy.” As police aggression only divides the police and the community, there is even more need to prescribe the Village Initiative. If Balko is correct and many have misconceptions, the country should find a model for community policing in the success of Paterson’s project.

Pruden’s work through the Village Initiative was not just a medical house call, but a social checkup. This should be how community policing looks, with community leaders working with one another. Police supervise medical evaluations, doctors help police at-risk youth, and the force of the community creates something positive together. Let’s prescribe the Village Initiative’s community policing in New Jersey to other cities in need.

—

Jake Ephros (@JakeEphros)

Featured image courtesy of [City of North Charleston via Flickr]

Jake Ephros

Jake Ephros is a native of Montclair, New Jersey where he volunteered for political campaigns from a young age. He studies Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy at American University and looks forward to a career built around political activism, through journalism, organizing, or the government. Contact Jake at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Community Policing in New Jersey: A Model for Stopping Local Violence appeared first on Law Street.

Detroit filed for bankruptcy last July with over $18 billion in debt, the biggest municipal collapse in the history of the United States. The city also has the highest crime rate among all large cities in the country, which exacerbates its economic hardships even more. Our report, Crime in America: Top 10 Most Dangerous Cities Over 200,000 notes that unemployment, population reduction, slow police responses and a vast amount of abandoned buildings may be correlated with high crime rates in the city. According to Time Magazine, “Detroit is in particularly bad shape, many of its underlying issues — crushing debt and unfunded and unsustainable retiree benefits — are not unique.”

The country’s industrialization brought not only economic advancements and prosperity to the United States, but income inequality and multi-ethnicity problems to its cities. Detroit became known during the late 1950-60s as the “Motor City” or “Motown” due to the large concentration of automobile companies in its metropolitan area. Its freeway system was also constructed during industrial revolution, and facilitated the development of the city and its rapid industrialization.

However, instead of simply discussing the unfortunate economic and social hardships within the city, we should focus on what options Detroit really has for recovery!

Any suggestions?

Detroit is a city with a rich history and vibrant atmosphere, but high crime rates spoil all odds for its residents. Former Detroit Chief of Police and current Wayne County Sheriff, Benny Napoleon, reaffirmed this in his article in the Huffington Post, claiming that Detroit lost more than half of its population due to disorganized neighborhoods and high crime rates. He also proposed a Five Point Crime Reduction Plan, that should include but not be limited to the following:

– Data-driven approach

– Crime prevention

– Directed enforcement

– Problem-oriented policing

– Community policing

Sounds like a solid plan to me if staff training and implementation procedures are utilized systematically and correctly.

What has Detroit already done?!

There is a plethora of existing initiatives that have been adopted by the Detroit Police Department. Neighborhood Watch, for example provides the main line of communication between police and the community. Another useful crime prevention strategy is Citizen Observer, which is, in essence, a mobile platform that “provides updates of crimes trends, description of wanted suspects, missing persons, crime prevention tips, and other pertinent information pertaining to businesses and the community safety.” Other notable programs include Detroit’s Most Wanted and the Community and Police Advocacy (CAPPA) group, both of which equip the community with useful information and work directly with the public on a range of safety issues.

As we can see, the Detroit Police are vigorously trying to bring city crime down through community-oriented policing strategies, but one practice looks quite alarming to me: the Offender Tracking Information System (OTIC), which, according to its website, will “provide information about any offender who is, or was, in a Michigan prison, on parole or probation under the supervision of the MDOC, has transferred in or out of Michigan under the Michigan Interstate Compact, or who has escaped or absconded from their sentence.” The practice is disturbing because it can be easily misused by people to label and harass ex-offenders. It undoubtedly raises many ethical concerns.

Besides police initiatives, the Detroit community is trying to revitalize its neighborhoods to create a safe environment for all residents. The Helping Ourselves Overcome Disparities Project (Osborn HOOD) uses efforts from different city and neighborhood organizations to engage youth in community building and provide more mobility and safety to the Osborn area residents of Detroit. Osborne HOOD is an excellent example of community leadership and progressive thinking. Detroit should welcome similar initiatives in its backyard that can provide positive spillover effects and facilitate such projects on a larger scale.

Data and Necessary Surroundings

I strongly agree with the Five Point Crime Reduction Plan proposed by Benny Napoleon. Napoleon served as Detroit’s youngest Chief of Police and later became a prominent Assistant Wayne County Executive. As a longtime resident of Detroit with a 38-year public service career, he knows what is best for the city. Another important notion that he supports is the idea that comprehensive data collection is paramount in combating crime. The data-driven approach focuses on collecting and using data so we can understand patterns and try to reduce incidents of crime across neighborhoods. It’s truly a starting point for any preventive actions as well as for adequate respons times.

However, in addition to data gathering and analysis, Detroit needs systematic research on ecology of crime to understand where crime incidents are located to find the so-called “hot spots.” Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) can be utilized to make the public spaces safer. Some changes can be quite pricey, but Detroit can start with the small pieces of the puzzle that are relatively inexpensive, effective, and easy to incorporate. Small adjustments of neighborhood spaces like the replacement of blind spots with safer architectural designs, or changing the layout of streets to bolster neighbors’ interactions and provide a greater sense of community. Neighborhood watch groups should be also utilized in every community to better understand needs and the most pressing problems. The above examples are just the tip of the iceberg among the many innovative ways that CPTED can offer to transform criminogenic spaces into safe communities.

Detroit can learn a great deal about CPTED by looking at Irvine, California, which was rated the number one safest city over 200,000 population in 2012 according to our methodology. The city was carefully planned by Irvine Company in the 1960s utilizing some notions of CPTED. Omar Masry, an associate planner in the City of Irvine, California claims that implementation of CPTED in Irvine “enhances the sense of safety and security for new occupants and the surrounding neighborhood.” Using the same strategy for Detroit can render significant results in reducing its crime rates and reorganizing its communities.

So, Can We Rebuild, or Can’t We?

If we want crime reduction strategies to work in Detroit, strong police cooperation not only with communities, but with other sectors of local government, should be implemented. To eradicate “hot spots” of crime in Detroit we will need to “rebuild” the city by changing existing environments and providing safer opportunities for its residents. Communities should come together without having to wait for government and police to magically alter existing realities. The real change will happen when all human resources are pulled together including local government officials, police officers, community leaders, young professionals and educators.

It has been long proven that alone we can do so little, while together we can do so much.

—

Valeriya Metla is a young professional, passionate about international relations, immigration issues, and social and criminal justice. She holds two Bachelor Degrees in regional studies and international criminal justice. Contact Valeriya at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Gwert38 via Wikipedia]

Valeriya Metla

Valeriya Metla is a young professional, passionate about international relations, immigration issues, and social and criminal justice. She holds two Bachelor Degrees in regional studies and international criminal justice. Contact Valeriya at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Can We Rebuild Detroit? Affirmative Thoughts appeared first on Law Street.