Quality of Life
Quality of Life

Author: Mia Abboud Holbrook

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13:

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The rise of problem-solving courts in the American criminal justice system has paved a way for a collaborative, rehabilitative approach to addressing crime. Community courts have since emerged as a criminal justice response to enhance quality of life. By definition, a community court embraces a holistic approach by tending to the participant from all aspects of their life. This includes the collaboration of criminal justice actors, such as judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and law enforcement, with outside entities such as mental health professionals, social service providers, and community organizations. The process of community court embodies a very different approach from the traditional court system. While there are many successful aspects to community courts, research has shown a lack of focus on recidivism reductions within community court participants, as well as the use of inconsistent study methodology. This research examines the importance, efficacy, and impact of community courts through a program evaluation and gap analysis of an established community court. This research also addresses the key issues that are often the sources for the lack of community court research.This study found that when implemented correctly, the community court displays model adherence to the recommended community court principals as well as the policies and procedures as outline in the manual. Promising results were discovered, including the creation of a service provider room, the utilization of a validated risk and needs assessment tool, and the collaboration present between the community court team and the social service and treatment providers. The community court also displayed an of the needs of its participants with the service provider offerings they currently provide. Some challenges were also noted, including negative preliminary findings. Challenges found include a need for improved data collection procedures, an enhancement in ensuring that participants understand the program structure and continue to follow-up with case plan, and the development of a way to track and follow-up with community court participants. These findings offer an important look into the community court model and open the door for future research.

Courting the Community
Courting the Community

Author: Christine Zozula

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 2019-06-21

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781439917398

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Community Courts are designed to handle a city’s low-level offenses and quality-of-life crimes, such as littering, loitering, or public drunkenness. Court advocates maintain that these largely victimless crimes jeopardize the well-being of residents, businesses, and visitors. Whereas traditional courts might dismiss such cases or administer a small fine, community courts aim to meaningfully punish offenders to avoid disorder escalating to apocalyptic decline. Courting the Community is a fascinating ethnography that goes behind the scenes to explore how quality-of-life discourses are translated into court practices that marry therapeutic and rehabilitative ideas. Christine Zozula shows how residents and businesses participate in meting out justice—such as through community service, treatment, or other sanctions—making it more emotional, less detached, and more legitimate in the eyes of stakeholders. She also examines both “impact panels,” in which offenders, residents, and business owners meet to discuss how quality-of-life crimes negatively impact the neighborhood, as well as strategic neighborhood outreach efforts to update residents on cases and gauge their concerns. Zozula’s nuanced investigation of community courts can lead us to a deeper understanding of punishment and rehabilitation and, by extension, the current state of the American court system.

Good Courts
Good Courts

Author: Greg Berman

Publisher: Quid Pro Books

Published: 2015-12-03

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1610273311

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Presented in a new digital edition, and adding a Foreword by Jonathan Lippman, Chief Judge of the state of New York, Good Courts is now available as an eBook to criminal justice workers, jurists, lawyers, political scientists, court officials, and others interested in the future of alternative justice and process in the United States. Public confidence in American criminal courts is at an all-time low. Victims, communities, and even offenders view courts as unable to respond adequately to complex social and legal problems including drugs, prostitution, domestic violence, and quality-of-life crime. Even many judges and attorneys think that the courts produce assembly-line justice. Increasingly embraced by even the most hard-on-crime jurists, problem-solving courts offer an effective alternative. As documented by Greg Berman and John Feinblatt—both of whom were instrumental in setting up New York’s Midtown Community Court and Red Hook Community Justice Center, two of the nation’s premier models for problem-solving justice—these alternative courts reengineer the way everyday crime is addressed by focusing on the underlying problems that bring people into the criminal justice system to begin with. The first book to describe this cutting-edge movement in detail, Good Courts features, in addition to the Midtown and Red Hook models, an in-depth look at Oregon’s Portland Community Court. And it reviews the growing body of evidence that the problem-solving approach to justice is indeed producing positive results around the country. Quality eBook features include linked Notes, active TOC, and proper formatting.

Dispensing Justice Locally
Dispensing Justice Locally

Author: Richard Curtis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-01-02

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1134417500

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This book shows the significant impact and success that can be accomplished when courts are designed to meet the needs of the community regardless of traditional proceedings. The presentation of this unique approach marks the way for courts and ancillary justice agencies of all sizes to work together to build community confidence and assure not only quality of life but quality of justice.

Courting the Community
Courting the Community

Author: Christine Zozula

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 2019-06-21

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 143991740X

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Community Courts are designed to handle a city’s low-level offenses and quality-of-life crimes, such as littering, loitering, or public drunkenness. Court advocates maintain that these largely victimless crimes jeopardize the well-being of residents, businesses, and visitors. Whereas traditional courts might dismiss such cases or administer a small fine, community courts aim to meaningfully punish offenders to avoid disorder escalating to apocalyptic decline. Courting the Community is a fascinating ethnography that goes behind the scenes to explore how quality-of-life discourses are translated into court practices that marry therapeutic and rehabilitative ideas. Christine Zozula shows how residents and businesses participate in meting out justice—such as through community service, treatment, or other sanctions—making it more emotional, less detached, and more legitimate in the eyes of stakeholders. She also examines both “impact panels,” in which offenders, residents, and business owners meet to discuss how quality-of-life crimes negatively impact the neighborhood, as well as strategic neighborhood outreach efforts to update residents on cases and gauge their concerns. Zozula’s nuanced investigation of community courts can lead us to a deeper understanding of punishment and rehabilitation and, by extension, the current state of the American court system.

Problem Solving Courts
Problem Solving Courts

Author: JoAnn Miller

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2009-11-16

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1442200820

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Problem Solving Courts examines a relatively new approach to criminal justice in which judges, advised by law enforcement officers and mental health workers, meet with offenders on a weekly basis to talk about their issues in a socio-legal setting where therapeutic intervention is combined with a measure of punishment for program violations. Sociologist JoAnn Miller and judge Donald C. Johnson, creators of three successful problem solving courts themselves, address the compelling needs for alternatives to prisons, analyze problem solving courts in depth, and assess the impact problem solving courts can have on offenders and their communities.