Center for Court Innovation
Encyclopedia
The Center for Court Innovation is a non-profit think tank
headquartered in New York that helps courts and criminal justice agencies aid victims, reduce crime and improve public trust in justice.
The Center for Court Innovation works closely with the New York State Unified Court System, functioning as the judiciary's independent research and development arm. In that role, the Center creates demonstration projects that test new ideas. The Center’s projects include the Midtown Community Court
and Red Hook Community Justice Center as well as drug court
s, reentry courts, domestic violence court
s, mental health courts
and others.
The Center also works closely with jurisdictions around the U.S. and the rest of the world, disseminating lessons learned from innovative programs and providing hands-on assistance to criminal justice practitioners interested in deploying new research-based strategies to improve the delivery of justice. The Center, which received an Innovations in American Government Award from the Ford Foundation
and Harvard University
, was founded in 1996 by John Feinblatt, who currently serves as the criminal justice coordinator for New York City
.
The Center for Court Innovation grew out of a single experiment in judicial problem solving. The Midtown Community Court
was created in 1993 to address low-level offending around Times Square
. The Midtown Court combines punishment and help, sentencing offenders to perform community service and receive social services. The project’s perceived success in making justice more visible and more meaningful led the court’s planners, with the support of New York State’s chief judge
, to establish the Center for Court Innovation to serve as an engine for ongoing court reform in New York.
The Center works within the court system, but is administered as a project of the Fund for the City of New York, a non-profit operating foundation. The Center works closely with court system staff but, as an independent organization, retains the perspective of independent observers. According to New York State Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, "In creating the Center, we essentially adapted a model from the private sector: we chose to make an ongoing investment in research and development, and we chose to shield these functions from the daily pressures of managing the courts. The results have been unmistakable: the Center for Court Innovation has helped keep New York at the forefront of court reform for more than a decade."
Center planners also work with practitioners beyond New York. For example, they've worked with government leaders in Great Britain
to replicate the Red Hook Community Justice Center in North Liverpool
. In 2008, England and Wales adapted Center concepts to develop 11 new community courts, bringing the nation's total number of community courts to 13. Center planners have also worked with officials in San Francisco, who are planning a new community justice center to serve the city's Tenderloin neighborhood. Among other things, the Center helped court planners in San Francisco complete an extensive community planning effort, including a needs assessment.
The Center has received numerous awards for its efforts, including the Innovations in American Government Award from Harvard University
and the Ford Foundation
, the Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation from Claremont Graduate University
and the Prize for Public Sector Innovation from the Citizens Budget Commission
.
to the reentry of ex-offenders into society—the approach is always the same: rigorous, collaborative planning and an emphasis on using data to document results and ensure accountability. The Center’s projects have achieved tangible results like safer streets, reduced levels of fear and improved neighborhood quality of life.
Aside from the Midtown Community Court and Red Hook Community Justice Center, the Center’s projects include the Harlem Community Justice Center, Bronx Community Solutions, Queens Plaza Community Clean Up, Brooklyn Treatment Court, Manhattan Family Treatment Court, Brooklyn Domestic Violence Court, Integrated Domestic Violence Court, Youthful Offender Domestic Violence Court, Youth Justice Board, Red Hook & Harlem Youth Courts, Bronx Juvenile Accountability Court, Brooklyn Mental Health Court, Parole Reentry Court, Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, and New York City Family Court Blueprint for Change.
It began to offer technical assistance to other jurisdictions under grants from the Bureau of Justice Assistance
, the arm of the United States Department of Justice
responsible for nurturing new ideas. In 1996, the Bureau of Justice Assistance awarded the Center a grant to help cities across the U.S. develop their own community courts. Over time, the Center has also won national “requests for proposals” to provide technical assistance in a growing number of areas, including community prosecution, domestic violence, drug courts, technology, tribual justice and institutionalizing problem-solving justice.
The Center's technical assistance takes many forms. From 1996 to 2006, more than 1,800 visitors—including representatives from 50 countries—toured Center projects. These site visits to the Red Hook Community Justice Center, the Midtown Community Court and other projects are structured learning experiences that provide visitors a chance to interact with their peers and see new ideas in action. Notable visitors to Center projects include U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, New York City Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, and the home secretary, lord chief justice, lord chancellor and attorney general of England and Wales.
More than a dozen community courts have opened in South Africa
, and staff from the Center have also worked with officials from Scotland
, Japan
, Australia
, Ireland
, New Zealand
and Canada
on adapting the community court model.
The Center has also sponsored roundtables, which have explored a wide range of topics, including ethical challenges facing lawyers in problem-solving courts, and how to improve communication between criminal justice researchers and practitioners.
The Center has published dozens of how-to manuals and best practice guides for criminal justice officials, culling the lessons from successful justice innovations and disseminating them to the field. The Center’s web site, www.courtinnovation.org, was named a "Top 10" web site by Justice Served http://justiceserved.com/top10sites.cfm.
The Center also regularly conducts trainings throughout New York for judges and staff working in problem-solving courts. In recent years, the Center has also helped organize trainings for judges in general court calendars to educate them about problem-solving principles. In 2005, for instance, the Center helped convene two dozen upstate judges for a day-long training exploring how approaches used in problem-solving courts might be adaptable to general calendars. The training was the first of its kind in the country.
The Center works closely with technologists at the New York State Court System's Office of Court Administration in an effort to promote the use of innovative technology and support the expansion of problem-solving justice. Among other things, the Center’s technology team is helping adapt elements of computer applications it has developed for problem-solving courts to a new system to be used by all criminal courts in New York State.
Researchers from the Center spent three years documenting the performance New York’s drug courts. The resulting impact evaluation found significant reductions in recidivism at all drug courts (urban, suburban, rural) —an average of 29 percent over a three-year post-arrest period. When researchers looked at just drug court graduates, they found a 71 percent reduction in recidivism.
The findings, released in 2003 and reported widely around the country (including an article in the Sunday New York Times), were significant because they were among the few studies to track participants in multiple drug courts over a long (three-year) study period.
In another study, Center researchers followed over 400 domestic violence offenders from the Bronx in a randomized trial and found that batterers programs had no discernible impact on recidivism. This finding, which calls into question the efficacy of batterer programs, could eventually lead to changes in how misdemeanor offenders are handled, not just in New York but across the country.
In another study, Center researchers explored whether problem-solving justice always requires a specialized court or if core principles and practices from these specialized courts are transferable to conventional courts. After interviewing judges, attorneys and representatives from probation departments and service providers, researchers concluded that a number of principles—such as judicial monitoring and linking offenders to services—could be transferable. The study, conducted in cooperation with the Collaborative Justice Courts Advisory Committee of the Judicial Council of California, was the first of its kind in the country.
Other Center research projects include a national survey seeking to determine how and why courts use batterer programs to hold domestic violence offenders accountable; a comprehensive evaluation describing the Brooklyn Mental Health Court model; an in-depth study of the implementation and early results produced by the Brooklyn Youthful Offender Domestic Violence Court; a study of the Suffolk County Juvenile Drug Court’s effects on recidivism; a study examining the degree to which criminal defendants processed at the Red Hook Community Justice Center believe they were treated fairly; and a five-year national study with the Urban Institute and the Research Triangle Institute that is expected to shed light on which aspects of the drug court model are most important.
In 2005, The New Press
published Good Courts: The Case for Problem-Solving Justice. The first book to describe the problem-solving court movement in detail, Good Courts features profiles of Center demonstration projects, including the Midtown Community Court and the Red Hook Community Justice Center, portraits of practitioners in the trenches and a review of research findings. “Sociologists and those within the legal system will no doubt be intrigued by this accessible and provocative call for change,” Publishers Weekly
said in its review. All authors’ proceeds from the book, which is being used in law schools and public policy classes, benefit the Center for Court Innovation. The book is already being used in law schools and public policy schools, thanks in part to a law school course on problem-solving justice that the Center piloted at Fordham Law School. The Center has also published the books A Problem-Solving Revolution: Making Change Happen in State Courts, Documenting Results: Research on Problem-Solving Justice, and Personal Stories: Narratives from Across New York State.
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
headquartered in New York that helps courts and criminal justice agencies aid victims, reduce crime and improve public trust in justice.
The Center for Court Innovation works closely with the New York State Unified Court System, functioning as the judiciary's independent research and development arm. In that role, the Center creates demonstration projects that test new ideas. The Center’s projects include the Midtown Community Court
Midtown Community Court
The Midtown Community Court is a municipal court of law established in 1993 in the Times Square neighborhood of New York City. The court focuses on quality-of-life offenses, such as prostitution, shoplifting, farebeating and vandalism...
and Red Hook Community Justice Center as well as drug court
Drug court
Drug Courts are judicially supervised court dockets that handle the cases of nonviolent substance abusing offenders under the adult, juvenile, family and tribal justice systems...
s, reentry courts, domestic violence court
Domestic violence court
Specialized domestic violence courts are designed to improve victim safety and enhance defendant accountability. They emerged in the 1980s and 1990s in response to frustration among victim advocates, judges and attorneys who saw the same litigants cycling through the justice system again and...
s, mental health courts
Mental health courts
Mental health courts link offenders who would ordinarily be prison-bound to long-term community-based treatment. They rely on mental health assessments, individualized treatment plans, and ongoing judicial monitoring to address both the mental health needs of offenders and public safety concerns of...
and others.
The Center also works closely with jurisdictions around the U.S. and the rest of the world, disseminating lessons learned from innovative programs and providing hands-on assistance to criminal justice practitioners interested in deploying new research-based strategies to improve the delivery of justice. The Center, which received an Innovations in American Government Award from the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
and Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, was founded in 1996 by John Feinblatt, who currently serves as the criminal justice coordinator for New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
History
Community Court
In the United States and several other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and South Africa, a community court is a neighborhood-focused court that applies a problem-solving approach to local crime and safety concerns...
was created in 1993 to address low-level offending around Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
. The Midtown Court combines punishment and help, sentencing offenders to perform community service and receive social services. The project’s perceived success in making justice more visible and more meaningful led the court’s planners, with the support of New York State’s chief judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
, to establish the Center for Court Innovation to serve as an engine for ongoing court reform in New York.
The Center works within the court system, but is administered as a project of the Fund for the City of New York, a non-profit operating foundation. The Center works closely with court system staff but, as an independent organization, retains the perspective of independent observers. According to New York State Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, "In creating the Center, we essentially adapted a model from the private sector: we chose to make an ongoing investment in research and development, and we chose to shield these functions from the daily pressures of managing the courts. The results have been unmistakable: the Center for Court Innovation has helped keep New York at the forefront of court reform for more than a decade."
Center planners also work with practitioners beyond New York. For example, they've worked with government leaders in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
to replicate the Red Hook Community Justice Center in North Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
. In 2008, England and Wales adapted Center concepts to develop 11 new community courts, bringing the nation's total number of community courts to 13. Center planners have also worked with officials in San Francisco, who are planning a new community justice center to serve the city's Tenderloin neighborhood. Among other things, the Center helped court planners in San Francisco complete an extensive community planning effort, including a needs assessment.
The Center has received numerous awards for its efforts, including the Innovations in American Government Award from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
, the Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation from Claremont Graduate University
Claremont Graduate University
Claremont Graduate University is a private, all-graduate research university located in Claremont, California, a city east of downtown Los Angeles...
and the Prize for Public Sector Innovation from the Citizens Budget Commission
Citizens Budget Commission
The Citizens Budget Commission is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic organization that attempts to influence constructive change in the finances and services of New York City and New York State government.-History:...
.
Demonstration projects
The Center for Court Innovation creates new programs that test innovative approaches to public safety problems. Underlying this work is the concept of “problem-solving justice”—the idea that, rather than simply processing cases, the justice system should seek to change the behavior of offenders and improve public safety. While the Center’s model projects cover a broad range of topics—from juvenile delinquencyJuvenile delinquency
Juvenile delinquency is participation in illegal behavior by minors who fall under a statutory age limit. Most legal systems prescribe specific procedures for dealing with juveniles, such as juvenile detention centers. There are a multitude of different theories on the causes of crime, most if not...
to the reentry of ex-offenders into society—the approach is always the same: rigorous, collaborative planning and an emphasis on using data to document results and ensure accountability. The Center’s projects have achieved tangible results like safer streets, reduced levels of fear and improved neighborhood quality of life.
Aside from the Midtown Community Court and Red Hook Community Justice Center, the Center’s projects include the Harlem Community Justice Center, Bronx Community Solutions, Queens Plaza Community Clean Up, Brooklyn Treatment Court, Manhattan Family Treatment Court, Brooklyn Domestic Violence Court, Integrated Domestic Violence Court, Youthful Offender Domestic Violence Court, Youth Justice Board, Red Hook & Harlem Youth Courts, Bronx Juvenile Accountability Court, Brooklyn Mental Health Court, Parole Reentry Court, Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, and New York City Family Court Blueprint for Change.
Assisting practitioners
The Center for Court Innovation works with jurisdictions in New York, the U.S. and internationally.It began to offer technical assistance to other jurisdictions under grants from the Bureau of Justice Assistance
Bureau of Justice Assistance
The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, within the United States Department of Justice.On Monday, December 13, 2010, President Barack Obama sent to the U.S. Senate the nomination of Denise Ellen O'Donnell, of New York, to be the Director of the Bureau, in...
, the arm of the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
responsible for nurturing new ideas. In 1996, the Bureau of Justice Assistance awarded the Center a grant to help cities across the U.S. develop their own community courts. Over time, the Center has also won national “requests for proposals” to provide technical assistance in a growing number of areas, including community prosecution, domestic violence, drug courts, technology, tribual justice and institutionalizing problem-solving justice.
The Center's technical assistance takes many forms. From 1996 to 2006, more than 1,800 visitors—including representatives from 50 countries—toured Center projects. These site visits to the Red Hook Community Justice Center, the Midtown Community Court and other projects are structured learning experiences that provide visitors a chance to interact with their peers and see new ideas in action. Notable visitors to Center projects include U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, New York City Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, and the home secretary, lord chief justice, lord chancellor and attorney general of England and Wales.
More than a dozen community courts have opened in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, and staff from the Center have also worked with officials from Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
on adapting the community court model.
The Center has also sponsored roundtables, which have explored a wide range of topics, including ethical challenges facing lawyers in problem-solving courts, and how to improve communication between criminal justice researchers and practitioners.
The Center has published dozens of how-to manuals and best practice guides for criminal justice officials, culling the lessons from successful justice innovations and disseminating them to the field. The Center’s web site, www.courtinnovation.org, was named a "Top 10" web site by Justice Served http://justiceserved.com/top10sites.cfm.
The Center also regularly conducts trainings throughout New York for judges and staff working in problem-solving courts. In recent years, the Center has also helped organize trainings for judges in general court calendars to educate them about problem-solving principles. In 2005, for instance, the Center helped convene two dozen upstate judges for a day-long training exploring how approaches used in problem-solving courts might be adaptable to general calendars. The training was the first of its kind in the country.
The Center works closely with technologists at the New York State Court System's Office of Court Administration in an effort to promote the use of innovative technology and support the expansion of problem-solving justice. Among other things, the Center’s technology team is helping adapt elements of computer applications it has developed for problem-solving courts to a new system to be used by all criminal courts in New York State.
Research
The Center publishes research about its own experiments and innovative initiatives around the United States and world. The purpose of the research is to identify best practices as well as strategies that don't work or can be improved upon.Researchers from the Center spent three years documenting the performance New York’s drug courts. The resulting impact evaluation found significant reductions in recidivism at all drug courts (urban, suburban, rural) —an average of 29 percent over a three-year post-arrest period. When researchers looked at just drug court graduates, they found a 71 percent reduction in recidivism.
The findings, released in 2003 and reported widely around the country (including an article in the Sunday New York Times), were significant because they were among the few studies to track participants in multiple drug courts over a long (three-year) study period.
In another study, Center researchers followed over 400 domestic violence offenders from the Bronx in a randomized trial and found that batterers programs had no discernible impact on recidivism. This finding, which calls into question the efficacy of batterer programs, could eventually lead to changes in how misdemeanor offenders are handled, not just in New York but across the country.
In another study, Center researchers explored whether problem-solving justice always requires a specialized court or if core principles and practices from these specialized courts are transferable to conventional courts. After interviewing judges, attorneys and representatives from probation departments and service providers, researchers concluded that a number of principles—such as judicial monitoring and linking offenders to services—could be transferable. The study, conducted in cooperation with the Collaborative Justice Courts Advisory Committee of the Judicial Council of California, was the first of its kind in the country.
Other Center research projects include a national survey seeking to determine how and why courts use batterer programs to hold domestic violence offenders accountable; a comprehensive evaluation describing the Brooklyn Mental Health Court model; an in-depth study of the implementation and early results produced by the Brooklyn Youthful Offender Domestic Violence Court; a study of the Suffolk County Juvenile Drug Court’s effects on recidivism; a study examining the degree to which criminal defendants processed at the Red Hook Community Justice Center believe they were treated fairly; and a five-year national study with the Urban Institute and the Research Triangle Institute that is expected to shed light on which aspects of the drug court model are most important.
In 2005, The New Press
The New Press
The New Press is a not-for-profit, United States-based publishing house that operates in the public interest. It was established in 1990 as an alternative to large commercial publishers, and is supported financially by various foundations, groups and corporations including the Ford Foundation, the...
published Good Courts: The Case for Problem-Solving Justice. The first book to describe the problem-solving court movement in detail, Good Courts features profiles of Center demonstration projects, including the Midtown Community Court and the Red Hook Community Justice Center, portraits of practitioners in the trenches and a review of research findings. “Sociologists and those within the legal system will no doubt be intrigued by this accessible and provocative call for change,” Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
said in its review. All authors’ proceeds from the book, which is being used in law schools and public policy classes, benefit the Center for Court Innovation. The book is already being used in law schools and public policy schools, thanks in part to a law school course on problem-solving justice that the Center piloted at Fordham Law School. The Center has also published the books A Problem-Solving Revolution: Making Change Happen in State Courts, Documenting Results: Research on Problem-Solving Justice, and Personal Stories: Narratives from Across New York State.