| The Center for Court Innovation seeks to promote information-sharing and the dissemination of best practices across national borders by performing original research, conducting state-of-the-art training, hosting structured site visits to its demonstration projects in New York, and providing hands-on consulting to practitioners on the ground. The goal is to encourage the proliferation of community justice initiatives and their underlying principles—problem-solving orientation, focus on low-level offending, and engaging local residents and unconventional partners in doing justice. |
Without public trust and confidence in the legal system, democratic reform and sustainable development are compromised and the rule of law becomes weak. Conventional approaches to criminal justice often result in declining public confidence in justice, prison overcrowding, neighborhood disorder, fear of crime, rising and unmanageable caseloads and system-wide dissatisfaction. The Center’s approach to reform is based on three key elements:
- Solving Problems: Encouraging judges, police, prosecutors and other criminal justice players to address community safety problems aggressively rather than simply responding to individual crimes after the fact or engaging in typical case processing.
- Engaging the Community: Engaging local residents in working directly with criminal justice agencies to identify local problems, select priorities and craft new solutions.
- Forging New Partnerships: Emphasizing reaching outside of the criminal justice system to create partnerships with unconventional community stakeholders such as business groups, faith-based organizations, schools and NGOs.
The Center provides a wide array of services to assist justice agencies, governments, NGOs and community groups around the world to develop community justice initiatives and improve public trust and confidence in the justice system. The Center’s services include:
- Technical Assistance: The Center provides hands-on, individualized consulting services at every stage of creating a community justice project, from concept to planning to implementation to evaluation. This includes how to perform a needs assessment, how to reach out to local residents, how to develop a solid concept paper, how to create interagency partnerships and how to measure efficacy.
- Training: Through a combination of site visits, written materials and conference presentations, we provide the tools and skills justice professionals—including judges, prosecutors and police—need to innovate locally. Working with local partners, we develop training materials and design community justice and community prosecution conferences and training programs.
- Research and Evaluation: In order to learn what works and what does not, the Center for Court Innovation performs original research to examine the implementation and impacts of community justice initiatives around the world. In concert with local partners, the Center assists in the design and analysis of research and evaluation tools including, public opinion surveys, needs assessments and process and outcome measurement indicators.
- International Visitors Program: The Center designs and conducts educational programs and site visits for international criminal justice professionals, government representatives and NGOs. These programs include visits to functioning community justice projects including the Midtown Community Court, the Red Hook Community Justice Center and the Community Prosecution program at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office. During these site visits, international visitors see community justice in action and obtain peer-to-peer consultation with community justice professionals. To date, visitors from over 50 countries have participated in this program.
- Information-sharing: The Center identifies and disseminates best practices through publications and the website so that practitioners all over the world can take advantage of solutions devised by their peers.
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REQUEST ASSISTANCE FORM
Please use this form for any of your expert assistance needs, whether you'd like to arrange a visit to one of our demonstration projects in New York, request hands-on assistance, schedule a training, engage our researchers, or just request more information in general. We look forward to hearing from you. |
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