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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
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Results for community courts (seattle)
2 results foundAuthor: Nugent-Borakove, M. Elaine Title: Seattle Municipal Community Court: Outcome Evaluation Final Report Summary: Community courts began to emerge in the early 2000s to help alleviate the crush of minor offenses and quality of life crimes plaguing communities and criminal courts across the country. The theory behind community courts is that the defendants entering the justice system charged with relatively minor offenses have a variety of unmet needs that may contribute to their criminal offending. These offenders, referred to by some as “frequent fliers,” have lengthy criminal histories, often fail to appear in court on citations or summonses, and drain not only criminal justice system resources but also those of emergency rooms, homeless shelters, drug treatment programs, and other social programs. Traditional responses to these offenders — jail, conventional probation, and fines — seem to have no deterrent effect, nor do they help reduce the likelihood of recidivism. Many of these offenders have a multitude of problems that are often related to their criminal activity — mental illness, substance abuse, homelessness, unemployment, illiteracy or learning disability, and lack of social or family support. By addressing these needs through a non‐traditional court process, community courts are intended to reduce the likelihood that these offenders will commit new offenses after the courts’ intervention. The Seattle Community Court team has collected several years of data related to the community court to facilitate a more comprehensive evaluation as recommended by JMI in 2007. Although experimental designs, in which defendants who meet the eligibility criteria are randomly assigned to either Community Court or traditional court, are considered to be the gold standard in evaluation research, such evaluations are quite costly and often require contemporaneous data collection as well as random assignment of defendants to community court. Given the level of funding available and the time period in which the evaluation needed to be completed, an experimental design for this evaluation was not feasible. However, based on the available data, JMI was able to use a quasi‐experimental design using a pre‐/post‐test design and a control group. The City Attorney’s Office provided JMI with two datasets — one for community court participants and one for a control group of defendants who did not participate in the community court program. The community court sample consisted of defendants who entered community court between July 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006. Data collected on these defendants include criminal history 18 months prior to and 18 months after the community court intervention, criminal charge, offense dates, types of social services received, type of disposition, and other demographic information about the defendants. The intervention date was considered to be the date of the community court plea. The control group was selected from defendants receiving a community court offer during the same period, but who failed to “opt‐in. The control group dataset included criminal history 18 months prior to the date that community court was offered and 18 months after that date, criminal charge, offense dates, and type of disposition. The intervention date for these defendants was considered to be the date of their rejection of the community court offer, usually their first appearance date in court for arraignment. JMI examined criminal offending patterns prior to community court and level of criminal offending after community court, using the defendant as the unit of analysis. The total sample size was 439 defendants—209 who participated in the community court and 230 who did not (the control group). The primary question addressed in this evaluation is whether or not the community court is effective in reducing or eliminating recidivism. Given that the community court focuses on repeat offenders, the number of contacts with the justice system prior to entering the program compared to the number of contacts after completion of the program is a particularly relevant measure of effectiveness. There are several additional questions that were addressed as part of the evaluation: Is community court effective for all types of defendants or select defendants, and what are the characteristics of those who are most successful following program completion? Does community court impact the likelihood of involvement in more serious offenses after program completion? Are there differences in recidivism between community court participants and similar defendants who are handled in the traditional Municipal Court? Details: Denver, CO: The Justice Management Institute, 2009. 15p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 2, 2011 at: http://www.jmijustice.org/publications/outcome-evaluation-of-the-seattle-municipal-court Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.jmijustice.org/publications/outcome-evaluation-of-the-seattle-municipal-court Shelf Number: 122255 Keywords: Community Courts (Seattle)Recidivism |
Author: Mahoney, Barry Title: The Seattle Community Court: Start-up, Initial Implementation, and Recommendations Concerning Future Development Summary: In June 2006, a group of urban court administrators and presiding judges from large urban trial courts in the United States met in Seattle, Washington, hosted by the Seattle Municipal Court. The program for the meeting, which was organized by The Justice Management Institute (JMI) as part of its Urban Court Managers Network project, included opportunity to observe a session of the Seattle Community Court. Following the court session, participants at the meeting had an opportunity to speak informally with three justice system leaders—Presiding Judge Fred Bonner, City Attorney Tom Carr, and Dave Chapman, Director of Associated Counsel for the Accused, the lead indigent defense agency serving the Municipal Court—who had participated actively in the session. During the informal discussion following the session, everyone present learned about the origins of the Community Court and the remarkable commitment to innovation and system improvement that these three leaders had forged. All of the court administrators and presiding judges present at the meeting recognized the difficulty of the challenge that the Community Court leaders had taken on. Every community of any size faces problems of the sort that Seattle has faced with a population of individuals charged repeatedly with minor “quality of life” offenses. It has become increasingly clear that traditional criminal sanctions—such as jail, probation, or fines—rarely have any deterrent effect on these individuals. It has also become apparent that the roots of their behavior lie much deeper. The individuals who repeatedly commit these offenses are very likely to have a host of other problems: substance abuse or addiction, mental illness, lack of employment or stable housing, and physical disabilities of varying severity. In addition to cycling repeatedly through the criminal justice system, they also turn up repeatedly at hospital emergency rooms, homeless shelters, and other publicly supported facilities. Few jurisdictions have developed effective ways of handling the problems they pose. The Seattle approach struck most everyone at the meeting as innovative and promising. It involved the use of the authority of the court to impose a short sentence of community service rather than a jail term, coupled with requirements that the defendant make at least initial linkages with social services and treatment agencies. The Seattle justice system leaders were candid in acknowledging that their objectives for the program were modest: they hoped to begin to turn around the lives of some of the participants, but they had no illusions of 100% success. Simply getting as many as 30 percent of the defendants to complete their sentence obligations could be regarded as a major accomplishment. However, even modest success would be better than continued adherence to traditional practices that were demonstrably ineffective in changing behaviors, though expensive in the use of jail space.The main objectives of this report are to describe how and why the Seattle Community Court program got started, summarize the experience of the first two years of the program, and provide recommendations for further expansion of the Community Court. Details: Denver, CO: Justice Management Institute, 2007. 46p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 20, 2012 at: http://www.jmijustice.org/publications/the-seattle-community-court-start-up-and-implementation Year: 2007 Country: United States URL: http://www.jmijustice.org/publications/the-seattle-community-court-start-up-and-implementation Shelf Number: 125700 Keywords: Alternatives to IncarcerationCommunity Courts (Seattle)Community SentencesCommunity Service |