The Center for Court Innovation provides hands-on, expert assistance to reformers—judges, attorneys, criminal justice officials, and community organizations—around the world. The Center provides guidance on assessing public safety problems and crafting workable, practical solutions. Having launched dozens of innovative criminal and juvenile justice initiatives in New York, the Center knows first-hand the nut-and-bolts steps that must be taken to get a new project off the ground—from performing a rigorous community needs assessment to figuring out how to measure the impacts of new procedures. The Center is working with innovators both in the United States and abroad to help create new responses to problems like drugs, domestic violence, delinquency, and neighborhood disorder.
The Center's experts are available to speak on topics of justice reform at conferences around the world. For example, in recent months representatives from the Center have been featured at a Policy Exchange briefing in London, England, Sacro's Annual Conference "Community Justice - Making Scotland Safer" in Edinburgh, Scotland, International Bridges to Justice's training in Beijing, China and numerous other events. |
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The Center assisted the British Government in developing a pilot Community Justice Centre in Liverpool, providing support to a planning team of officials from several government departments—including the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Constitutional Affairs, and the Crown Prosecution Service—on such topics as needs assessment, program planning, community engagement, and site selection. Center staff led trainings in London on how to build community support, and anticipate operational challenges. In addition, the Center hosted structured site visits to New York City by the planning team.
The North Liverpool Community Justice Centre opened in 2004, followed by a second court-based community justice project in Salford (part of Greater Manchester). In 2006, the British government announced its plan to launch a series of community courts. The ten new courts represent a significant investment in rethinking the relationship between courts and the community. In making the announcement, the Lord Chancellor said, "I believe that community justice is an essential part of the future of the criminal justice system." In 2009, the Ministry of Justice announced its intention to adopt the principles and practices from the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre in magistrate's courts throughout England and Wales.
Numerous government and charitable organizations in the United Kingdom have visited New York and issued reports recommending changes to the justice system based on their findings. Here is a sampling:
To read more community court case studies, click here. Click here for more international case studies. |
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Planning a Domestic Violence Court: The New York State Experience
By Liberty Aldrich, Samantha Moore, and Robert V. Wolf
A close look at the development of the Domestic Violence Court Model in New York State, with a special focus on the launching of the Brooklyn Felony Domestic Violence Court in 1996.
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Avoiding Failures of Implementation: Lessons from Process Evaluations
By Amanda Cissner and Donald Farole, Jr.
Part of a multi-faceted inquiry into failure undertaken by the Center for Court Innovation and the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance, this paper examines failures that occur during the implementation of a new initiative, seeking to identify common sources of failure and to develop a basic list of considerations that may help practitioners avoid future pitfalls.
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