Kevin G. Kelly, deputy commissioner of NYC Business Customer Service in the New York City Mayor’s Office,
discusses how the city uses technology to improve efficiency and radically restructure how businesses interact with
government. January 2013

KEVIN
KELLY: Create a new operating normal so that there is no other way to do it. And that’s really the way to use
powerful levers like technology to make changes that don’t roll back.

ROB WOLF: I’m Rob Wolf, director of communication at the Center for Court Innovation. With
me today is Aubrey Fox, the Center for Court Innovation’s director of strategic planning. Today we’re looking
at how technology can be used to improve government and institutionalize innovation. Helping us explore these issues
is Kevin G. Kelly, deputy commissioner of NYC Business Customer Service in the New York City Mayor’s Office. Thanks
for hosting us in your office today.

KEVIN
KELLY: My pleasure.

ROB WOLF:
You’ve been working at the intersection of technology and government for a number of years, particularly helping
change the way businesses interact with city agencies. How important has technology been to that effort and what
have you been able to achieve?

KEVIN
KELLY: Well technology has been a fundamental building blocking driving innovation and radically restructuring how
businesses interact with the city. And if you find a process that’s in a manual state, or that’s paper-based,
or that requires people to go from their place of business to a city location in order to fill out a form and pay
a fee with a money order, bringing technology to bear so that they can enter their information remotely, pay for
things online with a credit card, and manage their transactions with the city using technology has really enabled
us to take what had been a series of fragmented and paper-based processes, and bring them into the 21st century.

AUBREY FOX: Can you give us some concrete examples of
where technology has changed how a customer interacts, or how a citizen interacts with the city?

KEVIN KELLY: So prior to the city building a website
called NYC Business Express, there were no licenses or permits or certifications that businesses required online.
In all cases, those papers needed to either be mailed in or brought into a physical location, so on NYC Business
Express, there’s now 57 licenses, permits, and certifications that a business can go online, create a very simple
account, select the licenses and permits that they need for their business type, pay with a credit card, and send
all of the data to a city agency for processing.

AUBREY FOX: And I can imagine that the opportunities to use technology to improve these processes
are endless. How do you choose what you focus on?

KEVIN KELLY: That’s a great question. So start at one end of the spectrum, which is sort of
Nirvana. If you had $10 billion in 10 years, you could replace every existing legacy system and mainframe, and then
think about practical elements. The amount of money that’s available, how much time the disruption to business
is, etc. The best possible solutions are ones that allow us to leave, to the extent possible, systems that are fundamentally
sound in place so that from a customer perspective, things are radically transformed. They can do things over the
web, they can access the Internet, they can create an account, they can transact with the city. They don’t know
what’s going on behind the curtain. And what’s behind the curtain is sort of an aggregation of technology
solutions leveraging, to the extent possible, the good and the sound and the viable that’s there, with targeted,
specific system switch-outs in cases where it was impossible to mold or extract value out of something that was already
in place.

AUBREY FOX: I think
it’s important to say that you’re using technology to try to meet a policy goal, which is to increase access
to business activity.

KEVIN KELLY:
The other component piece that I would add is that when you make it so difficult to understand what it is that you’re
supposed to do in order to be in compliance. There are businesses that will move forward with their business plan
anyway and they are, you know, just sort of taking a chance that they’re not gonna get caught. So wrapped up
in the economic development objective is also increasing compliance, and increasing the quality of compliance that
business have with oversight agencies like the fire department, and the department of buildings, and the health department.

AUBREY FOX: Does your department have the freedom to
choose where you go? I mean can you survey a city business and say, now I want to look at problem x, now I want to
look at problem y?

KEVIN KELLY:
We have a tremendous amount of latitude inside of some fairly well understood parameters. So for NYC business customer
service, anything that touches on city and, in certain cases, other government oversight requests and demands on
the part of businesses are part of what we’re focusing on and working on. So it could be regulatory analysis,
taking a look at all those laws and requirements associated with licenses and permits and thinking about ways to
simplify the “what” of it. It could be operational transformation, which is the “how” of it.
How you change the way in which things get done. It could be learning and planning, instructional, or producing videos
that are designed to show businesses elements of oversight requirement that potentially would require 15 pages of
text, but if you show someone in a video what you’re talking about, it can be 30 seconds, or two minutes, or
two and a half minutes.

ROB WOLF:
So are there issues around the mayor’s achieved certain fundamental shifts and changes, and you want to embed
those changes in this technology? I mean is that part of it as well?

KEVIN KELLY: It’s not so much embedding the changes in the technology. It’s using the
technology to create a new operating normal so that there is no other way to do it. And that’s really the way
to use powerful levers like technology to make changes that don’t roll back. Because the easy changes are policy
changes. “I hereby declare that…”, you know, or executive orders or, you know, things that happen at
50,000 feet—change with administrations, change with different commissioners, etc. But when you operate at the operational
and technological level, and you change the way things were done and create the way things are done, and you make
it impossible for things to be done in the way that they were, then you’ve effectively guarded against roll
back. And the only thing that you need to concern yourself with when you’re integrating technology into operational
processes is to remember that not everyone can access the Internet. Not everyone is comfortable accessing the Internet.
Some people need support. Some people have language barriers, some people have other types of disabilities. So you
transform your current customer service locations or processing centers that are seeing lots of over the counter
traffic from everyone, because everyone has to do it this way. Those locations should be for the people who need
help.

ROB WOLF: It’s hard
for me to visualize a policy change at the 50,000 feet that you described, that then surfaces in a drop-down menu
on an online questionnaire or something. Can you give an example of how you would take something that—

KEVIN KELLY: Sure, lots of examples. So if an administration
or legislative body decides that people who are looking for certain types of social service should not have to go
through intake 15 times, right? So you can have a policy that says data sharing among social service agencies will
be utilized in order to reduce the number of times someone has to fill out duplicate forms. Then what that can translate
into is a website that has a uniform sort of data capture front end, right? A form that has the three fields that
everyone uses— name, address, phone number, email address, social security number, etc. And then, and on the back
end, that same data packet could be sent to multiple agencies to process someone for specific services, but it doesn’t
mean that that person has to over, and over, and over supply the same information.

AUBREY FOX: Creating a new normal. That seems like the power of technology
at its best. Would you say that’s correct?

KEVIN KELLY: Yes. Technology is without a doubt the single most powerful tool that can be used in
a service delivery realm to create a new operating normal. But in and of itself, it doesn’t necessarily do the
trick. So the business process re-engineering has to happen. You have to analyze what the oversight or policy objectives
are, and I think sometimes where folks get in trouble—not just in government, in private sector it happens all the
time as well—is when they think of technology as an end rather than a means, and they become enamored of a technology
for itself, as if in and of itself it was something that was worthy of admiration, or worthy of consideration.

ROB WOLF: We’ve been talking with Kevin G. Kelly,
who is the deputy commissioner of NYC Business Customer Service in the New York City Mayor’s Office. Thanks so much,
Kevin, for taking the time to talk to us.

KEVIN
KELLY: It was my pleasure. Thanks very much for your interest.

ROB WOLF: If people want to just get a sense of some of the innovations we’re talking about,
is there a web address they can go to to learn more?

KEVIN KELLY: Sure. So one would be www.nyc.gov/businessexpress, and you can look at the one stop
tool that we’ve built for businesses to make it easier to start to operate and expand in the city. Another website
would be www.nyc.gov/nbat, which is the website for the city’s new business acceleration team that works with
food service establishments in a quicker, more efficient manner.

ROB WOLF: That’s great, well thank you very much. I’m Rob Wolf, director of communication
at the Center for Court Innovation, and I’ve been here with—

AUBREY FOX: Aubrey Fox, the director of strategic planning.

ROB WOLF: And to find out more about Center for Court Innovation or to
listen to our podcasts, you can go to our website at www.courtinnovation.org. You can also download our podcasts
on iTunes. Thank you very much for listening.

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Authors of new research about gun
violence in Brooklyn, New York, Sarah Picard-Fritsche and Lenore Cerniglia discuss findings on
Save Our Streets (SOS) Crown Heights, an approach to gun violence prevention in the Crown Heights neighborhood. The
new report, “Testing
a Public Health Approach to Gun Violence,” details a comprehensive impact and process evaluation of Save
Our Streets, which is based on the Cure Violence model that treats outbreaks of violence like epidemics of disease.

Additional Resources

To download a Q &
A with the authors, click here.

To read a press release about the findings, click
here.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Hi, I’m Sarah Schweig
of the Center for Court Innovation, and today I’m speaking with Sarah Picard-Fritsche and Lenore Cerniglia,
authors of new research about gun violence in Brooklyn, New York, and an approach to preventing it in the Crown Heights
neighborhood. The new report, Testing a Public Health Approach to Gun Violence, details a comprehensive impact and
process evaluation of Save Our Streets Crown Heights, a program started in 2010. Save Our Streets is based on the
Cure Violence model which treats outbreaks of violence like epidemics of disease, taking a public health approach
similar to campaigns that have addressed risky behaviors such as smoking or not wearing seat belts. Thanks for speaking
with me today and welcome. The Save Our Streets Crown Heights approach to stopping gun violence, known as the Cure
Violence model, uses violence interrupters to prevent shootings before they happen. Can you speak a bit about the
origins of the model and who these violence interrupters are, what their background is, and what violence interruption
actually looks like in practice.

SARAH PICARD-FRITSCHE: The origins of the SOS model, the Save
Our Streets model, it comes from Chicago. The first program of this type began in 1999 and it was designed by a public
health scholar named Dr. Gary Slutkin, and essentially violence interrupters are just a piece of a multi-part model,
but the violence interrupter’s job is to go into a community where they are familiar with those folks who are
at high risk of becoming perpetrators or victims of gun violence and work directly with those folks to try to come
up with—to mediate the conflict and come up with alternatives to gun violence as a solution to the conflict.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Great, and where do they generally come from? How do they have that kind of expertise?

SARAH PICARD-FRITSCHE: Well they’re considered, under the model, credible messengers. Essentially because
they have a background that is either, they were gang involved or possibly perpetrators or victims of some kind of
violence, if not gun violence in the past. Usually they’re from the target community but if they’re not,
they are currently living in or are familiar with the target community. So that means that they, and so they’ve also
sort of turned their lives around so they are able to talk with the folks that are currently involved in the violence
about how to change. So they go out into the community, they find the folk that they knew before they turned their
lives around, start talking to them, find out what the current conflicts are, go find the people that are involved
in the conflicts, and try to work with them directly.

SARAH SCHWEIG: because this approach is
about prevention, I would imagine that evaluation is kind of tricky in that you’re trying to kind of gauge the
amount of violence that was prevented by this approach. So what was your methodology like for this research and how
did you get the numbers that suggest to you that Save Our Streets Crown Heights is really working?

SARAH
PICARD-FRITSCHE: Well it is difficult to evaluate. I’m going to let Lenore speak about the impact evaluation,
which is how we measure the reduction in gun violence in Crown Heights.

LENORE CERNIGLIA: So first
of all, we used quasi-experimental design where we took the shooting numbers from the NYPD for fatal and non-fatal
shootings for the Crown Heights precinct as well as adjacent precincts to Crown Heights that had similar demographics
and crime numbers. And we took those numbers in addition to the shooting numbers from Brooklyn as a whole from a
period of approximately 17 months prior to the start of SOS as well as 21 months following its implementation, to
see if there are any changes as well as the trends that were going on. So our idea was, if we can look at what’s
going on in beforehand, as well as these similarly matched areas in Brooklyn as a whole, then we can see once Crown
Heights has been going on for some times if these changes are also either reflected in these similar areas, or if
crime was displaced from Crown Heights into these adjacent precincts.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Testing a
Public Health Approach to Gun Violence gives the numbers that the average monthly shooting rates in Crown Heights
decreased by 6 percent. In surrounding areas, shooting rates increased by 18-28 percent, and that suggests that gun
violence in Crown Heights is about 20 percent lower than it would have been without Save Our Streets. Did the report
considers whether violence was forced out of Crown Heights into the surrounding areas like you said, the displacement
of violence?

LENORE CERNIGLIA: Yes, and we were able to test that by looking at the shooting numbers
from Brooklyn as a whole, from the whole borough, and we found that the whole borough was going up at the same rates
as these surroundings precincts as well, so Crown Heights was kind of that jewel that was actually decreasing while
surrounding precincts, and the entire borough were increasing at much higher rates. 

SARAH SCHWEIG: Right, places far away from Crown Heights.
So the report also shows that over 100 potentially deadly conflicts were mediated by violence interrupters since
2010 and that violence interrupters mediated conflicts involving more than 1,300 people. It also showed that Save
Our Streets increases residents’ confidence in the power of community to prevent gun violence. Why is the confidence
of the residents so important in violence prevention?

SARAH PICARD-FRITSCHE: We have previous
research which essentially shows that community level values and community confidence in the ability of their community
to solve shared social problems has a very real impact on the actual. So, in the case of violence, the lower the
tolerance at the community level for violence, the lower the violence, regardless of whether the average community
member is involved in violence themselves. So it’s basically a concept of collective efficacy. And what the
norms of your community are affect what our individual behavior is gonna be. So in this project we found that there
was a change, a statistically significant and substantial change in the way that a representative sample of residents
in Crown Heights answered a question, the question being—How likely is it that community mobilization campaign to
bring down violence would actually bring down violence? And many more people said that it would after the campaign
than before the campaign.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Maybe one of you can talk just briefly about what a shooting
response really looks like, and why that is so visible to community members.

SARAH PICARD-FRITSCHE:
What they are is a targeted response to an actual shooting even that has happened, and it happens within 72 hours
of the event. And typically they bring out folks who were close to the victim and other community members who are
angry, upset, saddened about the levels of violence in the community. And they make, basically, a show of themselves.
And the message is essentially, we won’t tolerate this anymore. It’s not just to remember the victim, but
to let the folks know out there, that are involved in the violence that the community won’t put up with it anymore.

LENORE CERNIGLIA: And they call it a vigil. A shooting vigil.

SARAH SCHWEIG: You know
many factors, as I’m sure you guys know, affect violence levels in communities. Was it difficult to attribute
decrease of violence in Crown Heights as opposed to other methods like stop and frisk?

LENORE
CERNIGLIA: Well initially when we were first trying to figure out what precincts we were going to compare Crown Heights
to, we made sure that we didn’t pick any precincts that had other specific programs going on. Stop and frisk,
and other NYPD policies are city-wide, so we would expect that they would be going on in Crown Heights as well as
the surrounding precincts such as Bed-Stuy or East Flatbush. So we also made sure that we took time periods that
wouldn’t overlap with other prevention programs going on in that area. We did also look at arrest numbers for
those precincts as well as for Crown Heights in that time period, to make sure that there weren’t large round-ups
of people being arrested, which would then possibly also drive down numbers, and we didn’t find any significant
changes over the time period that we were looking at.

SARAH PICARD-FRITSCHE: Right, so the arrest
numbers were steady over the period. If they had done like some huge sting you would expect like a bunch of arrests
and then a lower violence rate the next month. We didn’t find that.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Why is
it important to evaluate interventions like Save Our Streets and what can Save Our Streets, SOS itself take from
this report moving forward, do you think?

SARAH PICARD-FRITSCHE: Well, as researchers, we think
evaluation is the most important part of any program… Um, you know, I think that in particular
these programs, because they are multi-component and because they are community oriented, it’s not like a laboratory
where you can measure one mechanism that produces one result. There’s a lot going on. And the folks on the ground
in the program don’t always know what’s going on. So as researchers, we try to get a big picture and the
way we build that picture is to do our best to measure every single component. I think the folks in the program can—and
I actually went there last week and talked to them and told them they can be very proud of the work that they’ve
done so far. They’re actually quite data-oriented down there, so they’re already kind of looking at where
they can improve in the future. But I do think there are questions regarding the program, that more specific programs
that would be great if we could answer. We don’t know for sure when someone reports that a conflict is resolved
that it actually is resolved.

LENORE CERNIGLIA: And I would just add, I think for Cure Violence
as a whole, this shows that the model, when adhered to closely, can be replicated in an inner city with a dense population
because it has been tried in Chicago and Baltimore and many other cities. So this just shows that you know, it could
reach a different type of population and kind of area.

SARAH PICARD-FRITSCHE: Right. Every city
is different so the more positive evaluations we get, the more confidence we have in the model as a whole.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Well it’s been great speaking with
you today. I’m Sarah Schweig and I’ve been speaking with researchers Sarah Picard-Fritsche and Lenore Cerniglia
about gun violence prevention and the role communities can play in stopping conflict, as well as the importance of
evaluating innovations like Save Our Streets. To find out more about the Center for Court Innovation, or to download
the new report on Save Our Streets Crown Heights, visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org. Thanks for listening.

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Judge Joseph Gubbay, who presides over one of nine pilot sites of the Adolescent Diversion Program, explains how the initiative is expanding the
justice system’s options for dealing with 16- and 17-year-old defendants, who are currently treated under New
York law as adults, even for non-violent offenses.

Kings County (N.Y.) Justice Joseph Gubbay presides over the Brooklyn pilot of
the Adolescent Diversion Program.

ROB WOLF: Welcome to New Thinking. I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communication at the Center for Court
Innovation. Today’s podcasts focuses on a special pilot program called the Adolescent Diversion Program. I’m
in the chambers of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Gubbay, who presides over one of nine sites across New York State
where the adolescent diversion program is being carried out. Glad you could join me on New Thinking today.

JOSEPH GUBBAY: Thank you very much. It’s wonderful
to be here.

ROB WOLF: I think
it would be helpful to start with an overview of what the adolescent diversion program is. So what is it and how
did it come about?

JOSEPH GUBBAY:
Let me give you a little background. New York State and North Carolina are the only two states which prosecute 16-
and 17-year-olds as adults. So Jonathan Lippman, the Chief Judge of the New York court of appeals identified this
inequity and recognized that in order to change it, there would have to be legislative change, which is slow going.
So to address the problem on a more immediate basis, he created these nine pilot programs. What are we trying to
accomplish? Three things. Number one, identify services which, if completed by the individual, will stop the behavior
that brought the individual to court in the first place.

ROB WOLF: And just to be clear, what kinds of charges are you handling in this court?

JOSEPH GUBBAY: We’re seeing actually a whole range
of charges. Certainly we’re seeing theft of services cases, which may involve jumping a turnstile, going into
the subway system without paying the lawful fare. We may see trespass, being in a location without permission or
authority, whether that’s a part after hours, whether that’s a housing development on somebody’s roof
or something like that. But we’re also trying to address the more complex cases, so this may involve assaultive
behavior within a family, assaultive behavior at a school. Goal number two, this is about growth and this is about
maturity, and this is about accountability. For this very, very young population, these are qualities that come with
experience, and these are qualities that come frankly with age. And what we’re trying to do is give this young
population, give these young people the tools to make better decisions, to become more responsible, and three, if
the services are performed as set forth by the court, they will end up without a criminal conviction. These three
goals are shared by myself, the chief judge, and this is the underlying policy of the court. Now none of this could
happen unless you have a progressive prosecutor. And we are very fortunate to have Charles Hynes as the district
attorney of Kings County, who recognizes that this young population really needs to be treated a little differently.
And the services and change and growth are ultimately going to be safer for our community, and a better alternative
than jail. And I think it’s critical to recognize the incredible support that we’re getting from the defense
bar as well. Brooklyn Defender Services, the Legal Aid Society, and the private bar have devoted extraordinary resources
to ensure the success of this program.

ROB
WOLF: In the past, those crimes, those offenses that you’ve described, those all would have been handled in
a more conventional criminal court fashion, as a criminal offense?

JOSEPH GUBBAY: Absolutely. In a typical court, the case may be disposed of with a day or two of
community service cleaning up a park, but we’re trying to something much more than that. We’re trying to
provide a more nuanced approach so a lot of effort goes on in terms of an assessment to identify those specific and
particular needs of the individual that appears before us. That just cannot take place in a large all purpose traditional
court, where the volume of cases is crushing.

ROB WOLF: And I know you work closely with the Redhook Community Justice Center, which has an onsite
clinic and had extensive knowledge of community providers, social service providers, and relationships with them.
How, in fact, have they supported the work of the adolescent diversion program?

JOSEPH GUBBAY: It’s actually a two part model. My job is to identify
services and craft an offer and negotiate between the parties, between the prosecutor and the defense to make a deal
that’s going to work. Compliance is monitored by my colleague, Alex Calabrese.

ROB WOLF: So in essence, the young person comes here, appears before you,
their attorney, the prosecutor, yourself work out the plea, and then they’ll go a couple miles away to the Redhook
Community Justice Center where they might actually have onsite services, they appear before Judge Calabrese, who
monitors compliance, offers his words of encouragement, and they don’t come back here until the case is closed?
Or they never come back unless there’s a problem and they need a little shot in the arm to encourage them?

JOSEPH GUBBAY: Exactly, it’s the latter. Hopefully
then never come back to see me again. If they’re coming back to see me again, it’s because there’s
a problem.

ROB WOLF: I had a
wonderful chance to observe you in the court and I found you were very clear, you didn’t use jargon or lingo,
you seemed to really almost want it to be participatory. You asked people to raise their hand, was this their first
time here, were their family members here? Please raise your hand. You spoke directly to the defendants; you spoke
with their family members when they appeared before you did things like encourage the young person to thank their
guardian, who presumably took time off of work, made an effort to be with them. So there was a certain accessibility
there, and I also thought an attempt to really make sure that the young person understood and wasn’t just a
cog. And I wonder, is this how you always are, or is this a reflection of the fact that a young person, as you’ve
said, that they are in fact different than adults.

JOSEPH GUBBAY: I come to the adolescent diversion part having served in a felony drug treatment
court for many, many years. So I have experience in the area of recovery, in the area of providing services, and
in the area of—I want to call it—engagement. Because there are two models at work here. There’s the coercive
element. If you don’t do it, there’s gonna be a punishment. You have to do it, okay. That doesn’t
always work. There has to be engagement. There has to be internal motivation. So what I’m trying to do is, I’m
trying to communicate and get across that this is going to be something that is going to be good for you and your
family, and those you care about the most. I think it is very, very important, whether in adolescent diversion part,
or whether you’re in a conventional, traditional part, that the process is transparent. And in order for it
to be transparent, then it needs to be intelligible, it needs to be understandable, and it needs to be in a language
that’s gonna be accessible.

ROB
WOLF: So what is it like working with young people, versus your experience working, even with adults in drug court?
And what’s your feeling as the pilot moves forward? You know, has it been successful and what have you learned?

JOSEPH GUBBAY: you know, I’m very, very encouraged.
Our rough sense is that we have a very high compliance rate, somewhere around 80, 85 percent which is extraordinary.
And there needs to be some flexibility, there needs to be second chances, there may even need to be third chances.

ROB WOLF: There are nine pilots that are being carried out in different counties, including here in Kings
County, which is otherwise known as Brooklyn, with the ultimate goal, perhaps, of legislative change so that it’ll
become system wide. And I wonder how you feel about the advantages about testing it in these pilot sites before it
goes system-wide.

JOSEPH GUBBAY: The creation of a pilot program before this goes live if you
will, very sound, very prudent. And it’s exciting to be in the middle of it.

ROB WOLF: Well
it’s been exciting talking to you today. I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communication at the Center for Court
Innovation and I’ve been speaking with Kings County Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Gubbay, who presides over
the Adolescent Diversion Program here in Brooklyn.

JOSEPH GUBBAY: Rob, thanks for having me.

ROB WOLF: To find out more about the adolescent diversion program or hear more of our podcasts, you can
visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org, or you can listen to us through iTunes. Thanks very much for listening.

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While on a visit to observe practices in New York City, Heather Munro, the chief executive of the London Probation
Trust, takes a break to discuss the challenges facing probation in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom and new initiatives,
including experiments in England and Wales with high-intensity community sentence projects (which is also the subject
of a monograph by Centre for Justice Innovation’s director Phil Bowen). November
2012

Judge Joseph Gubbay welcomes observers, including Chief
Executive Heather Munro of the London Probation Trust, into his courtroom in Brooklyn Criminal Court.

ROB WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation and today
we’re focusing on probation. I’m with Heather Munro, who’d visiting New York City this week from London.
She was appointed Chief Executive of London Probation Trust in 2010, which means she’s in charge of probation
for the whole city—about 70,000 offenders a year. She’s in New York City this week, learning how probation and
justice in general is carried out in the U.S., observing several of the Center for Court Innovation’s demonstration
projects. Thanks for joining today.

HEATHER MUNRO: Thank you, it’s a pleasure.

ROB WOLF: So probation at its heart is about keeping offenders accountable without sending them to jail
and if things work out well, probation is also about making sure the offender doesn’t return to offending. But
I know in the U.S. that the probation department sometimes has a hard time because of budget cuts, high case loads,
reduced resources. They have a hard time meeting those goals. I understand that in London, you’re going through
an era of change. You’re probably facing quite a few challenges of your own, and I thought maybe we could start
out by you explaining a little bit about what some of those challenges are and how you’ve been addressing them.

HEATHER MUNRO: Okay, yes. Probation in England is slightly different than in New York because we also deal
with offenders who you would normally call on parole. So we’re dealing with both community orders and parole
orders. We call them licensees.

ROB WOLF: So people who have served time in jail or prison and
are returning to the community.

HEATHER MUNRO: Yes. So we have much more of a sort of holistic—we’re
dealing with some very serious offenders, dangerous offenders who are coming out of custody, as well as the lower
level cases. And having observed New York, I think there are lots of similarities about the challenges we’re
facing. You’re right about the economic pressures, having to do more for less is a—we’ve been going through
cuts over the years but there’s also lots of differences. I think we do probably manage to have more contact
with the majority of offenders, although we are about to trial kiosks, which I know is something that’s been
part of the way they’ve managed the large numbers of cases.

ROB WOLF: Here in New York. In
other words, the offender goes to a kiosk and checks in without actually speaking to a human probation officer.

HEATHER MUNRO: Yes, yes. So we’re looking to trial that approach in a different way, I think maybe
as an incentive towards the end of an order or at a different point. So yes, some challenges around how me manage
the cases. What I’ve noticed is that, so the differences are we have probably more use of an assessment tool,
and our staff probably have more intensive training—probably because of the management of these higher risk offenders.
So it takes about 18 months to qualify. So I think it’s slightly different here.

ROB WOLF:
They go through an 18 month training process after they’ve been hired or prior to being hired?

HEATHER
MUNRO: Yeah, well they are hired on the job, so they start off as a probation service officer and then they can be
trained to become a probation officer, and that takes about 18 months on the job and academic, university work as
well. So there’s quite a lot of investment in those people, I think probably because they are managing some
very dangerous and difficult offenders in the community. But otherwise, I think there’s lots of similarities
with New York probation where I think they’re looking at working much more in the community. We are similarly
looking at how can we get our staff much more out of their offices based in the community. So it’s been fascinating
seeing the work that the Center for Court Innovation—all of those, the problem-solving, and how all of that works,
and the real work around community engagement that’s being done. So certainly one of the things we’ll be
taking back is looking at how we can get more buy-in from the community. But also do people really know what we do?
Similar things, I’m sure here, does anybody understand what it is that probation services do? They’ve heard
of us but do they know what we really do?

ROB WOLF: You had actually written an essay where you
said that there isn’t a lot of public understanding, and because of that lack of understanding, there isn’t
a lot of support for community sentences.

HEATHER MUNRO: Yes. Certainly a big thing in the U.K.
around the credibility. And the debate around punishment, and the care aspect, rehabilitation, and there’s been,
over the years, much more of a focus on the punitive elements of order. In fact, only this week there’s been
an announcement from our Ministry of Justice that every community order, probation-type order, will have an element—they
propose to have an element of punishment in there. So we use electronic monitoring, or it could be fines, or it could
be community service, or community payback. So there is a feeling that the public don’t feel that there’s
enough punishment in orders. Now those of us that work in the system probably think that’s not as accurate because
actually doing a community order can, for many offenders, be much more punishing or challenging than going to prison.
They’ve been in and out of prison, it’s very easy, things are on tap, on hand for them. It’s much
more challenging to actually have to change your behavior. So for those of us who’ve tried to lose weight or
stop smoking or whatever, you know, it’s a really difficult process and that’s what we’re often doing
with people is trying to do some difficult work with them about how to change their behavior.

ROB
WOLF: Such as what? Stopping abusing drugs or—

HEATHER MUNRO: Absolutely. Abusing drugs, thinking
differently, domestic violence.

ROB WOLF: And you do have the resources then, because that does
sound—I mean it is called intensive probation. Do you have the resources to be so intensively supervisory?

HEATHER MUNRO: Yes, we do do a lot of the intervention, so there’s a lot of work going into it. So
we run a lot of programs—cognitive behavioral programs, but what we do very much is we base our resources on risk
and need principles. So the higher the risk, and the higher the need, the more resources would go into that, so the
more intensive the work we’re doing. So we also do have people that we’re seeing less often, doing less
intensive work.

ROB WOLF: And then that ties back into your saying that you do an assessment initially,
and that’s how you determine the level of risk and the level of need?

HEATHER MUNRO: Yes.
The assessment is usually done pre-court and it is the basis of all of our work. We call it OASIS and it’s an
assessment system.

ROB WOLF: I noticed you were honorary visiting professor at the University
of Lestor, where you wrote about your interest in research and basing practice on real evidence. And I wondered if
you have been able to incorporate research into the way London Probation conducts business. It sounds like this assessment
tool is an evidence-based practice.

HEATHER MUNRO: Yes it is. I think we’ve found that at
a local level, particularly, it’s been hard to have the resources to do the research that’s needed around
the ways we work. So the one thing we’re doing is trying to build up a greater research capacity within the
trust, but also it’s looking to the evidence that’s done by academic institutions and trying to make sure
our practice is aligned with that. So we’ve done a lot of work around cognitive behavioral groups. We’re
delivering those, but the latest research around assistance theory talks about the importance of the one to one relationships
of offenders being able to see themselves as non-offenders. And so therefore what we’ve done is try to bring
in more peer mentors, more work with people who are ex-offenders so they can see role models there, and try to do
work with our staff around the importance of that one to one relationship.

ROB WOLF: One thing
that I’ve heard about from a colleague of mine, was you were looking at an intensive community order for young gang-involved
individuals. And I know that it builds on the intensive alternative to custody pilots, which our own Phil Bowen,
who directs our London office wrote about—and I’ll link to the paper that he wrote with this podcast, but I
wonder if you can tell me a little bit about why the focus on gang-involved individuals and how that works, how that’s
customized to them.

HEATHER MUNRO: Yes. I mean I think we, first of all, being entrusted in doing
something which is more responsive and different for the younger age group. We deal with people over 18, but the
18-24 year olds, having something that looks different, not that one size fits all approach. When you’re 18
you become an adult and you get the typical adult sentence. And in London the whole problem of gangs is an issue.
It’s a priority for our mayor and the police and for us. So we wanted to help with that, so that’s what
we’re hoping to do, and we’ll start talking to sentences shortly.

ROB WOLF: You started
off a little bit referring to some of the lessons you think you’ll be taking back from New York with you, about
community engagement, for example. Are there any other lessons that come to mind?

HEATHER MUNRO:
Yes. We feel that there’s a lot here around, that’s being done around immediacy, doing things much quicker,
and so we want to look at how we can try and speed up some of the ways in which we are picking people up at court,
working with some very impressive things—like in Brownsville—and others where we’ve seen, where people are seen
quickly and dealt with. So that’s one aspect. I think a more flexible approach, so that it was interesting how
certainly the judge at Red Hook was able to give very flexible sentences.

ROB WOLF: At the Red
Hook Community Justice Center? Judge Calebrese?

HEATHER MUNRO: Yes. And that was great. I really
enjoyed that visit. Also, I think this accountability bit. I think what we’ve seen here is the focus on holding
offenders or clients to account for what they’ve done, and coming back regularly, the reviews, it doesn’t
happen so much. We have some work around that with our drugs courts, but it’s not a routine as I think we could
make it, particularly with the intensive alternative to custody. That’s an option we’ve now thought about
looking at how can we hold people to account at regular intervals.

ROB WOLF: Well great. It sounds
like you’ve had a productive week.

HEATHER MUNRO: We’ve had a great time.

ROB WOLF: I’ve been speaking with Heather Munro, who is visiting New York from London. She is the Chief
Executive of London Probation Trust. I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation.
Download our podcasts from our website at www.courtinnovation.org and from iTunes. Ms. Munro, thank you so much for
taking the time.

HEATHER MUNRO: Thank you.

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Phil Bowen, co-author of Payback
with a Purpose and director of the Centre for Justice Innovation in the U.K.,
discusses what good “community payback” (“community service” in the U.S.) should look like, comparing
the experience in the U.K. with New York City. The debate about what community payback ought
to be comes at a crucial time for probation services in England and Wales, where the Government is committed
to encouraging non-state organizations to provide community payback.

SARAH
SCHWEIG: Hi, I’m Sarah Schweig of the Center for Court Innovation and today I’m talking with Phil Bowen. Phil Bowen
is the director of the Centre for Justice Innovation in London, and international project of the Center for Court
Innovation that works to promote thoughtful criminal justice reform in the United Kingdom. Phil has just written
a new paper called Payback with a Purpose, about community service, or as it’s called in the U.K., community payback.
And so today he’s here in our New York office and will be discussing some new thinking about giving back to the community
and what it can mean for offenders and communities here in New York and overseas. Thanks for speaking with me today.

PHIL BOWEN: It’s my pleasure.

SARAH SCHWEIG: So just to start off, I think many people
would consider community service or community payback a good thing for the community, but can community payback benefit
both the neighborhood as well as the offenders, and how can it do that?

PHIL BOWEN: Sure. I mean,
I think community payback, when it’s done well, focuses on local issues of concern to a neighborhood, local problems,
whether that be gang graffiti tagging or streets that sort of feel unsafe at night. So payback should be a place
where local law enforcement agencies and local neighborhoods come together to figure out how they can use unpaid
labor to solve problems in their communities. For offenders, it’s about getting them to reflect on what it feels
like to do a good day’s work in that community and put something back on the table for the crime and the harm they’ve
caused. So I think good payback should work at both those levels, looking at how to solve problems for neighborhoods
but helping offenders to move away from a life of crime.

SARAH SCHWEIG: In this paper, Payback
with a Purpose, you mention that the community payback system is sort of at a crossroads in the U.K. Can you speak
a bit about this and maybe what led up to that, and sort of where it is now?

PHIL BOWEN: Sure,
there’s been a government policy since the election of the coalition government 2010 to look at how they can open
up statewide services to other providers, and how that’s kind of played out in the criminal justice field has been
looking at community payback in particular and thinking about, well how can we get other people to provide the service,
rather than it just being provided by the Public Health and Probation Trust. So in July the first big contract was
awarded, it was awarded to a private firm called Circo, who have partnered up with London Probation to deliver community
payback. So it is at a sort of crossroads. You’ve got opportunity where new providers can come in and maybe deliver
it a bit differently, and I guess the theory of change is, can they reduce the costs, reduce recidivism, and provide
something that’s maybe more meaningful to communities.

SARAH SCHWEIG: And I would imagine like
organization of these projects can be very complex logistically and in terms of, you know, the kind of bureaucracies
that are in charge. How do you think, considering that, considering how kind of the delivery on that level can be
kind of complicated and politicized, how do you think community payback practices can ensure that projects remain
or maybe even become more meaningful to the community? Help them be more meaningful based on the sentences that are
being fulfilled?

PHIL BOWEN: Well I guess part of the purpose of writing the paper was to reflect
on, like what’s the really important thing here? The important thing is having payback that works for communities,
that’s engaged with neighborhood associations and civic groups, and that is really driven by local needs. Part of
the point of the paper was to remind people of that because a lot of the discussion in the U.K. has been about contracts
and how the money flows, and who’s getting commissioned. So we have a concern that in that discussion about how payback
will be commissioned, people might lose the picture on what actually really matters to the victims and communities.

SARAH SCHWEIG: So you’ve been listening to some lessons learned from community service practices in New
York City. Can you speak a little about maybe some things that stood out for you, and also how they’ve helped potentially
inform the new thinking about community payback in England?

PHIL BOWEN: I mean in many ways what
the paper’s done is it documents about eight or nine key principles that should be in any good community payback
program. Some of those, in fact most of those won’t be used to practice in England, Wales. I think in many really
good projects that’s what’s happening in England and Wales. What we wanted to do is remind people of those principles
and to make sure that however the new contracts and the new providers come aboard, that has to be the core of what
they do. There’s a great opportunity for building on those principles. They can deliver something that’s even better.
I think one of the things that is striking about the New York practice, which is maybe a bit different than what
we have in England and Wales, is a lot of the Center for Court Innovation projects are based around courthouses.
So there’s a real priority on getting people right after they’ve been sentenced, putting them into an intake office
and set them up for a mandate, and that mandate is worked as quickly as possible. So the sort of idea of swift and
sure justice is one that is actually delivered here. It’s one that I think in England and Wales people embrace and
they get, but whether they’re actually able to deliver it at the moment, I think that’s in question.

SARAH
SCHWEIG: Right, right. There were some—

PHIL BOWEN: Yeah, there’s a sort of classic anecdote that
people would do one day of community services every week and it would stretch on for months and months, and then
it would take two weeks to get them started. No, I think that’s a bit of a myth these days, but I think like all
myths, there’s some truth in it.

SARAH SCHWEIG: The paper does a great job highlighting lessons
from New York and specific cases, and sort of talking about the larger picture too. So, you know, New York and London
are obviously both large urban areas. But I assume that while similar in that way, they also share many differences.
What do you think, in general, are some of the things to keep in mind about applying lessons learned from, you know,
one city to another, or one location to another?

PHIL BOWEN: I think this is a really good question
and something that we’ve struggled with on a daily basis of, you know, looking at particular projects in New York
that are in our field, how do we deliver those in London, or in the U.K. more generally? And I think, you know, one
of the key things to do is to sort of move up a level of instruction and think okay, what are the key ingredients
of making, say, the Redhook Community Justice Center work so well? It’s not necessarily about exactly following a
detailed play book. It’s thinking about, well these guys are really engaging very well with their communities, so
that’s what the core of the values should be, but part of the particularity of communities is understanding that
they’re all different and that you need to respond to those differences. So when we’re advising practitioners about
how to come up with new ideas, we always try to make sure that we’re clear about grounding, the circumstances, the
assets of your community. I mean one key difference, for example, between London and New York is we’ve got a much
bigger state sector. You’ve got National Health Service provides centralized medicine, you know? Those kinds of things,
and they are big things. So you have to always ground whatever you’re trying to do in the circumstances that face
you, rather than try to think that there’s a sort of blueprint that originated in New York and all we have to do
is follow it exactly.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Right. And so just as sort of a take away, since your paper
really addresses this sort of crossroads that’s taking place in the U.K. about public and private services being
utilized, what do you see as some of the potential advantages coming about in the future, from that partnership?

PHIL BOWEN: Well I think one of the takeaways from the New York experience is to, you know, tell a practitioner
in the U.K. that this doesn’t necessarily have to be a scary thing, that it can lead to great renovation, it can
lead to sort of dynamic partnerships with community groups and volunteer sector organizations that maybe you haven’t
worked with before. So it can actually really add value. But it’s about being really clear about what the values
and vision should be, and having that collective vision. And that’s certainly my take away from the New York experience—has
been over 15 years, has been this commitment to a particular vision of payback that’s allowed New York to go from
a position where, frankly, community payback was a bit of a neglected service to something that’s really vibrant
and dynamic. So I guess our message is embrace the change, but embrace the right circumstances.

SARAH
SCHWEIG: That’s great. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. I’m Sarah Schweig and I’ve been speaking with
Phil Bowen at the Center for Justice Innovation in London, about community payback. To find out more about the Center
for Court Innovation or the Centre for Justice Innovation, visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org. Thanks for
listening.

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Dr. Mara Schiff, an associate professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic
University, focuses her work on restorative justice, community justice, and juvenile justice. Here, she gives on
overview of restorative practices and discusses why a restorative approach can be particularly valuable for youth. October
2012

SARAH SCHWEIG: I’m Sarah Schweig of
the Center for Court Innovation and today on New Thinking I’m speaking with Dr. Mara Schiff. Dr. Schiff is an
associate professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University. Her work specializes
in restorative justice with focuses on community justice and juvenile justice. Dr. Schiff is in New York because
she has just participated in a research roundtable on youth courts hosted by the Center for Court Innovation. Thanks
for speaking with me today. Welcome. Restorative justice basically is about healing the harm done to victims and
communities while holding offenders accountable for their actions. So to start, can you give us a brief description
of what some restorative processes look like in practice, and how are these practices different from the sort of
business as usual approach in the criminal justice system?

DR. SCHIFF: There are many different
types of restorative practices. The most important thing about restorative practices is not the model it uses, although
I’ll talk about those, but the values and principles on which the intervention is based, specifically, as you
mentioned, the idea of repairing harm. The idea of including stakeholders, so the victim, the offender, and communities
in the response to crime. That it be an inclusive process, that it be flexible to the needs of the participants,
or those that have been affected by the particular event. And a series of values, respect, how we interact with each
other. It’s not so much just about the model, although there are models that demonstrate, if done well, that
demonstrate these values. So, for example there’s victim/offender mediation, which is a dyadic model with a
victim, an offender, and a facilitator. That can then expand outward to something called a conference or a family
group conference, which might include a victim, an offender, a facilitator, and members of their respective families,
and possibly other supporters. That can expand further outward to something called circles. And in circles there
may be—the facilitator in circles is called a keeper, who may do a lot of work prior to bringing—in any of these
interventions a lot of work is done prior to bringing the priors together. You’d never do that without making
sure it’s appropriate to have these people in a room together. But in circles you may include the victim, the
offender, their families, and anybody who feels that they have a stake in the outcome of this event, that they were
affected by it and want to participate in how it’s going to be discussed and resolved.

SARAH
SCHWEIG: You’re here in New York for a round table in youth courts. The youth courts train teenagers to serve as
jurors, judges, and attorneys handling real life cases involving their peers. How do you see the goals of restorative
justice related to what you’ve observed during your visit, and do you think youth courts can be restorative?

DR. SCHIFF: So I’ve learned a lot about youth courts in my visit. And there are, as with any process,
even including traditional court-based processes, there’s advantages and disadvantages, things that work and
things that don’t work. What works about youth courts—again, and in any of this the caveat has to be—when they’re
done well. What works is that it gives youth an opportunity to engage with their peers about the impact of their
actions and what needs to be done to resolve it. So that it’s not simply about adults telling kids what to do
or punishing kids for what they do. It’s kids working with kids and understanding the actions and behaviors
of their peers, not of people who they can’t really relate to. Youth courts also have a lot of different models.
Some of them are restorative, some of them are not, and it’s not better or worse because it’s restorative,
it’s just the model through which it’s been implemented. Personally, I like things that are more restorative,
obviously, so I believe more in models that are restorative. And by that I mean they are dialogue based, they are
not deliberatively punitive, that are inclusive and flexible to the needs of the participant, not adversarial. It’s
not about us versus them. It’s how do we collectively understand and respond to what’s happened? In an
adversarial model, we are generally trained not to take responsibility rather than to take responsibility. And restorative
process is grounded in taking responsibility and being honored for that. Being respected for the guts and the maturity
it takes to be responsible rather than to deny responsibility in hopes of getting lesser punishment. Youth courts,
when implemented restoratively, where they are about repairing harm, and they are about understanding the impact
of your actions, and they are about giving youth an opportunity to make amends and earn their own redemption back
into their communities and be honored and respected for doing that, to become known as the kid who does good, rather
than the kid who’s always messing up.

SARAH SCHWEIG: As you know, evidence based practices
are very much based on being able to prove outcomes in certain ways, and proving impact, and quantifying what a program
is achieving. And I saw you wrote that impact of restorative justice interventions on communities is especially problematic
because definitions and boundaries of community are amorphous and hard to pin down. So I was wondering if maybe you
could talk about some of the challenges of evaluating the impact of restorative justice programs, especially those
perhaps designed for youth and do traditional measures effectiveness, like delinquent behavior or recidivism adequately
measure effective programs?

DR. SCHIFF: Over the last 10 years probably, we’ve gotten far
more sophisticated at measuring the impacts of restorative processes. Yes, we should measure recidivism. Yes we should
look at—do restorative interventions reduce subsequent harm in offending as much as, or more than traditional court
interventions. Of course we should look at that. But we shouldn’t use that as the exclusive gauge of whether
or not a program is working. I’ve been working for the last four years on restorative practices in schools because
I’ve come to believe that by the time a kid gets into the juvenile justice system we’ve missed so many
opportunities to learn that something’s going on with this kid, and we’ve missed so many opportunities
to intervene in a way to direct him out of the system. There’s an opportunity in schools where you have an active
audience. Kids have to be there. And given that, we have an opportunity to teach them ways of behavior, and ways
of interacting with each other, ways of accountability, ways of being engaged in community. So for example, if you’re
looking at a restorative practice in a school, yeah we want to look at—did we keep the kid out of the system? Of
course it’s hard to measure what we didn’t do, and that’s one of the hardest things about this is
it’s hard to measure what we’ve prevented. But for example, is the kid doing better in school? Does he
have more friends? Is he showing up? Does he feel engaged in his school community? Is he talking more in class? Now
those aren’t necessarily things that you can say, a justice-based intervention is responsible for doing, but
there are ways of looking at the benefits of a practice that are not just about, did the kid commit another offense?
And particularly in restorative justice processes, we want to be attentive to that. For most of the kids who wind
up in the justice system, there are so many problems. There are so many issues that these kids confront that it’s
really unfair to say that because A or B intervention did not produce the result of keeping him out of the system,
that we’ve done a bad job, when there are many other issues and problems and concerns that may face this kid,
that are just so much more complex than did he not re-offend again because he participated in a circle. Youth courts
can occur either in a justice setting or a school setting, but the language of those settings differs. The outcomes
we want to look at from those settings differs and the way that the restorative practice integrates with other things
that are going on in the justice process or in a school-based process are very different. And we have to be cognizant
of the environment in and outside of the school, and what a kid may need to do simply to survive. So we teach a kid
how to talk about what happened, but then he goes to his home or his community and is given a completely different
set of cues, is ridiculed, maybe, for talking about it or wanting to be “sensitive” to someone else, or
to somebody that he harmed. When if we’re not including communities in the type of work we’re doing in
a justice system and in a school system, we may be beating our head against a wall because we can’t, through
one intervention that doesn’t permeate all of the different communities and environments a child may have to
encounter. We tend, when there’s something like restorative justice or some other intervention, to hold it to
very high standards, like it’s got to do everything that the court system doesn’t do to consider it effective.
Well no, it doesn’t have to be the be all and end all that solves all problems for all kids.

SARAH
SCHWEIG: Right. How does restorative justice itself change when applied to young people, do you think? Or how should
it change?

DR. SCHIFF: Kids are kids. Kids do dumb things because they’re kids, not because
they’re evil. But if you look back 20 years ago or 30 years ago, things happened in schools or on streets that
were not criminal offenses, they were just what happened. And kids grow out of them. Now we criminalize a lot of
small, minor stuff that kids will grow out of. And it’s tragic. And we’re putting kids into a system for
stupidity, really, or for immaturity, not for criminal behavior. So we have to be aware that kids are kids and their
mental, and moral, and social, psychological, emotional development is not that of an adult and we can’t interact
with them like they should know that. We have to teach them.

SARAH SCHWEIG: I’m Sarah Schweig
of the Center for Court Innovation and I have been speaking with about restorative justice and juvenile justice.
To learn more about the Center for Court Innovation, please visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org. Thanks
for listening. 

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Under Chief Michael A. Davis, the police officers of Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul, pursue
community building.

ROB WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, Director
of Communication at the Center for Court Innovation. This New Thinking podcast is focused on policing and the ideas
of community building and police legitimacy. On the phone with me today is Michael Davis, the chief of police of
Brooklyn Park, which, with about 80,000 people is the second largest suburb of Minneapolis – Saint Paul. Chief Davis
was recognized earlier this year by the Police Executive Research Forum as an up and coming innovator. Thanks for
taking the time to talk with me, Chief Davis.

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS: Thank you.

ROB
WOLF: Let’s start with community building. You’ve said, at a National Institute of Justice conference in
2011, community building is the next generation of community policing. And I think many listeners might be somewhat
familiar with the idea of community policing, but what is community building?

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS:
Well in the context that I speak of it, community building is more reliant on the assets of the community more so
than trying to fix the problems. Now for those who know community policing, they know that at the core of it is this
problem-oriented policing model by which if your rectify low-level problems, in theory, that you prevent other levels
of crime and disorder. Well the problem with that is that there’s limitations to problem-fixing. There really
is no limitations to building upon assets. And so if you want to change this place, want to make this place better
than what it is currently, it really is about leveraging all the assets that exist within a community, not simply
fixing the problems. And so this gets away from the transactional model, and more towards a model that is built on
the understanding of three things. One is, is that we’re a community that has abundant assets. The second thing
is that we know to make those—activate those assets, we must have strong relational ties. And thirdly, these relational
ties aren’t serendipitous. We have to go out and intentionally connect with one another, which is why, I think,
it’s a shift in focus. Not necessarily a new iteration of community policing, but more a new way of looking
at our role in community.

ROB WOLF: So you’re saying that instead, perhaps, of saying, Oh,
there’s a problem in this neighborhood around drug sales—are you saying think larger than that? Let’s look
at the whole community and how can we strengthen connections within the community so that anything, any challenges
that may arise, it would be in a better position to deal with?

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS: Absolutely.
You look at what a community is meant to accomplish. A competent community is one that supports the family in accomplishing
its mission. So the larger structure supports the smaller structure, the family, in accomplishing its mission. When
that breaks down and we rely exclusively on services, like the police, to do what the community is supposed to do,
then the impact of what the police can do alone is obviously severely limited. And so we have to re-engage the community
and get them to see what their role actually is, which is to take ownership, to be accountable to one another. In
that process we are creating a competent community. I mean it’s not an abdication of our role to pluck out the
deviants of our society, but this is thinking bigger than that.

ROB WOLF: The philosophy of community
policing—hasn’t it in some ways tried to promote that?

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS: Yeah, well I
mean obviously community policing purists will say that, you know, this is what the essence of community policing
is. I disagree, and I disagree because it’s not what’s happening. This is not what’s happening in
our communities. You’re talking about communities that have been trying different iterations of community policing
for 30 years, yet the conditions of their communities remain unchanged. People point to this dip in crime, so to
speak, that we’ve been experiencing throughout the country. In some cities it’s reversing itself and no
one can explain it. And so my focus really is on really understanding what makes a community really successful. And
it’s not the most robust police department. What we do know is that the conditions in the most challenged neighborhoods
that need to be reversed. There’s a condition of isolation, there’s a condition of fear, there’s a
condition of dependency. We know that when we study any successful community. People reminisce all the time about
the small town. Well in small town America, typically there’s a dearth of what we call municipal services that
can do things the community can’t, and so they’re forced to rely on one another. Probably the most common
occurrence where this transaction takes place between one another, where interdependency is developed, is in the
local cafe. Every morning folks get together, and it’s not about bacon and eggs, they have those things at home.
It’s about being able to talk about what’s going on amongst this social group. What problems they have
and how they’re gonna work together to solve those things.

ROB WOLF: It sounds like almost
the work of either a café owner, who can bring people together around breakfast, or a social worker who understands
how to bridge cultural or societal or class differences. How do the police help bridge that divide and build that
social capital?

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS: Well first of all, we inculcate it to every aspect of our
service model. We become conveners, we become facilitators. If a community meeting looks like you walk into a classroom
where everybody’s staring at the back of one another’s heads, looking to the front of the classroom waiting
for someone to rain down wisdom, that’s not gonna build community. But if you put people in small groups, bring
people together, you have them talk about assets. You set the ground rules and you have them communicate. And then
you carry out that methodology through every type of community contact, you begin to build fabric.

ROB
WOLF: And have you been able to bring people together in this way, around Brooklyn Park?

CHIEF
MICHAEL DAVIS: Absolutely. I mean we started off in earnest really three years ago with our community café, which
is a methodology of bringing people together in small groups to talk about what they want the impending future of
the community to be. And from that, we develop a model, a structure by which people can become engaged. And from
that we have begun to infuse this methodology into every aspect of how we interact with community. So police officers
are not only rated on how well they go out there and perform the perfunctory task of policing, but they’re also
rated on how well they go out and engage the community—not just the police with the community but also the community
with one another.

ROB WOLF: And how do you measure if your officers have been successful?

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS: Well, there’s a couple different methodologies. Obviously there are proven methodologies
by which you go out and you ask folks about the level of connectivity, level of commitment. Obviously, there’s
the anecdotal success.

ROB WOLF: And you hold these community cafés? Your officers arrange them
on a regular basis?

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS: Not only officers, but other city staff. It has now become
a framework by which we vet through a whole host of issues, from how to deal with the relational conditions, to whether
we want to organize garbage haul.

ROB WOLF: And you bring food? Or the citizens, people, community
members bring food?

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS: Yeah. Food is key, right? Especially in a diverse community
like ours. We are a 25 percent foreign born here, right? And one of the things we know, one of the universal languages
of hospitality is food.

ROB WOLF: Let’s talk about police legitimacy, and clearly there seems
to be a connection. How does it tie into the idea of community building, tie into police legitimacy and how are you
trying to advance police credibility in the city of Brooklyn Park?

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS: Well in
terms of our ability to influence people, we’re leading. This is a leadership role that we’re taking on
as a police department. Us being viewed as a legitimate government entity is absolutely critical, and what we know
through research is that it’s not the outcomes we’re talking about. It’s not whether or not someone
gets a ticket or someone gets arrested. There’s the process of administering law enforcement services besides
whether or not people feel it’s legitimate or not.

ROB WOLF: That’s like the concept
of procedural fairness or procedural justice.

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS: Absolutely. Absolutely. The
two are inextricably linked. Legitimacy is the outcome. Procedural justice is the process, is the methodology. What
we know is that effective policing doesn’t have to be brash or harsh. You can do it with a sense of empathy
and understanding. You give a voice to the people you come in contact with. And you do that by making sure that you’re
creating a culture within an organization that reflects the service that you intend for people to deliver outside
the organization. You create a microcosm of what you want to be expressed in the community. So if you want those
officers to be community builders, you make sure that you have that type of framework within the organization. We
say that we encourage collaboration, and this place, this organization is yours, not mine. Just because I’m
Chief doesn’t mean I own it.

ROB WOLF: I’ve been talking with Michael Davis, the Chief
of Police of Brooklyn Park, which is a suburb of Minneapolis, St. Paul. Thanks so much, Chief Davis, for taking the
time to talk about police legitimacy and community building.

CHIEF MICHAEL DAVIS: Well thank you.
It’s my pleasure.

ROB WOLF: And I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communication at the Center
for Court Innovation. This has been one of our New Thinking podcasts. To listen to other podcasts you can visit our
website at www.courtinnovation.org, and you can also listen to us on iTunes.

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A multi-faceted partnership to lower violence in one of Brooklyn’s most beleaguered neighborhoods gets a major
boost with the announcement of $599,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Justice. Among those speaking at a
press conference to announce the grant are Denise E. O’Donnell, director of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance,
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta E.
Lynch, and Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes. September 2012

ROB
WOLF: While crime is down across New York City, residents of some neighborhoods still fear gunfire and gangs. One
of those neighborhoods is Brownsville, Brooklyn, site of several new programs launched by the Center for Court Innovation
to address violence and strengthen community responses. I’m Rob Wolf, director of Communications at the Center
for Court Innovation and in this New Thinking podcast, the focus is on the Brownsville Anti-Violence Project, which
was the subject of a press conference September 26, 2012, in which the director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance
of the U.S. Department of Justice, announced that the project would receive nearly $600,000 in funding out of $11
million in grants distributed to 15 neighborhoods across the U.S. With a siren in the background reminding the audience
what was at stake, the Bureau of Justice Assistance Director, Denise O’Donnell, said that the grant was not
about the federal government dictating priorities but about empowering communities.

DENISE O’DONNELL:
This program is not about the federal government changing neighborhoods. It’s about community members and stakeholders
working together to identify priorities and solutions to persistent crime problems.

ROB WOLF:
O’Donnell was joined at the podium in the Heritage Room of the Stone Avenue Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library
by a number of officials, including New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who said his department was always
willing to test new ideas.

RAY KELLY: You know, when it comes to driving crime down or saving
lives, I can assure you that the New York City Police Department is open to new ideas. Anything that has the potential
to save lives and make this community safer, we’re for it, and we see in the Brownsville Anti-Violence Program
some very strong potential.

ROB WOLF: District Attorney Charles J. Hynes described call-ins, a
key feature of the Brownsville Anti-Violence Program, in which recent parolees are offered services and encouragement
while, at the same time, being reminded of the serious consequences they face if they get into trouble again.

CHARLES HYNES: The past two months we have partnered with the Center for Court Innovation, United States
Attorney Lynch, Commissioner Kelly, and the NYPD in implementing an evidence-based gun violence reduction strategy
with Project Safe Neighborhoods call-in forums. These call-in forums send a clear message to those with violent pasts
who are reentering the Brownsville community after incarceration, to desist from picking up guns, that gang life
is a dead end, and that we stand ready to help anyone who wants to be on the productive trail.

ROB
WOLF: The real life importance of the grant was underscored by Mark Tannis, a community leader.

MARK
TANNIS: With this grant, in conjunction with VJA, we can have a coordinated effort to get guns off the street. Stop
the gun violence. By far, the large majority of our community want safe streets and a sense of peace, where they
all call home. Unfortunately, too many times that tranquility is shattered by senseless gun violence.

ROB
WOLF: The Brownsville Anti-Violence Program works closely with the community, according to James Brodick, director
of the Brownsville Community Justice Center.

JAMES BRODICK: We started to do a community wide
survey and focus groups. And time after time after time we hear common themes. Theme number one is a lack of opportunities
for young people. And we understand that it’s very clear that we need to get our young people better education, job
readiness, and actual jobs. But what we also hear is that there are real issues with gangs and guns, and unfortunately
as much as people say one of the ways of solving this problem is opening up more after school centers, or opening
up you know, opening up a community center, if young people don’t feel comfortable to cross Van Dyke to the
Brownsville Houses, we can’t get past that. And again, you know, one of the things that the Center for Court
Innovation is here to do today, is what we bring to the table is an expertise in research and expertise in trying
to convene people to solve problems, but we’re not the ones who are going to solve the problem by ourselves.
It’s gonna be the systems, the partners, and most importantly the community.

ROB WOLF: U.S.
Attorney Loretta Lynch, whose office is a partner in the Anti-Violence Initiative, said the Department of Justice’s
anti-violence strategy has three legs.

LORETTA LYNCH: Our anti-violence strategy consists of what
has been described, really as the three-legged stool. Each piece equally important. Prevention—you’ve heard
about the youth programs. Let’s prevent this crime from occurring. Let’s keep people safe. Targeted prosecution—and
yes, we’re here to do that. And re-entry assistance—because we all know that to send people home, back into
the same environment and issues and conflicts that led them into violence in the first place, is just creating a
vicious cycle.

ROB WOLF: For more on the Brownsville Anti-Violence Program or the Brownsville
Community Justice Center, or other podcasts in our series, you can visit our website www.courtinnovation.org. You
can also subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes. And feel free to like the Center for Court Innovation on our Facebook
page. I’m Rob Wolf, director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation. Thanks for listening.

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Angela Irvine, director of research in the Criminal Justice Division of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency,
sat down for this podcast interview after participating in a research roundtable on youth courts that was sponsored
by the Center for Court Innovation and the Lowenstein Family Foundation on July 18, 2012.  Irvine also discusses
research into lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender justice-involved youth.

ROBERT V.
WOLF:  I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. In this New Thinking
podcast, I’m with Angela Irvine, director of research of the criminal justice division of the National Council
of Crime and Delinquency. And I have the good fortune to have a few minutes with her just as she’s finished
participating in a research roundtable on youth courts that the Center for Court Innovation hosted here today in
Manhattan, at the law firm of Skadden Arps. So thanks, Angela, for taking the time to talk with me.

ANGELA
IRVINE:  Thank you for having me.

WOLF: Are there particular challenges that researchers
face when looking at a justice program geared for youth?

IRVINE:  I’m not sure if
there are different challenges. I think that people, in a lot of ways, have given up on adult criminals. In a lot
of ways I find research on adults challenging because it’s hard to engage a public, or to find a source of sympathy
for adult criminals. I think that what’s actually exciting about doing research in the juvenile justice arena
is that we have the possibility of engaging sympathy for different populations of youth who are engaged in the system.
I think if you look at girls in the juvenile justice system, researchers have done a really good job of sort of highlighting
the links between past traumatic experiences and how that drives young people into the juvenile justice system, and
how therefore we, as a society, need to take responsibility for creating firewalls so that girls who have experienced
trauma don’t end up in the juvenile justice system. And what I’m really interested in, moving forward, is thinking
about ways to engage the public in becoming more sympathetic to boys of color who are in the juvenile justice system
who’ve also experienced trauma.

WOLF:  One thing I hear you saying is that there’s
a greater, perhaps, societal interest in research of justice programs that focus on youth, and that is because it’s
easier to have empathy for youth?

IRVINE:  I think so, yes, compared to adults.

WOLF:  And is it also because there’s this general sense that there’s a greater possibility
of rehabilitation?

IRVINE:  I think that there is so much fear of boys of color, in particular—in
public schools, in public spaces, and so I’m not sure how much the general public thinks about wanting to rehabilitate
that population. In theory I think that the juvenile court system was developed to rehabilitate young people in a
different way than the adult criminal justice system has been, but I think that we’re caught in a little bit of a
quagmire right now. If you look from the ’80s on, I think that that’s when super-predators in urban Chicago,
urban New York, started to take over media. You know –

WOLF:  Like “wilding,” that kind
of thing?

IRVINE:  Yeah, exactly. And I think that it’s really important for us
to sort of stop the fear of those young people, and to try to move back in time, to a time when we really do think
of the juvenile justice system as different than the adult criminal justice system, and a system that does seriously
invest in the rehabilitation of those young people, because they’re all our kids.

WOLF: 
And do you think researchers have a role to play in helping to change that orientation? 

IRVINE: 
Researcher always have a role in identifying which program should be invested in. So if researchers identify programs
that effectively reduce recidivism or improve graduation rates, I think that the government, the federal government,
state governments always justify their investment in programs based on research. I think that it’s really important
to think about who the researchers should be doing this work. I think it’s really important that we try to recruit
researchers of color who come from the neighborhoods where we are arresting most of the people, so that we can have
a richer discussion about what the findings are, but also have a richer discussion about what the possible solutions
are because in my experience, researchers who are more familiar with low-income communities of color come up with
more realistic solutions in terms of effectively changing behavior, essentially.

WOLF: 
You’ve done a lot of research with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, and they face a number of
problems that make them more likely to offend or get involved in the system. I wonder if you can maybe explain some
of your findings.

IRVINE:  The most important finding is that LGBT youth are over represented
in the system. We surveyed young people at the point of arrest and we found that at that point, 15 percent of young
people disclosed being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, which we believe is a higher percentage than the general
population, though we don’t have an accurate measure of the general population. And if you just aggregate by
what we consider, you know, traditionally consider gender, that’s about 11 percent of boys but 27 percent of girls.
I also think it’s important to remember that we have the same disclosure rates for African-American, Latino,
and white youth. Now, in terms of why LGBT youth are there, our surveys show that LGBT youth were twice as likely
to be removed from their home as children because of conflict with their parents, were twice as likely to be homeless
at some point in time, and then twice as likely to be held in detention for status offenses like running away, or
prostitution.

WOLF:  Your employer, the National Council of Crime and Delinquency, started
a project called Improving Permanency for LGBT Youth, which is trying to build an infrastructure of permanent, competent
housing for LGBT youth.

IRVINE:  So I think that what’s really exciting for me about
this program is that youth who are placed outside of their home are at risk for negative outcomes, no matter who
you are. I think that the data shows that if you are a youth of color, or that if you’re LGBT, you’re less likely
to be placed in a home that can meet your needs because it’s very difficult to identify foster parents of color,
or group homes that can adequately serve the needs of African-American and Latino youth, and LGBT youth. And so what
you see is then youth running away from placement, and then because they’re running away from placement, then they
get elevated to higher levels of placement, and they essentially get anchored into the system.

So
in each of three counties, Alameda, Orange, and Fresno county, we’re going to be working with task forces and the
goal of all three task forces would be immediately to try to pass anti-discrimination policies because that—the moment
of crisis is when LGBT youth are in juvenile detention centers, and we need to make sure that youth are not discriminated
against, that we deconstruct homophobic sort of systems, what people say, but also how particular gender non-conforming
youth are placed in housing units. But then the next step is to try to dig into these communities and see, what is
the infrastructure?  How many, you know, do we have homes that have been identified as LGBT culturally competent? 
Are there solutions that can be put into place to reunify kids with their families, or with some sort of kin care,
sooner than later?

WOLF:  And will research be playing a role in the development of this
program?  How will researchers be helping inform this process?

IRVINE:  That’s
a really good question. So the project is being managed by Bernadette Brown, who’s a really accomplished attorney
and LGBT advocate. And so she’ll be running the task forces in each of the counties. And then I’ll sit on, as
a researcher, each of the task forces and make sure that we are setting data-collection protocols into place, so
that we can measure outcomes for youth in each of those system.

WOLF:  So let me ask
you about what brought you here, to New York today, from Oakland, California, your home. So you spent the day here
in Manhattan, here at the law firm of Scadden Arps, where we are now in the middle of an incredible thunderstorm.
So the theme of the roundtable discussion was on the topic of youth courts and research. The roundtable itself was
sponsored by the Center for Court Innovation. And I’m wondering now, after the five-hour conversation, you know,
what did you learn from it, and what did you think about youth courts before you arrived and have your attitudes
changed or is it too early to really make any particular declaration?

IRVINE:  I think
that my initial concerns about youth courts is that they were a program that could accidentally pull low-risk youth
into either the juvenile justice system or school disciplinary procedures.

WOLF:  Maybe
I’ll just clarify that youth courts, as we’re talking about them here, are program that train teenagers
to play court-like roles to evaluate cases of their peers, and usually just come up with a disposition—they usually
don’t determine guilt. And some are in schools and some are outside of schools. So I just wanted to say that.
I didn’t want to interrupt you.

IRVINE:  So I think that what—I’m really impressed
by the group of people that were here and I think that what I saw is a real commitment to creating a model that works.
I think that there are really two populations that potentially benefit from youth courts. I think that there are
what are called the respondents, so young people who have gotten in trouble, who are essentially the defendants in
a youth court, and then there are the young people who serve as jurists and judges and bailiffs. And the engagement
of those young people who are involved in the program, and staffing the program, is much longer and the benefits
to those young people are very, very clear. I think that in general these young people develop positive relationships
with the adults who are facilitating the program. I think that you see really high rates of graduation and college
attendance. And I think that what everybody coalesced around was the idea that Jeffrey Butts proposed, which is that
we don’t want to do any harm to the respondents or the defendants in this system. And understanding that is a complicated
process, but I’m really excited to have been a part of a group that really sort of rolled up our sleeves and
thought about, how is it that we can document, or how is it that we can ensure that the respondents or the defendants
have positive outcomes instead of negative outcomes.

WOLF:  These are important questions
because youth courts are sort of gaining popularity, and yet there hasn’t been a whole lot of research about
their efficacy.

IRVINE:  Exactly. I think it’s really, really important that we
be able to posit an effective model. I think that the idea of youth courts is easy to replicate, right, just based
on common sense. And I think that it’s really, really important that we identify elements, potentially effective
elements like peer-to-peer-led courtrooms. That was a variable that came up today that we try to reduce the punitive
nature of those courts, perhaps not even calling them courts anymore, that we think about healing and stopping the
cycle of trauma, so that we create—intentionally create what I want to call systems, or structures of those youth
courts that make young people feel comfortable and forgiven by their peers.

WOLF:  Well
listen, thank you so much Angela.

IRVINE:  Thank you.

ROB: 
I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to talk with me. I’ve been speaking with Angela Irvine, who’s
the director of research of the criminal justice division of the National Council of Crime and Delinquency. And her
office is based in Oakland, although the National Council has offices in several locations. If you want to learn
more about some of her work, you can go to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency’s website which is
www.nccdglobal.org. And to find out more about youth courts or about the Center for Court Innovation, please go to
www.courtinnovation.org. You can also listen to this podcast on iTunes. You can follow us on Facebook as well, and
on Twitter. I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. Thank you for listening.

July 2012

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The graduation of seven fathers serves as a jumping off point for Liberty Aldrich, director of the Center for
Court Innovation’s family
and domestic
violence programming, to discuss the Kings County Parent Support Program, which links non-custodial parents with needed services
to increase child support payments and maintain healthy parent-child relationships.

ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. 
And today I’m talking with Liberty Aldrich, who is our director of domestic violence and family court Programs. 
Hi Liberty.

LIBERTY ALDRICH:  Hi.

WOLF:  We’re talking
today about the King’s County Parent Support Program, which the Center for Court Innovation operates in collaboration
with New York City Family Court and the city’s Human Resources Administration.  The Parent Support
Program works closely with non-custodial parents who owe child support. Over the course of the program’s first
17 months there have been about $140,000 in child support collected.  Liberty and I recently had a chance
to see a graduation of participants, so today I thought we would listen to some excerpts from that.  To
start off, Liberty, I thought maybe you could give an overview of what the King’s County Parent Support Program is. 

LIBERTY:  Sure, thanks.  The Parent Support Program takes a problem-solving approach to
address a problem that has bedeviled courts and parents and families for a long time, which is how can we address
the persistent problem of non-payment of child support in a way that is both fair to the non-custodial parents, but
also provides support to children.  The Parent Support Program is open to any non-custodial parent in Brooklyn
who is in arrears on their child support. Support magistrates, attorneys, or other folks can refer potential participants
to the Parent Support Program and that program has a resource coordinator. The resource coordinator meets with the
non-custodial dad, sees whether he’s eligible for the program, sees what kind of services he needs in order
to become better employed, better able to support his children, and if it’s appropriate, she makes that recommendation
to the support magistrate that that non-custodial dad be ordered to participate in those programs in lieu of more
traditional sanctions. The court continues to monitor his compliance with the programs on a regular basis, bringing
him back to court and checking in to see if, in fact, he’s taking advantage of the services offered. 

WOLF:  I’m gathering that the program really is to support, as its name suggests. I thought
maybe we could listen to some of the things we heard from the graduation.  Here, in her welcoming remarks,
Theodora Andreopoulos, the deputy borough chief of child support for the Brooklyn Family Court Division, pointed
out that the Parent Support Program goes beyond focusing just on the parent’s failures to actually trying to
offer some concrete help.

THEODORA ANDREOPOULOS:  Enforcement petitions are often viewed
as proceedings which focus on a parent’s failure to pay child support. However the Parent Support Program and
the success of the graduates today has shown that enforcement petitions can be more than that. They can be an opportunity
for a second chance to be given to a parent who wished to comply with the child support order but had not had the
ability to do so in the past, because of his or her own personal circumstances.

WOLF: 
So maybe you can tell me what kind of personal circumstances might prevent a parent from being able to make child
support payments. 

ALDRICH: In a lot of the cases that we’ve had so far, and so
far we’ve worked with over 120 non-custodial parents, the major issues are a history of incarceration, which
makes it very difficult to find adequate employment, and under-employment. So folks who’ve lost their jobs,
folks who were previously making a regular salary who are no longer able to sustain that level of income, and so
they may be making ends meet for their personal needs by doing odd jobs, but they are unable to find adequate employment.

WOLF:  Let’s listen to what Devin Banton said about why he wasn’t able to make his payments.

WOLF:  What brought you to the program?  What was the situation that got you here?

DEVIN BANTON:  The situation was that you know, the economy got bad and I had my own vehicle, and
I had an accident, twice.  Not my fault, but because of the accident I had suffered the loss of T&LC
license and then wasn’t working, payment got backed up on me. So the child’s mother decided to take me
here.

WOLF:  When I spoke to Support Magistrate Nicholas Palos he said the problems for
some non-custodial parent often start with the child support order.  Here’s part of what he said.

NICHOLAS PALOS:  A needs-based order for most of the people that we see in Brooklyn, and the way
we calculate them, they’re way beyond the means of the non-custodial parent. 

WOLF: 
So what is a needs-based order?

PALOS: A needs-based order is if you don’t have good information
regarding the income of a parent, we have to then enter an order based upon the needs of a child.  When
you have nothing countering it—it’s a default order for example, that’s what we enter and these guys get
these huge bills. And a lot of times they’re never going to get out from underneath them unless we take some
more proactive steps, and that’s what we’re looking to do.

WOLF:  So Liberty,
let me ask you if someone is facing high arrears because of an order that goes well beyond their ability to pay,
how does the Parent Support Program help the parent turn the situation around?

ALDRICH: 
In two ways. The first is that we do an individualized assessment with each participant in the program and see what
kind of services that we know are out there, would actually improve his chances of finding a good job that will allow
him to support his children. The second point is that many of these folks are overwhelmed by the court process itself,
so while they knew they weren’t really able to make this payment, they felt so overwhelmed that they never came
into court to ask for it to be reduced to reflect what their actual income was. So they let the payments continue
to accumulate and they got further and further behind. So the second thing that we really do is work with them on
understanding the legal process and understanding what they can do to make their payments more manageable in the
future.

WOLF:  Magistrate Palos also explained that the Parent Support Program doesn’t
just offer the parent services like job training, but also intensive supervision.

PALOS: 
It’s intensive in court that they may be on the calendar for a while every week, but it’s also a matter
of carrots and sticks as well. I mean it’s a matter of—if they’re doing well, I pat them on the back and
we move them along and we expand their court appearances out. If things aren’t going, well we’ve used things
such as contracting the amount of when you come to court, a couple of times sit in the back of the court room and
just watch for a day, sort of the equivalent when I was a kid of standing in the corner.  I’ve had
them write essays, and about three guys we’ve actually referred for community service. The ultimate leverage,
of course, is proceeding to the hearing on a willful violation and the potential for possibly recommending jail. 

WOLF:  So how important is this kind of supervision that the Parent Support Program offers?

ALDRICH:  It is absolutely essential. That’s really the key factor that distinguishes the
Parent Support Program from any other program. We are combining the provision of services, making sure people know
where they can get help – with the accountability to make sure they are taking advantage of those services. It’s
not okay for folks not to support their children. That can’t be the outcome here. The outcome here has to be
that it’s a win for the non-custodial dad, but it’s also a win for the kids. And the way that we ensure
that is through the compliance reviews. By making sure that the non-custodial parents are actually applying for jobs,
that they’re actually participating in the programs, and that they’re taking proactive steps to address
their legal situation.

WOLF:  How widespread is this model?  Is this happening
in other places, and what are the plans for carrying it forward?

ALDRICH:  There are
several jurisdictions around the country that are trying similar kinds of approaches in child support cases, and
we think that it’s very promising. We think that it’s, as I said before, really can be a win for everybody,
for the custodial parent who needs and has a right to get support, for the non-custodial parent, who can reestablish
a relationship with their child, because often when they’re not paying child support that causes difficulty
in their relationship with their children, and for the child, obviously, who is able to have the support that they
need. We’re certainly hoping to replicate it in other jurisdictions in New York City, as well as work with other
jurisdiction around the country who are interested in replicating this approach.

WOLF: 
I have to say my overall impression, just having been there for the graduation, was of this incredibly positive energy
from the fathers speaking very positively about the program, and I thought maybe we could conclude just by hearing
from the father we heard earlier, Devin Banton.

BANTON:  Uou know, I really feel great
about the program because at first I thought it would kill me.

WOLF:  How so?

BANTON:  Because you know, listening to people’s experience that a, it’s the ladies always
win, and the judge gives you the burden, some amount to pay, but it was reasonable to me and the program was created
in a way that it gives me a chance again, to see myself as a father because I was feeling less of myself, especially
when I’m – you’re a deadbeat dad. So I was encouraged that this program here give me a certificate and
it really makes me feel as if I have achieved something great, so I’m just looking forward to just making my
payments on time, and double up to catch up with some of the arrears that I owe.

WOLF: 
I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation and I’ve been speaking with
Liberty Aldrich, who is the director for the Center for Court Innovation’s family and domestic violence programming,
which includes the Parent Support Program, which is run in close collaboration with Brooklyn Family Court and the
New York City Human Resources Administration. To find out more about the Parent Support Program or anything else
we do at the Center for Court Innovation, you can visit our website www.courtinnovation.org, and you can listen to
more New Thinking podcasts on our website or on iTunes.  Thanks for listening.  

(August 2012)

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