Gail Pendleton, co-director of ASISTA, which advises and trains advocates and attorneys who work with immigrant
survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, discusses some of the complex issues non-citizen survivors face. July
2012

SARAH SCHWEIG: Hi, I’m Sarah Schweig at the Center for Court Innovation
and today I’m speaking with Gail Pendleton about how issues around domestic violence become far more complicated
when they involve victims with pending immigration status. Gail Pendleton is co-director of ASISTA, a national immigration
law technical assistance project supported by the Federal Office on Violence Against Women. Thank you for speaking
with me today and welcome.

GAIL PENDLETON: Thank you.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Women
who are victims of domestic violence already face a number of hurdles, and women who aren’t citizens often face
a much more complex situation. Can you give a sense of these challenges and, you know, for instance, how does immigration
status factor into the sort of abuse patterns that they’re experiencing?

GAIL PENDLETON:
Well the first thing to think about is how is this similar to what you might see with citizen survivors? So for instance,
language might be an issue for deaf women, for instance, right? Language access and understanding what they’re
saying, and who’s information are you taking as true, if you’re not getting it directly from their mouth.
 Culture also could be an issue. Is the pastor or the religious leader telling people they should stay married?
That could be true for immigrants, it could be true for citizens. Economics, also an issue for citizens, but when
you’re talking about someone who may not be able to work legally, or is working illegally, that adds an extra
tool of power and control in the hands of—particularly a documented spouse or intimate partner. And in our immigration
family system, prior to the Violence Against Women act, the U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident spouse controls
the immigration process. And so that’s why, in the Violence Against Women Act, Congress created a special route
to status for victims of domestic violence by citizens and lawful permanent residents. So that control of the immigration
status is the one weapon that, you know, wouldn’t happen to a U.S. citizen. And the other thing that I think
is probably true for a lot of citizen survivors, but especially true for a lot of non-citizens is who is their source
of information? Because the isolation may be even more intense for non-citizen survivors than it is for citizens,
their source of information is going to be their perpetrator and what are they telling them? They’re telling
them, you—our court system won’t help you because you’re undocumented, or semi-documented. I’ll get
custody of the kids, you’ll get deported, you’ll get turned over to ICE if you call the police. All of
those are very effective tools for abusers to keep their spouses and their kids in violent homes.

SARAH
SCHWEIG: Right. And ICE, just for our listeners—

GAIL PENDLETON: Oh right. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Okay. A victim of domestic violence, a domestic violence offender,
and any children involved may have all varying immigration status. Is that right? How does that further complicate
the situation, and how do you sort of deal with those differences in the court system?

GAIL PENDLETON:
Well, the crucial role that we have tried to work on is ensuring that there are routes to status that allow victims
of domestic violence to pursue immigration status without the control of their abusers. And so most of the system,
unless you’re the—what we call the principal beneficiary of an immigration benefit, which is usually going to
be the abuser, frankly, like say engineers who come over on high-tech visas or whatever. Their family members are
here legally, but if they leave them then they get deported. So you can’t—and in the family-based system, as
I mentioned, the abuser controls—for the most part—controls the process. So that was the initial attempt was—it doesn’t
matter so much whether, what status they have. It matters who c controls getting a permanent status. And the safest
permanent status, short of citizenship, is a green card, what people call lawful permanent residents. And that actually
takes a long time, even if you do self-petitioning. Or the U-Visa, which is the other thing I wanted to mention because
self-petitioning just parallels regular family-based process, but those of you who work in court systems will know
that often times the abuser also lacks a secure immigration status, or doesn’t fit our normal family base, like
same-sex marriages, for instance. Immigration law does not recognize same sex marriages, because DOMA trumps, like
Massachusetts state law, where I’m from. So—Oren Hatch, as I mentioned in the training just now suggested the
U-Visa as a tool to get people who are too afraid, victims who are too afraid to call law enforcement, give a tool
for law enforcement to reach out to those folks and a form of humanitarian relief for them. They do have to be helpful
to law enforcement and they have to have certification for law enforcement. So the hurdles are higher in terms of
proof, for getting that status, but it helps a lot of people who really wouldn’t be able to be helped in our
regular system.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Yeah. You mentioned that you’ve done a lot of reform work
with immigration issues and policy change, and I know policies are often shifting and making headway on this issue.
Can you describe some of the recent legislation Congress has passed, and what hurdles have been cleared and what
else needs to be accomplished?

GAIL PENDLETON: Well, one of the things I tell the impatient lawyers
and advocates is that getting the law passed is, in some ways, the easy part and then you spend a decade getting
it implemented the right way. And we’ve been fortunate in the Violence Against Women area to have basically
a series of incremental improvements in access to status for immigrant survivors of domestic violence and sexual
assault, and human trafficking. So you have the ’94 Violence Against Women Act, then 2000, the Victims of Trafficking
Act, 2005 again, but we’re still working—I also serve as a liaison at immigration services on how to implement
these laws since 1997, and so it takes a long time, you know? It’s the government, right? It’s the federal
government and there are a lot of stakeholder besides us who are involved. So we’re still working on getting
some parts of, for instance, the U-Visa implemented, even though it was passed in 2000. So a lot of what I do is
work with the advocates and lawyers, and with CIS trying to create that fruitful communication as opposed to adversarial
relationship. And like I just said, we also recently in the past year have developed the same kind of relationship
with ICE headquarters, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Department of Homeland Security, Civil Rights
and Civil Liberties. So we’re trying to find common ground and, you know, share agendas. We obviously don’t
all share all agendas, but we do share some.

SARAH SCHWEIG: And at least share the information
to help an act.

GAIL PENDLETON: Right, and I help inform them about what we’re seeing in
the field. So, for instance, in the past year—I can’t take credit for this—but ICE did implement some prosecutorial
discretion memos and one is designed specifically for victims of crimes. And the idea is they have priority, you
know, people with criminal convictions, terrorists, you know, there are other priorities they have for removal, so
if someone is the victim of a crime and is being helpful to law enforcement, it’s not a high priority for them
to remove them, and tehy should allow them to stay here and pursue status. So that just happened, so again, my message
to the field is—this is gonna take another decade to actually make it work, but we’re here to—we, at the national
level are here to help you try to work that out in as non-adversarial way as possible.

SARAH SCHWEIG:
As with any issue with sort of ever-changing policies, keeping court advocates up to date seems incredibly crucial.
How do you ensure that jurisdictions are kept informed, and all those stakeholders are, you know, trained? How does
that work?

GAIL PENDLETON: Well there are two ways that we try to do it. One is that we work with
organizations such as the Center for Court Innovation and the National Judicial Institute, that are sponsored by
the Office on Violence Against Women, who have special training for court systems, and that’s kind of the trickle
down, and then because we’ve been doing this since 1993, we have a large field of thousands of people who are
out there, actually out there doing this, right? And so the idea is give them the ability to go out and do this locally,
because there’s only so much you can do. You have to have a bottom, pushing from the bottom, us pushing from
the top. So, and it’s never gonna be perfect, but hopefully it will make our systems better. I would say a thing
to do in the next few years is pick a few models that seem to be working, you know? There’s no one model that
works everywhere, so like what works in Suffolk County, New York, is not gonna work in northwest Arkansas, right?
You know, you’ve got to take the principles, it seems, the most important principles and figure out how people
can apply them to the resources that they have locally.

SARAH SCHWEIG: And so for those jurisdictions
that maybe haven’t gotten, you know, the training, what can a court do to help advocates and attorneys work
with immigrant survivors of domestic violence and you know, what are the key things that you think they need to be
aware of?

GAIL PENDLETON: Well I’d say the message for judges is judicial leadership. That’s
the key thing is that they need to go back to their systems because there’s only so much a judge can do by the
time it gets to them, right? It’s got to be the advocates in the system, it’s got to be the police and
the DAs, and the domestic violence people out there who are really the first point of entry for these folks so that
they even get to the judge, right? So often what the judges will say, the main thing they realize is they’ve
got to take this back and encourage bar association trainings, and at the stakeholder meetings raising these issues,
that kind of thing. And then the other piece is to get all those other players in the system trained up. There are
trainings out there, we do trainings at the National District Attorneys Association. The FJC conference is the Sexual
Assault and domestic violence Conferences for advocates, and there’s lots of materials out there. That’s
the other message is, you don’t need to start from scratch. Lots of people have been doing this around the country
in lots of different context so we don’t—because we have this huge network, we can also find people who can
talk to you. I’m a big fan of peer training. So if the message is better coming from and advocate for advocates,
or a police chief for other police chiefs, we can work on that.

SARAH SCHWEIG: That’s great.
Thank you so much for talking to me today. I’m Sarah Schweig and I’ve been speaking with Gail Pendleton,
co-director of ASISTA, about domestic violence and its bearing on immigration policy. To learn more about the Center
for Court Innovation please visit www.courtinnovation.org. Thank you for listening.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

David Adams, co-founder and co-director of Emerge,
the first counseling program in the nation for men who abuse women, discusses the inner workings, challenges,
and potential benefits of group counseling for men who batter. (July 2012)

SARAH SCHWEIG: Hi, I’m Sarah Schweig, of the Center for Court Innovation, and today I’m speaking
with Dr. David Adams. Dr. Adams is co-founder and co-director of Emerge, the first counseling program in the nation
for men who abuse women. He is one of the nation’s leading experts on men who batter and has conducted trainings
for social service and criminal justice professionals in 46 states and 18 nations. Dr. Adams has also conducted outreach
to victims of abuse for 35 years. Thanks for speaking with me today.

DR. DAVID ADAMS: Thank you.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Can you give us a little background about the kind of counseling you do? What kinds of issues
does counseling in this case seek to address? And is there a kind of model you use or promising practice?

DR. DAVID ADAMS: Well, I mean first of all, it’s small groups, and secondly the model that we use is
male/female co-facilitated. And the reason we do that is that we really want to provide a role modeling opportunity
for the abusive men to see women and men working together operatively and sharing leadership. Our program is divided
into two phases. There’s an educational phase, which is the first eight weeks where they’re exposed to
just really basic information about what is abusive behavior, broadening their understanding that it’s not just
the illegal behavior. How does it affect their partner, how does it affect their children, other alternatives and
so forth. But then the more interesting phase, you know, the second phase which is the remaining 32 weeks is more
of an interactive group. And that’s where we’re a little different as a model from other kinds of programs.
because we’re a psycho-educational model, not just an educational model, which really means that we’re
able to give individualized feedback to the men in the program, and to really kind of like focus more in depth about
each person’s history of abusive behavior. We actually do a very interesting exercise, which I call a relationship
history, where we ask each person 14 questions about every intimate relationship he’s had. And it’s done
right in the group. The other men ask the questions. And we do another interesting exercise where we really develop
very individualized goals for each man in the group, and the other men, again, are very involved in that process,
making suggestions about what goals make sense for that person. And so really the whole purpose of the goal of our
program is to really learn two things. One is respect, and how is respect communicated in relationships—not just
with your partner or with your children, but also empathy too. Because most abusers are very—kind of have a narcissistic
orientation and so the beginning stages, it’s really clear that it’s hard for them to see their own behavior
from their partner’s perspective. And so over time, we’re really trying to do that. We’re trying to build
that into the program so that even when men are giving each other feedback in a group, we’re asking men to try
to see things from the partner’s perspective. So when a man’s reporting an interaction with his partner,
for instance, we’re asking all the other men to say, okay, what do you think his partner’s perspective
was in that interaction? And in the process, they are learning empathy too. Because it’s easier, I think sometimes
to recognize another person’s abusive behavior than one’s own, you know? So we kind of take advantage of
that natural ability that abusers have. They’re very good at actually spotting other people’s abusive behavior,
not so much their own. And so we really kind of teach the men how to give each other constructive feedback, and how
to kind of hold each other to a higher standard. That’s really kind of the premise of our program.

SARAH SCHWEIG: So, as you know treating domestic violence offenders can be controversial. Some people say
that abusers can’t be reformed or treated. Can you talk a little bit about how this affects your work, and what
you have seen in your perspective?

DR. DAVID ADAMS: Yeah. Well, I think there’s been a lot
of misinformation about the outcome studies that have been done, first of all, and I also think it kind of reflects
that the outcome that has been done has a very kind of narrow definition of what outcome is, you know, too, because
I always say I’d like to get the same deal the substance abuse programs get. Because nobody ever questions the
value of substance abuse programs, and yet their outcomes aren’t any better than ours. And yet, somehow for
us to have the same outcomes, you know, there’s questioning about—are we worth it? And I think that what all
of the outcome studies have found is that program completers do a lot better than non-completers because of recidivism.
So that’s very reassuring to us, because just like a substance abuser program, it sort of is a given that the
more treatment they get, the better they do over time. I think that, however, when you have the expectation, this
all or nothing expectation that—do we cure? because some of the outcome studies have sort of compared program participants
with non-participants, but even program complicits who only get one session, you know who drop out and reoffend,
that counts as a program failure. And that makes no sense because he’s only had one session. But the other thing
is that we feel that we provide a valuable service regardless of the outcome, because we provide really useful information
to the courts about his participation, about noncompliance, for instance. And noncompliance is really a big deal
because that’s a predictor of his reoffending. We provide really useful information to the partners, to the
victims of abuse, and that’s a big deal because victims are really trying to make decisions, you know? Quite
often when he’s in the batterers program, you know, do I want to say in this relationship? Do I want to maybe
curtail his access to the children? And so, you know, they’re hearing back from us, and if they’re hearing
back from us, well you know, he’s still minimizing his abusive behavior. Or he’s still really blaming you.
That’s really useful for victims, because we want to make sure that she doesn’t just automatically conclude
that because he’s in our program, you know that naturally things are going to get better, you know too.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Those are some excellent points about the information sharing, and I wanted to ask about,
you know, in the court how your program sort of comes into play, and as you know domestic violence court emphasizes
holding offenders accountable for their abusive behavior. Do you see a tension between accountability and treatment
within the court, and how do those concepts fit together?

DR. DAVID ADAMS: Well, yeah, I think
that sometimes accountability is taken to mean punishment. Most of the men who participate in Emerge, they definitely,
when they start our program, think of our program as a part of their punishment. And yet, our understanding of accountability
is really much broader than that. It’s about recognizing the impact of your behavior on other people, being
able to really identify and talk about your abusive behavior, and to make changes. That’s all a part of accountability.
And so that’s very different from punishment. You know? Some abusers, they’d love to just be punished,
you know, because then they’re sort of off the hook. They don’t really have to change. So that really,
accountability, we try to sort of build that into our program so that just the process of having them describe their
abusive behavior, which they would never do on their own, right? I mean and also to put it on record too, you know,
so it really goes back to the court and so now he is on record as admitting, you know, in some detail, what his abusive
behavior, is—and has been. Another part of the accountability is being able to really be open to feedback too, in
the program. So really it’s kind of an aging process, accountability. It’s more than just punishment.

SARAH SCHWEIG: How do you think a justice system can be flexible enough to sort of fit the response to the
needs of the offender, in terms of sort of redefining accountability in that way?

DR. DAVID ADAMS:
Right. I mean first of all we love it when judges do more than just sentence abusers to programs, but also kind of
reinforce the goals of the program, to really kind of say to the defendant, you know, I’m gonna sentence you
to this program, but I want you to be an active participant in the program. In fact, I’m going to review your
progress in the program. And that’s one of the great advantages of domestic violence courts, is there’s
that built into it, so that a person knows that they’re going to have to be accountable in that way, they have
to go back before the judge, the court, and kind of review the process. And they take it more seriously themselves
too. And I think it’s just human nature, that people will do that.

SARAH SCHWEIG: So since
you established Emerge in 1977, how has working with domestic violence offenders changed, and do any new achievements
come to mind or any new complications or challenges that you might want to mention?

DR. DAVID
ADAMS: Well, I think it’s been a lot of trial and error over the years and we’ve learned a lot about how
to engage men. And certainly programs have become more culturally relevant too, over time, as well as programs specifically
geared towards abusers in same sex relationships, too. But I think that in the beginning, I think there was kind
of a consciousness raising, more of a sort of emphasis really only one set of issues, which was really sort of gender,
equality, and more of a kind of confrontative approach, sort of confronting them about sexist attitudes and so forth.
And I think what we’ve learned over time is that that can be really quite alienating, that people—and really,
I think we’ve kind of replaced that with more of an emphasis on respect, because respect is more of a universal
value, and respect definitely plays into gender equality in terms of relationships. And so we sort of try to keep
it focused on how much do you respect your individual partner? More than, you know, what’s your attitude toward
women in general.

SARAH SCHWEIG: And that also goes back to teaching, you know, teaching empathy,
which is a much more intimate experience. So you’re also the author of the book, “Why Do They Kill? Men
Who Murder Their Intimate Partners.” Maybe talk a little bit about how you sought to answer that question and
what were some of your findings in cases of homicide?

DR. DAVID ADAMS: Well, I mean when I started
working on that project, there had been a real spike of intimate partner homicides in Massachusetts, so much so that
our governor had declared a state of Emergency for women. And so it really kind of made me curious about what distinguishes
batterers who kill from those who don’t kill. What do we need to know that can really help us to identify these
cases in the earlier stages, though I did interviews with prisoners that all had killed their intimate partners in
Massachusetts, and I also did interviews with victims of attempted homicide. And it really identified that there
were, essentially, five different types of killers in terms of their motivations to kill, and so I think we need
to make it better in the system, in identifying those men earlier on, flagging those cases, you know, looking at
the mental health issue on top of the domestic violence issue. I mean I think the first really, duty in combating
terrorism, you know, is to gather intelligence. These are domestic terrorists, so you know, we really need to gather
better intelligence about the people that are gonna be causing the problem, you know, which is the abusers.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Well that’s fascinating and it’s been wonderful talking to you. I’m Sarah
Schweig and I’ve been speaking with Dr. David Adams, co-founder and co-director of Emerge. To learn more about
the Center for Court Innovation, please visit www.courtinnovation.org. Thank you for listening.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

Peacemaker Administrator Anna Francis-Jack discusses tribal history and how The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington State have
launched and grown their peacemaking program. May 2012

ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. During
a visit to the Colville tribes in Washington State, I had a chance to interview a number of different people about
peacemaking, which is a traditional Native American approach to justice. In earlier podcasts, I spoke with two elders
and a client about their experiences with peacemaking, and in this podcast I talk with Anna Francis-Jack, who coordinates
the program. One of the first things we talked about was the building we were sitting in, which allowed Anna to talk
a bit about her tribe’s history.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

ANNA
FRANCIS-JACK: Yes, of course.

WOLF: Why don’t you say where we are actually.

FRANCIS-JACK:
We are at the Nesperse Long (sp?) house, which is one of the very last living legend of the Nesperse that went to
war, and we were exiled here as—my forefathers were exiled here as prisoners of war.

WOLF: And
approximately when was that?

FRANCIS-JACK: Late 1800’s.

WOLF: Okay.

FRANCIS-JACK: So some of the tribes refused to talk to us because—well refused to talk to my forefathers
because they had blood on their hands, because some of the tribes here on the Colville reservation never went to
war. That’s one of the intergenerational family traumas that still goes on today.

WOLF: And
this was a war against the whites, against the government?

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes, yes. but because
of who the chief Joseph Nesperse were, when they came here they weren’t quite welcome, so at one point I called
myself an Indian without a country because you know, we are still here despite all the odds. This is the only Long
House on the Colville reservation that practices tradition. We chose our religion, we chose our language—well not
me personally but my family, my forefathers, ancestors, and the ones that came before me. It’s what I was born
into.

WOLF: Why don’t you tell me how did your program get off the ground? You found some
peacemakers and you trained them? You trained each other?

FRANCIS-JACK: They gave me a resolution
that authorized the creation of the peacemaking circle program, and a list of elders.

WOLF: And
this was from the tribal council?

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes. So I began from there and I did a mail-out,
of course. I managed to get like 15 people to inquire. We started having meetings. I went off to Green Bay to the
traditional peacemaking, and I went to one of Fillmore Blue House’s presentations there and then I came back,
and then I started putting together information and sharing it with the elders, and then they would come and they
would give me things. And so everyone was doing research on peacemaking.

WOLF: And trying to look
at traditions.

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes.

WOLF: A traditional way of resolving conflict
and dealing with criminal behavior or misbehavior.

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes, but first we had to figure
out exactly what peacemaking was, and then they could relate it back to their different tribes within this specific
Colville reservation, since we’re a confederation—we have 12 tribes. And as I explained earlier, it’s the
prayer, it’s the smudging, it’s the talking, healing circle, and it’s the elders coming together,
you know, with the best needs of the client in mind at all times, trying to make him feel welcome, trying to make
him feel equal, trying to make him feel at ease, trying to make him trust. They have to search within themselves
to find that place that they can say, okay, I did this. I can be responsible. I can stand up and I can tell the elders
yes, I did this, yes, I was wrong. And maybe initially they just may mouth it but somewhere later on down the line,
they actually start conveying it. It’s not just words anymore.

WOLF: So just to be clear,
what you said before and what you just reiterated was that it starts, there’s a prayer involved, and then there’s
the ceremony, the smudge ceremony if someone wants to do that, and there’s a talking piece which can be handed
around and whoever holds the talking piece then speaks?

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes.

WOLF:
So what are some, what are the typical issues or offenses that are brought to a peacemaking circle?

FRANCIS-JACK:
Peacemaking was originally formed to handle juvenile cases but we don’t have an active juvenile code. But the
peacemaker was still created so don’t ask me why.

WOLF: But you do work with juveniles, so
where do they come from? Or do you not work with juveniles?

FRANCIS-JACK: No, we work with young
adults. Our very first case was a juvenile just turning 18, so you could call it a cusp. When he committed the offense
he was a juvenile, but when he finally made it to court he was 18 years old. He had four offenses against him that
involved a person that found themselves with three other people, where they entered a house and eventually shot off
a gun, which has three or four adults and also some minors in the home.

WOLF: I know you’ve
also spoken about dealing with serious assaults.

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes. Majority of our cases now
are domestic violence and the last two that we had, they referred both the man and the woman because it takes two
to heal over this very serious offense. It goes against how we want to look at a person holistically, we want to
heal them inside out, but it needs to be both the man and the woman, because the offense was against one another.

WOLF: Is there a protocol for how long a session lasts or how many sessions you have, or is that something
fluid that is decided upon case by case?

FRANCIS-JACK: It takes its own life. It depends on where
the person is at in their personal life. Some of them are really into alcohol and you know, the dysfunction in the
home. Others have already been working on themselves and have only seen us four times and they’re on with their
life. Others have—I know one client who has been with us going on 10 months now. His attorney wrote me a letter saying
that he had known this boy, turned into a man, for over two decades, representing him in a court. He said I’d
like to really thank you for what it is that you and the elders do because I haven’t seen or heard from him
since he joined peacemaking.

WOLF: So he’s been staying out of trouble, in other words.

FRANCIS-JACK: He’s been staying out of trouble.

WOLF: So, it’s a very intimate
process, isn’t it? People—I mean what I’ve learned today is, you know, among the things that peacemakers
do, they’ll relate their own stories about their own, perhaps, troubled past or conflicts in the past, to offer
instruction or to offer some kind of model to the client, or example.

FRANCIS-JACK: I guess to
mirror. We mirror back what we’ve gone through, and a lot of them realize that they’re not in this on their
own. There’s somebody that cares for you. There’s somebody that prays for you. There’s somebody that’s
there for you. There’s somebody there that can listen. There’s somebody there that will pick you up once
you fall. If you fall down, and if you do your drugs or do your alcohol, pick yourself back up because we’ve
all been there. We’ve all—well a majority of us, some of us have never—I’m, you know, but it’s each
and every elder that has, like Matthew was saying, it’s each and every elder that offers their little piece
of information that makes it so much more full, that you know, that little pieces altogether make a much more impact
on the client. And we’re not there to preach, we’re not there to condemn, we’re not there to judge—which
is their biggest fear. I consider each one of them a success when they walk through that door, because they’ve
overcome all their fears and all their self-judgment, all their put-downs in their head, and all their old tapes.
And they say, I’m gonna try it anyway.

(SINGING)

WOLF: That’s the
voice of Ray Diel who is a peacemaker with the Navajo nation, who was with us on the Colville reservation. Towards
the end of our conversation, I asked Anna about the first peacemaking case, the one she’d mentioned earlier
about the 18-year-old charged for being with a group that had discharged a gun in a home. She said he dropped out
of peacemaking, but then returned awhile later, ready to serve both the jail sentence imposed by the court, and participate
again with this group of elders in peacemaking.

FRANCIS-JACK: And he tells me, I want to go back
to your peacemaking. I told him, well, you can’t ask me. He said why not? I said because it’s the elders
you have to ask forgiveness from. I said because they were there for you then. But I didn’t tell him I had already
asked them, and that’s what they told me to ask him. (Laughs)

WOLF: That’s good, right.
And so is he in now? Is he back?

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes, he’s in now and he’s about ready
to graduate. He’s taking care of everything now and he’s getting married. His significant other is coming
to his sessions and she was even sitting in my office Tuesday. It seems like she said he was in jail doing his time.

WOLF: Doing time that he owed previously?

FRANCIS-JACK: Yeah. So he’s taking care
of his business and clearing his path, which is what we asked him to do. You need to clear your path. If you’re
going to be starting on a road with this significant other and getting married, it needs to be clear. And he’s
also the one that asked one of the elders to sweat with him, because he wanted to have that as part of his healing.

WOLF: And to sweat is another, is a religious—

FRANCIS-JACK: To go into the sweat house
and pray, and ceremony, and ritual and do all the things that are significant. And they did, they did it. And I think
his, he’s gonna be a future peacemaker because Matthew’s always telling everybody, you know when you come
into peacemaking, after you graduate here you’re a peacemaker.

WOLF: So you don’t have
to be an elder, per se, you have to be an older longstanding member?

FRANCIS-JACK: No.

WOLF: You can be a young person, that makes you an elder as well?

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes,
it does.

WOLF: Or that makes you a peacemaker, I mean. I think I would have to conclude with that
happy note, that I’ve been speaking with Anna Francis-Jack, who is the coordinator of the peacemaking program
at the Confederate Tribes of Colville. So I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation.
To find out more about peacemaking and the Center for Court Innovation please visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org,
and you can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. So thanks very much, and thanks for listening.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

During a visit by the Tribal Justice Exchange to the Confederated
Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington State, Robert V. Wolf talks with two elders–Matthew Dick
Jr. and Darlene Wilder–and a client about peacemaking, a traditional Native American approach to resolving both
criminal and civil issues. May 2012

ROB WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. In this
New Thinking podcast, the focus is on peacemaking, the traditional Native American approach to resolving both criminal
and civil issues. Peacemaking focuses on repairing harm. In a peacemaking session, an offender might meet with a
group of elders who will talk about how the offender can make restitution and get his or her life back on track.
The Center for Court Innovation’s tribal justice exchange is in the process of exploring the creation of a pilot
peacemaking project in state court. I was lucky enough to join two of my colleagues on a visit to the Confederated
Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington State, where we had a chance to see a peacemaking session firsthand.
After that session, I recorded the following interview with two elders and a client about their personal take on
the peacemaking process.

ROB WOLF: With me are Matthew Dick, Jr., and elder and peacemaker, and
Darlene Wilder, also an elder and a peacemaker, and then Brad, who is a 29-year-old client who has participated in
peacemaking. So I’ll direct this to the elders here. If someone says to you, gosh what is peacemaking? How do
you explain it to someone? Matthew?

MATTHEW DICK, JR: From my perspective, peacemaking has been
in our culture forever. It’s just that we haven’t practiced it for a long time and peacemaking is the ability
to live together with a lot of people, like our tribes did a long time ago in harmony.

ROB WOLF:
Darlene? Take it from there.

DARLENE WILDER: I never really thought about it so much of what it
is, but how it’s done. And I think aboriginally or traditionally we did it in our family units, and predominantly
with what was called a talking circle, where you gather like we did earlier today and you just went around and spoke
about whatever it is that you needed to discuss or resolve, or question that had more than one point of view that
needed to be heard. And I was just recollecting, we kind of celebrated a birthday, but I went around and each one
of them, I had all of those around that circle talk about something in their lifetime, an experience that they had,
that they would like somebody else to have because they learned something from it, or an experience that they would
caution no one to have because they learned something from it. So that way even the smallest child who could speak
is able to relate to that. Some of it might just be a scary dream, they’d wake up and think there’s something
under the bed or whatever, and they’d go look under the bed and there really isn’t anything there. So that’s
how I think a long time ago our family probably did this peacemaking. We would talk about what our experience was
and how we could benefit others by that experience. To me, that’s what peacemaking is, where we can share whatever
it is we’ve had in our life, with someone who is seeking more information that they don’t have or never
had the opportunity for that.

ROB WOLF: And so in the context of peacemaking here in Colville
now, you’re using those same principles you’ve just described in situations involving offending, and I
wonder how that goes. I’ll ask Brad in a minute about his experience, but I don’t know if Matthew wanted
to say anything about taking what Darlene described and putting it into this setting where you’re working with
someone who maybe has committed a serious crime, or some sort of crime.

MATTHEW DICK, JR: And
what the traditions that Darlene was talking about is some of the rights of passage of our people a long time ago,
their transition from being a child to a teenager and to an adult, and that’s one of the things, some of the
things that at least the peacemaker circle that I’ve been involved in, is that we try to bring those kinds of
traditions back up and talk about them, and explain why they were so important. And it’s so amazing the reception
that we get from the people that have been involved with us, because when I was 29 years old, I would have never
thought to sit down with my elders and try to learn something. I was one of those kids that knew it all and I was
bullet proof. Once you begin to learn about those traditions that have made the Native Americans such a strong people,
that have lasted through all these traumatic events that I was talking about in there, how they stood us in good
stead to bring us through all that.  We’re trying to revive those traditions, those teachings, the
way of life, the culture back up to so at least our young people are going to be recipients of what we remember.

ROB WOLF: Brad, I wonder if you could explain how you came into contact with peacemaking circle, and why
you decided to participate?

BRAD: The first time I heard about peacemaker circle I was actually
in corrections, didn’t know nothing about it and this was just last November. They asked me if I wanted to do
it and I said, yeah. And then so they released me from custody and told me I had to be at the center and I was gonna
meet with these elders. I didn’t know anything about it or anything, but those first couple sessions they really
touched me, and my whole outlook on peacemaker circle, you know it changed and just having them elders and stuff
tell you.

ROB WOLF: What do you remember? Like, what touched you?

BRAD: Mostly
it was their stories relating to my problems, but normally that, the problems I did say I had, they was guiding me
through it and helping me out, and trying to figure out how to fix it and stuff, and it’s just that guidance.
That’s what being an elder is, is you’re in that position to pass on the wisdom and the teachings, and
what you learned, and pass that on to the little ones, so they have it so they can pass it on. That’s what I’ve
been taught.

ROB WOLF: Are they giving you things that you hadn’t found previously in your
life, and teaching you things you hadn’t known much about?

BRAD: Yes. Most of the old people
where I’m from, I don’t see. I know they’re old, but I don’t see them as elders. A lot of them
are still drinking and not passing on what they’ve been taught. So it kind of sounds mean, but my understanding
is that it’s just an old person. I mean there’s that respect there, still, but you know, they’re not
deemed my elder. I mean do you guys feel that way?

DARLENE WILDER: When I was finishing high school
and going on to after high school, and after about four years my dad figured out that I was getting an education
to be a teacher, and I don’t think he really wanted me to be a teacher. I don’t know what he wanted me
to do. I think he wanted me to be a secretary in the legal system because I had a good memory. And at that point,
you know he probably gave me his best words of wisdom, personally, and he goes you can’t teach what you don’t
got. And I thought, wow, isn’t that the truth. I mean, I’m gonna be a teacher? What do I have that I can teach?
And then it really, you know, put the weight there and made me think, when I do I really have got to know what it
is I’m going to be doing. So he said the right things for me, as far as putting me in my spot, my place. But
he was good about that, I mean he – and I guess I would have considered him an elder because I still think back on
a lot of things he shared with me.

ROB WOLF: So it sounds like the same applies to an elder—that
you can’t pass on what you don’t have, snd so that an elder is someone who has some life experience to
pass on. I mean, does that sound accurate?

DARLENE WILDER: And willing to do it. Not just, like
you said, they may have that knowledge, but maybe they don’t have the setting or the circumstances to do that,
and the peacemaking is allowing that to happen here.

MATTHEW DICK, JR: And it’s changed so
much since our parents were young ones growing up, because the people back then didn’t consider themselves elders,
but they would sit around and talk and they would do things, and you were expected to sit there and listen to them
talk, and observe what they were doing. That’s how you learned back then. And they never did consider themselves
teachers back then either, but they conveyed a lot of wisdom to the people as they were growing up. And I know my
mother tried to do that with me, but like I said I knew everything so I didn’t listen too much. The people nowadays,
even though they’re older, they—most of them don’t think they really have anything to offer, and if they
sat down with the elders here—and we need elders, we need them to start participating—if they sat down and just start
talking about those things that they remembered, that’s the teaching on its own. That’s the kind of teaching
that our people used to do a long time ago. And we are really in desperate need of male elders because we have 100
ladies that come to these things, and we’ve got four or five men that come to them.

ROB WOLF:
So maybe, tell me a little bit about how Brad—what you’ve seen in him, the progress he’s made because you
know, I’d heard you talking about it before. I wonder if you want to share some of that.

DARLENE
WILDER: When he came to the peacemaking circle, it wasn’t like I’ll fill in my application, turn it in,
and I’ll be in the peacemaking circle. He had to come to one of our monthly meetings when there was, what, 30,
40 of us elders there, and then they had to present. He wasn’t the only one there. There were others that came,
that had to present why they were seeking peacemaking circle. And at that point I saw Brad scared and nervous, and
when he was a little kid he might have been scared and nervous, but he never acted it the way I saw him acting at
that point, because it was more defensive and defiant, and there was no defensiveness and no defiance, and it was
just, I am a pitiful person and I need help. And that’s a lot of how we begin our prayers, is to the creator
that I’m just a pitiful person and I need your help. And that’s what I saw in Brad at that first peacemaking
circle. And since then he’s finally wearing that he has to pity himself because if you don’t pity yourself
you’re not gonna admit your faults and weaknesses. And we all have faults and weaknesses and we’ve got
to go fess up to them, and accept them, and go on. If we can’t accept them then it’s hard to go on.

ROB WOLF: I want to thank you all for sharing with me and people who are listening, your experience as peacemakers
and your experience in the peacemaking circle. I’ve been speaking with Brad, who’s been a participant in
a peacemaking circle, a client, and Darlene Wilder, and Matthew Dick, Jr., both of whom are peacemakers and elders
on the Colville Reservation. I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. For
more information about the Center you can visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org. Thanks for listening.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

Mark Halsey of Flinders University Law School discusses key findings of an evaluation of Australia’s first community court.

ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation and
I’m in Washington D.C. at Community Justice 2012.  I’m speaking with Mark Halsey.  He’s
a professor of criminal justice at the Flinders Law School in Adelaide, Australia, and he was also one of the joint
leaders of the team that evaluated the Melbourne Neighbourhood Justice Centre.  Mark, first off let me just
thank you for taking the time to speak with me

MARK HALSEY:  Pleasure.  Thanks
for it.

WOLF:  What I wanted to do is ask you a little bit about the evaluation. So I
thought maybe you could just start off by describing what the three most important findings were, and maybe you want
to give just a little background about the evaluation, when it was conducted, and how it was conducted.

HALSEY:  Okay, so the evaluation virtually started when the center first opened, and it first took
clients in around February 2007.  And the evaluation – we collected data for just over two-and-a-half years,
and handed out the final report at the end of 2009, and the court was set up to serve a population of around 80,000
people in a locality called the city of Yara.  Quite a mix of people who come under the banner of the lowest
socioeconomic index, indeed in the country, one report found, with some very wealthy pockets in the population as
well, of the catchment area. 

In terms of your question around what were the three most
significant findings, the first one is that, I mean in terms of just out and out kind of findings, [we asked] “Was
this thing a success?  One of the things that we were charged with measuring was the degree of community
participation. There has to be a big focus on the Community Justice Center, the neighborhood justice center, and
we found kind of high levels of community participation and satisfaction, and it was evidenced by people reporting
that not only had the NJC given them the opportunity to be heard about justice and local community issues in their
area, but they also saw—around 50 percent of everybody surveyed reported that their decisions have been reflected
in things the Community Justice Center or neighborhood justice center had done. 

Another
big finding is that over time, everybody asks the recidivism question.  Now the court didn’t just handle
criminal matters. It sat as a children’s court, it sat as a VCAT, or Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal,
you know, like residential tenancy matters and so forth. It heard a wide range of matters. The majority of the matters
were criminal matters, however. We looked at a sample of NJC clients and they were following up for about, I think
it was about 16 to 18 months, against the control group from other courts with similar backgrounds, kind of offense
histories, times in and out of court and so forth.  And what it shows is the survival times of NJC clients
was slightly better than the control group. It may have came down to something like 7 to 10 percent lower recidivism
rate. I think one of the other clear results was the compliance rate on community-based orders and doing community
service that proved to be a better compliance rate than the state average.

WOLF:  Let
me ask you about something you brought up in your presentation that I thought we could discuss briefly and that was
what happens in the court room, in terms of who speaks.  And you made a point that you found that beyond
the attorneys, the prosecutor and defense, other people including the defendant were much more likely to have an
opportunity to speak and be heard in the courtroom than in a conventional setting.  And I wonder if you
could just say a little more about that.

HALSEY:  Sure.  We did look at, we
ran a series of court observations at the neighborhood justice center court and two comparative sites as well, two
kind of regular, traditional magistrate courts, and we were very interested in, to what extent do people in the court,
engaged in the process of the matter or the case, speak.  What was interesting was that defendants themselves
were not only far more likely to be called on to speak, to be asked to speak by the magistrate, but they themselves
would ask to speak, in a non-prompted way to the magistrate far more often than in other courts, which to us I guess
indicated a degree of trust or, you know, a sense that what they wanted to say would be taken seriously, and they
felt they could actually put their own views on the agenda, if you like. 

One of the
other important things about the NJC court, as opposed to other courts, is the presence of other support people there. 
So if you’re dealing with a clinician or a counselor or whatever, for mental health, alcohol and drugs, financial
counselor, if they needed to be in court to either support or clarify things immediately for the magistrate, they
were far more likely to be there and understand something about that person’s situation – their history, where
they need to go, and where they’re at in their kind of recovery process – if I can put it like that – and to
inform the magistrate of that. Which made for a much more holistic hearing, if you like. 

WOLF: 
There was one other thing you mentioned, that it was absolutely fundamental—I think those are the words you used—to
think about the way the magistrate is chosen, or in our case usually the judge in the United States. I thought maybe
you could just explain a little bit more about that, but it also raises for me the question, does it become personality-driven,
and if the personality of the judge is so crucial, does that make it harder to, say, replicate in different settings?

HALSEY:  Look, it does make it slightly more challenging because people are unique, but I think,
you know, they did exceptionally well in appointing the magistrate that they did, and I think one of the best things
that they can do is to try to really try to map – what are the great strengths of that particular magistrate? 
Why does he work in that scenario and so when they go to fill that position again, that at least some of those features
can be present. And I think, you know, it’s been said here at the conference as well that, you know, you need
someone that is willing to move away, if you like, from kind of the moral condemnation script that kind of inhabits
a lot of court kind of operations, and that is willing to canvas some other kind of way of operating, like the therapeutic
justice, like procedural justice, to actually kind of, in a sense, be willing to work with individuals and work to
understand the things that underpin their offending, if indeed they’re before you as a criminal defendant. No
one’s irreplaceable. It’s just a matter of going about the business of selecting someone very carefully
and not thinking you can just slot someone in and they’ll be overwhelmed by the climate and they’ll just
automatically changed.  There has to be some kind of integration process.

WOLF: 
So let me ask you one more question, Mark. What would you say are the three most critical factors to a community
court’s success?

HALSEY:  Okay, so the things that we know, I think ultimately in
the final report, were a single magistrate. So the magistrate gets to know, basically, everybody that comes before
them and they can set up some kind of tangible relationship with them, and the monthly—or however often the court
reviews for specific people—is really important.  The second things is that it is really important to have
a neighborhood justice officer, or a person that can act as the go between or liase between the magistrate and the
people who are trying to help clients in a more direct sense, you know, the clinical team and the other members of
the larger support team, like financial counseling, homelessness, whatever.  There needs to be that person
so that you can maintain the independence of the magistrate in court, and that they’re not seen to be interfering
in those other clinician’s roles

WOLF:  Would that parallel the role of the resource
coordinator that we have in community courts?

HALSEY:  I don’t know the answer. 
It may well, but if it is someone that basically is in court the majority of time, and knows what the magistrate
is doing, and knows what other aspects of the center are doing for particular clients who are in the court, then
that would be right.

WOLF:  Yeah, that sounds pretty parallel.

HALSEY: 
So that’s the second thing. The other thing is that it has to be, or from our point of view, there is huge weight
to be attached to the on-site nature of services so that clients don’t get shunted or lost between and order
from a court and trying to either find a service some distance away, or hope that they turn up to that, or hope that
they go to their community corrections office somewhere else.

WOLF:  Well great, thanks
so much, Mark,

HALSEY:  It’s a pleasure, Rob.  I’m really happy to
be here.

WOLF:  I’ve been speaking with Mark Halsey, who is a professor of Criminal
Justice at the Flinders Law School in Adelaide, Australia.  We’ve been talking about what he learned
as one of the joint leaders of the team who evaluated the Melbourne Justice Center.

HALSEY: 
Thanks Rob.  Can I just also acknowledge the other members of the team and  that’s Professor
David Bamford from Flinders University, Dr. Stuart Ross from University of Melbourne, and we also had assistance
from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, who did a cost-benefit analysis for us. And the Social Research Center of North Melbourne,
and the Brotherhood of St. Lawrence based in Collinwood in Melbourne.

ROB WOLF:  I am
Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation.  If you want to hear more of our
podcasts you can visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org.

(March 2012)

Associate Professor
Mark Halsey, left, answers a question as part of a panel on community
court research at Community Justice
2012.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

A new building in Milliken, Colorado, houses a community court, police station and social services in an effort
to foster collaboration among agencies and be more user-friendly for both the public and staff. Jim Burack, town
administrator and chief of police, discusses the logic behind the building’s design.

The
following is a transcript of the conversation.

ROBERT
V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation, and
I’m at Community Justice 2012 in Washington, D.C., and I’m speaking to various people who are in attendance
and presenting.

And right now I’m going to take a little time to talk to Jim Burack, who
is the town administrator and also the chief of police in Milliken, Colorado. And I was going to talk to him about
the development of a community court in Milliken, but I thought, Jim, I would start first with a little bit about
your personal journey, because I know that you used to be the counsel and director of operations at the Police Executive
Research Forum, which is kind of a think tank that explores issues around police, police policy, and I wonder how
you went from that role here in Washington, with a national perspective, to this more local perspective in Colorado.

JIM BURACK: You know, I spent, as you said, I spent six years at
PERF here in Washington, D.C., and I had the opportunity to meet and to hear and spend time with a lot of the leading
police researchers, leading police practitioners. So it was really an incomparable opportunity, and I was really
fortunate to have that chance to see up close, to be able to visit some of these communities that have done great
anti-crime initiatives and to be part of them as either a member of a consulting team, or a member of the research
team.

But there gets to be a point where you’re still an outsider that you want to actually be
engaged with making something happen in the field. And so after a number of years at PERF it was clear to me that
I wanted to get back into the field. I had been a police officer when I first got out of college. I was a patrol
officer on the street outside of Denver and that’s where I wanted to be. And that’s actually been the plan
since college—to be a police chief.

WOLF: Well tell me, then, how
you began to think about creating a community court in Milliken and what led you to that idea and what the process
has been like to actually bring it to fruition.

BURACK: I think
I have to go back years. I mean probably PERF was the formative, the formative period, but I spent a lot of time
working on problem-oriented policing, and I had a chance to spend time with Herman Goldstein and Ron Clarke and practitioners,
Chuck Wexler, who was my boss, and a number of folks who, if you’re in the world of policing, mean a great deal.
So I worked a lot on problem-oriented policing, community policing. One of your colleagues from CCI, Julius Lang,
came in and spoke at a problem-oriented policing conference. So it was clear to me at that point, listening to Julius,
that community courts was the twin of problem-oriented policing, and that there were these synergies that can happen
between policing and courts.

After a couple of years I had an opportunity to build a new police
station. We’re a very fast growing community in northern Colorado, and my county was one of the fastest growing
counties in the country in the early 2000s. We went to the voters for a bond. The voters approved it, and I think
early on I recognized I wanted to build a building which tried to incorporate all of these strands of police innovation:
community policing, problem-oriented policing, CPTED or crime prevention through environmental design. And my impulse
was “We need to build a courthouse into it.” We talked through it. We were going to build a courthouse into it and
figure out how we can make, at the municipal level, the very lowest levels of the criminal justice system, how we
can get the police and courts to cooperate better. And that was the genesis of it.

WOLF:
So it sounds like you’re making a connection between the architecture of the space and the actual practical
relationship the court system and the police have, or you hope that they will have.

BURACK:
I think that’s exactly correct. You put it better than I. I think that design has an impact. It sends a message
both to the defendants and folks who are participating in the in the justice system at the local level, and it sends
a clear message, I think, to the officers and participants that we believe in problem-solving and prevention.

The
beauty of it is that you can design this, what’s effectively a neighborhood-based police and court, for this
clearly defined geographic area and deliver service on a personal retail basis, where there’s a high level of
accountability, a high level of knowledge by officers about the community and about the customers and the families
and the businesses we serve.

So the question that I think our Milliken model leads to is whether
or not there’s some basis of suggesting that you could design or replicate neighborhood-based, decentralized
community police stations twinned with a community court along, probably, with some sort of human service resource
center, which is what we’ve added in our lobby of our police station. I think it’s a theory worth trying.

WOLF: Well tell me a little bit about the architecture, then. Paint
a picture then. What’s it like?

BURACK: Well, I think if you’re
a visitor, the first thing that strikes you when you walk into our building, first of all, it’s right downtown.
The building overlooks our future town square. But when you walk in, you walk into a lobby with a children’s
library, with children’s toys, with a fireplace, with rocking chairs.

You even walk in and
next to the service counter for the police department, there are two chairs at the counter. And what it does, I think
it changes the dynamic of that interaction between the visitor to the police station and our personnel behind the
counter. Because it instantly suggests to a visitor, “Please sit down. Let’s actually talk.” I mean, you’re
not there to get a burger. You’re there to sit down and talk out a problem. And I think it ties to this procedure
of justice. It’s not only how you’re treated, it’s those silent signals that the customer of justice
services receives, that “I’m gonna be treated with dignity and respect, and be listened to, because my environment
tells me that that’s what’s going to happen in this place.”

We put a lot of glass on
the outside of the courthouse. You want the court participants, you want the judge, you want the victim’s family
and the defendant’s family to understand that there’s a community beyond that glass, outside, that’s
being affected by that behavior that we’re talking about in court. And we wanted to reflect a sense that we
might to restorative justice in the courtroom, so we have a circular design in the center of the room so that if
we do conferencing or, you know, healing circles, that there’s some way that we reflect that tradition that
we hope, at some point, to start.

WOLF: So tell me about introducing
this idea of a community court and even some of the community policing ideas that you’ve brought to Milliken.
Have you found any kind of culture clash or any challenges or obstacles?

BURACK:
I’ll make one observation, which may be counterintuitive, but it reinforces itself from time to time. And that
is when you explain these concepts to the layperson, they intuitively understand it. They intuitively say it’s
a good idea, and it makes sense to them. Curiously, when you explain concepts like this to folks who are the experts,
the professionals, the folks who spent a lifetime in a silo, have a more difficult time—some of them—sort of bridging
the silos because they’re invested in a certain way of doing business. And community courts are a great example
of trying to pull people out of those silos and out of those sorts of cultural norms of the profession we’ve
grown up with.

WOLF: Great, well it’s been a pleasure talking
with you Jim. I’ve been speaking with Jim Burack who’s the town administrator and also the chief of police
of Milliken, Colorado. I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. To listen
to more podcasts, visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org. Thanks for listening.

Jim Burack, third from right, says the new combined courthouse/police station
fosters inter-agency
collaboration. With Burack are, from left, Benito Garcia, Commander, Police Dept.,
Bruce Fickel,
Community Prosecutor, Jessica Jones, Community Court Case & Resource Manager, Maria
Zuniga,
Community Services Assistant, Police Dept., John Easley, Community Court Judge, Beatriz Rangel,
Community
Court Clerk, and Mick Peters, School Resource Officer.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

Burke Fitzpatrick administers the Office
of Justice Programs in South Carolina’s Department of Public Safety, which distributes federal justice
dollars to programs in the state. In this interview, he explains why he thinks problem-solving courts have been a
good investment and what he looks for in a funding application.

The
following is a transcript of the interview.

ROBERT V.
WOLF: For anyone trying to start a new program, funding is crucial. The big question is, how do you
attract dollars to your initiative? I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation,
and I turned to Burke Fitzpatrick for an answer to that question.

Mr. Fitzpatrick is the Administrator
for the Office of Justice Programs in the South Carolina Department of Public Safety, and his team oversees the distribution
of federal justice dollars in his state. Mr. Fitzpatrick participated in a panel on funding at Community Justice
2012: the International Conference of Community Courts. I caught up with him afterward to talk about why he thinks
South Carolina’s problem-solving courts have been a good investment and to get a sense of what he looks for
in a funding application.

Thank you very much, Burke, for taking the time to talk to me.

BURKE FITZPATRICK: Pleasure to be here.

WOLF:
Why are you interested in community courts, given your capacity as overseer of federal justice dollars distributed
in South Carolina?

FITZPATRICK: Let me first give you a little
context. My office does distribute and manage much of the federal law enforcement funds that come from the Department
of Justice, as well as victim of crimes money and juvenile justice grant funds, and we’ve been doing that for
a very long time.

And in South Carolina we don’t have a very distinguished record as far
as our rankings in violent crime and property crime in general. In the last decade, we’ve been ranked number
one per capita in violent crime in the country. And we’re not in that ranking right now, we’ve slipped
to number two, thankfully, and maybe we’re down to five; we’re heading in the right direction. But for all those
years and before, my office put a lot of money into law enforcement to fight violent crime, with a number of initiatives,
multijurisdictional narcotics task forces, all kinds of things. But what we didn’t address—and I think this
was an oversight, which we are now trying to correct—what we didn’t address is the piece on the courts. Because
you can arrest a lot of people, either for minor crimes or major crimes—and major crimes are probably going to do
prison time, but the minor crimes, which affect the quality of life and lead, I think, to violent crime numbers in
the state—actually if you ignore those folks then you’re not solving the problem.

So we
now think that putting some resources into the specialized court, such as community courts, such as domestic violence
courts, such as mental health courts and other types of specialized courts is a wise investment because we’re
going to break that revolving door that—we’re going to break that chain where the offenders who start out as
low-level offenders—although it’s very, very serious, the people they impact—these low-level offenders, we can reintegrate
them into the community, get them sober, and stable, and employed, and have sufficient supervision, perhaps, for
a period of time where they’re a contributing member of the community and not, maybe, someone who’s going
to graduate to a more and more serious crime.

So in a nutshell, we’ve been putting a lot
of money into the law enforcement side and neglecting, to a great extent, the community corrections or community
court side. And now I think it’s time to balance that out. And interestingly, it comes at a time when federal
grant funds are diminishing, so it’s going to be even more difficult to do that. I think law enforcement in
our state and many states have sort of been used to taking advantage, rightfully so, of the justice system’s grants
and the Byrne Funds, and other funds. What they need to see—and I think many, many of our law enforcement officers
do—but they don’t want to be locking up the same people again and again either. And they don’t want their
communities to suffer the same problems over and over again that these courts might be able to solve. So we’ve
got good track records with some of our domestic violence courts. We’ve got a good track record for our mental
health courts— don’t have enough of them, they don’t impact enough people, and they’re not a perfect solution,
but they’re headed in the right direction.

WOLF: So you have
had experience with these kinds of problem-solving courts, and you’re saying that your experience has been positive?

FITZPATRICK: They have been positive. We have funded, out of my
office, domestic violence courts and mental health courts. They’ve all been successful, they’ve got very,
very talented people, judiciary and staff support, and all kinds of community resources behind them, but I question
whether we’re going to ever get to a point where we can have enough of them to make sort of a tidal change in
the kind of the crime rates we’re talking about. But certainly it’s the right thing to do for the judiciary
and it’s the right thing to do for the criminal justice system.

WOLF:
What factors are you weighing? What are you looking for in an applicant who is coming to you and saying, “You know,
we have a great idea. We want to start this kind of court or this kind of program”?

FITZPATRICK:
It’s an interesting question because for a grant administrator, it’s always a question as to where you
put your resources, and in my office we’ve taken the philosophy that we will reach out to everybody, make them
aware of these possibilities, and make them aware of the grant solicitation resources out there. But we’re not
wise enough to get on the community level and decide if that’s a good place or the next county’s a good
place, or the next city’s a good place. So we let them come to us. We let those proposals come to our office
because they’ve already shown the initiative and the interest, and they’ve talked amongst themselves and
got buy-in, probably, from law enforcement and courts and probation, parole and pardon services, and the alcohol
and drug abuse folks on the local level before they send us the grant application. Then we’ll look at it and
maybe give it some guidance on budget and structure and evaluation, and make sure they have measurable objectives
and good performance indicators. And then it’s our job to take that application and put it against all the others,
because we get millions of more dollars worth of requests than we can fulfill, and say that’s the project we
need to fund at the expense of others that aren’t gonna get funded.

We’ve been successful
in that because I think the council and board that we report to see the big picture the same way we do, in that if
we just concentrate on that one part of the criminal justice system, we’re just not going to be successful.

WOLF: And have you found that there is some resistance in some
parts within, perhaps, law enforcement or the judiciary to some of these alternative approaches, or are people welcoming
these ideas with open arms at this point?

FITZPATRICK: Let me speak
candidly here. When drug courts first were initiated around the country and I think also in South Carolina, the title
“drug court,” to the general public, meant that you had a special court set up to crack down on drug offenders. And
that was okay because that’s really not what the court was supposed to be about; it was supposed to break that
link of continued criminality and continued recidivism. So we didn’t get too much criticism from the public
because they thought this was a tougher, tougher measure, and I think that as people began to understand what the
drug court was about and saw its successes, they said “hey, this isn’t a bad idea. This is a good idea.”

Mental health courts, I think the community adopted that idea right away. I think the private sector, the communities,
the retailers, they knew that these panhandlers and folks were making, you know, are minor thieves, and people who
were scrawling graffiti or peeing and urinating all over the front of their businesses, they know they’re crazy.
I mean, that’s not a politically correct word, but yeah, they are, and they need special help. And they immediately
endorsed mental health courts, I think.

Domestic violence courts, that’s a very specialized
crime, and we need to work with those offenders so it doesn’t escalate, and people seemed to adopt that pretty
well, as well.

WOLF: And so given, as you referred to, the reduction
in federal dollars, where does that leave states and communities in terms of strategies or the options open to them?

FITZPATRICK: Well there’s ways to initiate community courts
with very little initial funding input. Traditionally it’s been done through grants because most communities
and municipalities just don’t have unprogrammed dollars just sitting around on the shelf saying, “Gosh, what
a great idea. Let’s start a court.”

So they come to maybe a state administrative agency
like mine and say, “I’d like a grant if you have grant money, but after two or three years, or four years, we’ll
stand on our own two feet.” And that’s the model we use in South Carolina.

The first year
is getting it all together and getting organized and getting that client/defendant population in place. The second
year is really hitting your stride and working out all the kinks and getting some good data. And the third year,
the third year is critical because you’re going back to your county council, back to your city council, or whomever
you can find, and saying, “Listen, these grant funds are going to be withdrawn. We have demonstrated success. Here
are our numbers.” And if that community really understands what that community court is about, if they’ve been
in the court and actually seen it and realize “Okay, there’s real people here acting compassionately and fairly,
but firmly,” that community’s going to say, “We understand that the community is safer, saving valuable tax
dollars, we’ve got to continue it.”

WOLF: Great, well, you
know, I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.

FITZPATRICK:
Well thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be invited to the conference. Great job.

WOLF: Thank you. I’ve been speaking with Burke Fitzpatrick, who’s the administrator of the
Office of Justice Programs of the South Carolina Department of Public Safety. I am Rob Wolf, Director of Communications
at the Center for Court Innovation. To hear more podcasts, you can visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

Crown Counsel Adam Dalrymple explains how the Downtown Vancouver Community Court uses community service assignments to match
offenders with organizations that address their social service needs.

The
following is a transcript of the interview.

ROBERT
V. WOLF: Is it possible to punish an offender and help them at the same time? The Downtown Vancouver
Community Court assigns offenders to restitution projects and the very social services that can help them.

I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation. And in the following
interview, I talk to Crown Prosecutor Adam Dalrymple about the Downtown Vancouver Community Court’s approach
to combining community service and social services.

WOLF: Hi Adam.

ADAM DALRYMPLE: Hello.

WOLF:
I wanted to ask you about a presentation you participated in today at Community Justice 2012, which really focused
on community service. I think Vancouver’s Downtown Community Court has been able to achieve something that a
lot of community courts strive to achieve, which is a kind of community service that not only seeks to improve the
community but does something for the defendant as well. And I wonder if you could sort of explain to me how your
community service works and how you meet the needs, both of the defendant and the community through your community
service assignments.

DALRYMPLE: Well the first step was identifying
the needs in the community. The Downtown East Side of Vancouver is an area marred by drug addiction, mental health
issues, homelessness, and poverty. We also knew that were there a number of social services in the community, and
the key was trying to connect or link the offenders to those social services.

What we did was,
throughout our community service program at community court, we attempted to organize these programs and have our
offenders go to these programs based on their social needs. And how we went about doing that was through a motivational
interview with a probation officer. So once an accused or an offender was deemed suitable for community work service,
they would go upstairs and have a meeting with a probation officer. The probation officer would employ the motivational
interview, which is designed to elicit information; it’s reflective listening and engagement from the offender–asking
the offender, you know, “What do you think the problem is?” or “Do you have housing? Do you have employment?” Those
sorts of things.

And then based on the answer, that probation officer would match that need
with a placement in the community at one of the various outreach organizations. For example, with women who may have
come in committing a theft under $5,000 or a shoplifting, they may have been victims of domestic violence in their
past. So the idea was, why don’t we place them with the women’s shelter in the Downtown East Side? It’s
a safe environment for them to go to, to give back to their community, learn about the various resources at the shelter,
such as obviously shelter, housing, food; they have outreach workers there.

WOLF:
So they’re actually doing work for the shelter as they learn about what the shelter provides?

DALRYMPLE: So they are, they are sorting clothing, they’re doing administrative
tasks, they’re cleaning, they’re serving food. So they’re working at the shelter, and at the same
time, they’re learning about the services that may assist them in the future. And so in a way we are sort of
killing two birds with one stone. And at the same time, we’re connecting the social services to the court and
the offenders of the court to the social services. We’re really rebuilding a community that was fractured.

WOLF: And are there other examples? So a defendant who has a history of domestic
violence, that sounds like a natural fit. Have her work in a shelter.

ADAM DALRYMPLE:
Well for example, we have individuals who don’t have stable housing who are new to Vancouver. There’s a
large population in Vancouver that are from other provinces and other countries that are on the Downtown East Side
using drugs, things of that nature. They don’t have stable housing. So we would refer them to a shelter where
they’ll complete their community work service. They may serve food there, they may engage in janitorial duties,
administrative tasks. The idea is to open their minds to all of the resources that are really at their fingertips
that they may not have been aware of before.

We had one really good example of an individual
from Edmonton, Alberta, who recently moved to Vancouver—didn’t have a lot of connections, didn’t have a
home, did his community work service for a minor offense at a shelter and now he’s thriving. He feels like he’s
part of the community. He actually returns to that shelter and plays ping pong and chess, and things of that nature.
And now he feels like he’s a part of that community. And we haven’t seen any recidivism with respect to
him.

WOLF: Was it a hard sell to the community at large? I’m
just speculating that in some instances, someone may feel that it’s too good for the defendants, it’s not
hard enough. I just wonder if there’s any push back.

DALRYMPLE:
We haven’t experienced any push back. In fact, most of community is quite practical about community work service
and educating them as well with respect to the principles of restorative justice. The idea that if you can restore
the offender as part of the community, that can pay itself forward many times over. This is someone who, if they
are linked up to shelters, to housing, to food, they may not need to steal from the local market. They may not engage
in criminal activity. So this has benefits for everyone. We’ve only received quite positive feedback.

WOLF: And was it difficult to find partners willing to take on defendants?
I mean presumably they’re working with similar populations, but were there new issues of supervision, or compliance
monitoring that needed to be put in place for the program to work.

DALRYMPLE:
I wasn’t responsible for setting up the program, but what I can tell you is that certain placements have restrictions.
For example, they may not want a sex offender working in their facility, or at a women’s shelter they won’t
have men. We respect those rules.

We have open dialogue with these organizations in terms of
compliance. The organization or the placement tells us if they’ve provided compliance. And I mentioned, we have
worksheets that are completed by the organization and when they’re submitted with respect to compliance, we’ll
actually go pick them up so that we have direct communication and dialogue with the organization. That keeps, sort
of, our thumb on the pulse of the organization, and it allows us to continue building those relationships.

WOLF: Are there plans going forward to expand or other thoughts about community
service that you perhaps are picking up here at the conference or you guys are already working on?

DALRYMPLE: Well an idea that we’re sort of thinking of is community work service
as a means to really engage the community and strengthen the ties of the court in the community. And that’s
one thing that I’ve discovered in preparing for this presentation, is that a lot of the organizations aren’t
quite familiar with community court. They care about community court and if we perhaps, we reached out to an even
broader group of groups and organizations, it may increase the profile of the court in the community. And that’s
always a good thing.

WOLF: Have you noticed from your contact
with American prosecutors, a difference in their approach or attitudes toward community court or specific strategies
or obstacles they encounter that perhaps you don’t encounter in Canada?

DALRYMPLE:
I’ve learned a lot about the difference between the Canadian and the American community court models. One important
difference is their profile within the community. The American courts are more active with private sector funding,
marketing, reaching out, whereas in Canada we are, have been relatively reluctant to do that. That’s the one
major difference.

As well, I’ve also learned from speaking to my American colleagues that
their courts deal with a lot of quality-of-life type crimes. In Vancouver, we deal with quite a number of serious
offenses in our community court. We deal with domestic assaults, we deal with fraud, we deal with weapons offenses,
we deal with break-and-enters of commercial premises, assault causing bodily harm type offenses. So it represents
an opportunity in Vancouver because we deal with such a variety of different offenses.

WOLF:
Adam, thank you very much. I’ve been talking to Adam Dalrymple, who is a crown prosecutor with the Downtown
Community Court in Vancouver, Canada. We’ve been talking about their approach to community service among other
things. Adam, thank you very much.

DALRYMPLE: Thank you.

WOLF: I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court
Innovation. To hear more podcasts, you can visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org. Thanks for listening.

March 2012

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

Kurt Sandstrom, assistant deputy minister of Alberta Justice in Alberta, Canada discusses his province’s efforts to
break cycles of offending with integrated, evidence-based services. 

ROBERT
V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation and I am
at Community Justice 2012 at the end of January in Washington, D.C. And I am speaking with Kurt Sandstrom who is
Deputy –

KURT SANDSTROM: Assistant Deputy Minister –

WOLF:
Thank you Kurt – for Alberta Justice in the province of Alberta in Canada. And I understand that you in Alberta are
exploring the possibility of creating a community court. So maybe you could tell me a little bit about where you
are in the process and what made you interested in the first place.

SANDSTROM:
It’s a long story, so I could go back in time to 2009 when we started looking at this issue. And we have a stakeholder
vehicle called the Justice Policy Advisory Committee that is co-hosted by the Minister of Justice and the Solicitor
General. And we had presentations at that meeting, outlining some of the innovative work that was going on in the
United States – notably the Redhook Community [Justice Center], and also looking at a lot of things that were going
on in Canada, the Victoria Integrated Court and the Vancouver Community Court, and the drug courts.

And
we were looking at a number of silos that were popping up, depending on the needs or circumstances of the offender.
So, for example, if you were addicted you could get into the drug court program. If you had mental health issues
you would qualify for mental health diversion. If you went down the road and were homeless, then you could get into
the Pathways to Housing program that would look at your justice needs.

And so the Justice Minister,
who is now our Premier, at that point in time, along with the Solicitor General, said we need to look at how we break
down these silos and look at it in a more holistic manner. So the Integrated Justice Services Project was born and
we engaged some consultants who looked at all the models across North America and came up with the Cadillac model,
which we’d like to implement, but we’re not able to make as much headway on the Cadillac model at the moment. We
are taking small steps and right at the moment we’re launching a pilot in Calgary, Alberta, that will be entitled
A Safe Community’s Resource Center. And it will be focusing on the population that is post-conviction that will be
serving their sentence in the community. And the idea would be to refer them to a program that has a joint assessment
team of probation and health services members who also have all the supports of housing, mental health, alcohol addictions
counseling.

We’ll be working in partnership with community organizations to essentially create
a center with wraparound, holistic, integrated services down the road. And so you’ll know that the court is not involved
in that project at the moment because we’re trying to focus on the government services and the other support services
in that offending population that is post-sentence but serving in the community. We then hope to evaluate and proceed
to other phases of the project that will look at pre-conviction. We’ll also look at pre-charge because the police
population is saying—or the police officers are saying—we need some sort of solution to deal with diversion without
charge. And so all of this will be considered and evaluated in the fullness of time.

WOLF:
And when you say the court’s not involved, you mean because it’s post-conviction?

SANDSTROM:
Correct. Because it’s post-conviction and these offenders are put on probation, at the moment the judiciary will
not have really much to say to nor will defense or Crown. It will be a determination based on the probation officer’s
assessment of whether the offender would qualify for the safe community’s resource center. And if they do so qualify,
then one comprehensive treatment plan will be set up for them. The judiciary are involved in our two drug courts
in the province already in the pre-trial, or pre-conviction population. So right at the moment we’re working with
them to ensure that they’ve got everything they need to come at it holistically, and we’re hoping to build on some
of their experiences when we go forward with the project further.

WOLF:
So your vision – correct me if I’m wrong – is that this resource center that you’re pulling together using community-based
organizations and not-for-profits and such, and government agencies, presumably, could serve as a resource for these
other components, when and if you create them – the pre-trial one that you referred to. It would be sort of an all-in-one
place that, as it expands, you perhaps could draw upon and refer defendants to?

SANDSTROM:
Yes and no. We want to make sure that the phases are separate from coming up with one cookie-cutter approach. So
we may be looking at the resource center doing some of this, but we may also be looking at other solutions. For example,
right at the moment we’ve got two communities in Alberta—Edmonton and Calgary—organizing at the community level with
respect to the community-based organizations, because they’re reaching out to clients in distress. And they’re, at
the moment, saying we need to do business differently. We need to provide one place for a person who’s not even charged
with an offense to have, you know, their distress remediated in some fashion or another. So the community right at
the moment is driving some of the solution making.

We’re gonna be participating as a government
with those community organizations. What they set up could be the response to the other phases of a project. And
the key is that we’re going to continue to integrate as we move forward. We have a number of, as I said, earlier
silos that we’ll need to kind of put together. And we’re creating one position within our Safe Communities provincial
government that we call the Director of Integrated Justice Services. And this person’s position will be to further
integrate, to further design programming that will get at the offender’s criminogenic needs and really try to move
that marker in terms of an integrated provincial system.

WOLF: And
how much of an emphasis are you placing on evidence-based practices, using strategies that evidence has shown apparently
works?

SANDSTROM: That’s the cornerstone to the model. We’re looking
at only working with programs that have been evaluated and have been shown to be successful. And that’s difficult
within Alberta to ensure that we have the knowledge base that we need to draw from that. There’s quite a bit of work
going on across North America and worldwide, I think, in this area. We really want to set ourselves up as experts
in that fidelity in the science, and build from that, and also contribute to it. So, for example, our Safe Communities
initiative has funded 88 crime-prevention pilots, pilot projects across Alberta, all of which have to be evaluated
from a social return on investment, as to what will work in preventing crime? Even getting further upstream, what
are we doing to prevent crime? And all of that evaluation and research will help infuse our approach provincially,
and will also hopefully contribute to the literature across North America on what works.

WOLF:
So I understand you visited the Red Hook Community Justice Center. Have you seen other community courts and, if so,
are there things in particular that you want to try to replicate, and are there things you think will not work in
Alberta?

SANDSTROM: I haven’t personally visited any of the community
courts other than the Victoria Integrated Court. But the team has and our consultants have gone out to Dallas. They’ve
seen Red Hook, they’ve seen Vancouver. Really we’re not sure exactly how we’re going to replicate this. It’s a, it’s
certainly not a cookie-cutter approach. We’re going to be seeing what works and what doesn’t. So right at the moment,
we’re just struggling to get the government services together, working differently, and at that point we’re going
to build community in so we’ll be looking at these other models to see what their successes are, drawing from them,
and hopefully, you know, replicating something that’s going to get at that criminogenic aspect.

WOLF:
And one last question. I know you’re kind of early in the process. It sounds like you’ve done an incredible amount
of research and now you’re putting in, you know, you’re taking steps to move forward with the plan. Are there any
lessons that you’ve learned so far, that you might share, that might help someone else who’s exploring the possibility
of creating this integrated approach, or something like a community court?

SANDSTROM:
Yeah, I guess the first learning I would have is it’s not often that state or provincial or federal governments will
attempt to do this from the top down. We’ve attempted to do it from the top down, drawing from the experience of
more community-driven success stories. It’s difficult driving it from the top down. What I’ve encountered is that
often times change is slow to come to systems, especially government systems. In the future I might look at another
approach as a provincial government going into this, whereby we actually empower work that’s going on in communities
and are there to enable and facilitate the work that would be happening there, and let the models come up. In a perfect
world, I guess you have to be top down and bottom up. And so don’t forget the bottom, the community. The community
is critical in the solution. Every community is different. Every organization or community has different organizations
and they all have to be engaged and it is difficult for government to know what is going on in that area. And so
we need to find a way to make sure the bottom is coming up to the top and the top is coming down to the bottom.

WOLF:
Very interesting. Well thank you very much, Kurt Sandstrom. I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me. I’ve
been speaking with Kurt Sandstrom who is Assistant Deputy Minister in Alberta Justice. And you guys are working on
exploring the possibility of creating something like a community court or an integrated approach, offering alternatives
to incarceration, enhancing probation.

SANDSTROM: Exactly, Integrated
Justice Services is what we’re calling it, as opposed to being a court at the moment.

WOLF:
So thanks very much for taking the time to talk to me.

SANDSTROM:
Thanks very much.

WOLF: I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communications
at the Center for Court Innovation at Community Justice 2012. To hear more of our podcasts, visit www.courtinnovation.org.
Thanks for listening.

February 2012

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

Sociologist Andrew Papachristos focuses his studies on urban neighborhoods, social networks, street gangs, violent
crime, and gun violence. A Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at Harvard University, Papachristos discusses
how social network analysis can aid crime prevention.

SARAH SCHWEIG: 
Hi, I’m Sarah Schweig at the Center for Court Innovation, and today I’m speaking with Andrew Papachristos. We
are currently in an executive session in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the California Endowment, Community Oriented
Policing Services, and the Center for Court Innovation that brought together public health experts and law enforcement
representatives for a conversation about public health approaches to public safety. Andrew Papachristos is a sociologist
who focuses his studies on urban neighborhoods, social networks, street gangs, violent crime, and gun violence. As
a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar, Andrew will expand his use of network analysis to the study of
crime epidemics in U.S. cities, paying particular attention to the way violence diffuses among populations of youth.
Thank you for speaking with me today.

ANDREW PAPACHRISTOS: 
It’s my pleasure.

SCHWEIG:  So let’s start out by talking
about crime epidemics. How does treating violence like a contagious disease affect approaches to crime in law enforcement,
and how does it help us understand, in general, how crime occurs?

PAPACHRISTOS: 
So I think when the phrase ‘crime epidemics’ is typically brought up, it’s brought up as sort of like a moral panic
to sort of motivate people into action, and usually the action is political or law enforcement. I think we mentioned
in our talk today one of the actions when you have a crime epidemic is to call out the National Guard, quite literally.
I think what both I’m trying to do, as well as people in this room are trying to do, is understand what the idea
of an epidemic means in public health—so we don’t mobilize the National Guard when we have an outbreak of influenza
or an STD—and in fact, taking some of the science that’s used in contagious disease studies and apply them to violence,
as in who is most susceptible to getting shot. And to use more precise models, especially around social networks
to really understand if crime is a disease, then how does it spread? What is its form? What is the way that it is
transmitted? So to actually take this sort of analogy, which is often political, and actually take it at its sort
of real value, and understand what these mechanisms of contagion might be. 

SCHWEIG:
 The public probably thinks of social networks as Facebook and stuff like that. Can you talk a bit about
what you mean when you say, ‘using social network analysis,’ and also the kinds of relationships are you looking
at—and why are you looking at those relationships?

PAPACHRISTOS: 
So social network analysis is a science that’s been around for 60+ years. It really started in anthropology and sociology
where people were interested to understand the connections among groups and individuals, and how that affects action,
political action, social action, health and behaviors, and the difference between that and sort of regular science
is—rather than just understand individuals in isolation—network analysis really tries to understand how the connections
among people affect their behavior. So how your friend’s choice of political candidates affects your choice, or whether
it’s eating habits or social influence, or how you get a job.  And so the idea of understanding connections
and how that affects your behavior.  When you talk about the connections that you have, like Facebook, who
are your friends, it is actually—the science behind it is much like social network analysis, especially the mathematics. 
What you are interested in, who are your friends, who are your family, who did you go to school with, who were you
in clubs with? As well as sort of—did you buy the same book as other people? So Amazon uses that type of analysis
to understand people who bought this, they also like this, based on what other people like you have done.

In the case of today’s discussion about crime, we’re trying to understand how certain types of risky relationships—so
sort of offending relationships or gang relationships affect some of these outcomes like mortality: who gets shot
and killed. And like other types of behavior like intravenous drug use or sex behavior, you want to understand the
relationships that matter. So who you share needles with, who you’re sleeping with, in much the same way we’re trying
to understand who you hang out with and how that affects all these sorts of bad outcomes.

SCHWEIG: 
Right. And you mentioned an offending population and during the talk today you talked about co-offending populations—how
does mass incarceration, that our country is dealing with right now, tend to affect the offending networks?

PAPACHRISTOS:  So it’s a great question. I haven’t looked at it sort
of in this analysis yet. But what it does do, we know—from the evidence as well as what I would hypothesize—is it
disrupts these positive networks—family, school, romantic relationships, jobs—and then essentially filters you into
a different set of networks when you come out. So the capacity to get a job being an incarcerated felon, the capacity
to maintain relationships with your children, and that then getting passed down to them, intergenerational transition
of things like poverty, really incarceration is having a long effect on these networks both now and in the future.
And hopefully it’s something we can get at empirically. 

SCHWEIG: 
That’s really interesting. And sort of in the vein of where you want this to go in the future, where do you see this
research moving and how might it affect law enforcement approaches on the ground? And also maybe talk a little bit
about what jurisdictions would need to best implement these ideas in the most useful ways.

PAPACHRISTOS: 
Yeah, I mean my guess is that in 5 to 10 years—probably 10—sort of network mapping for police will be where sort
of hotspot mapping is now. I think that intuitively people understand more now—because of things like Facebook and
Amazon and the Internet—how connections matter. I think we’ve always known, you know, it’s not what you know but
who you know, the good old boys club, like all of those sort of images and sort of analogies now have a basis in
scientific analysis. So I think that it’s only gonna go up. I think there’s a critical mass of people beginning to
sort of galvanize around it. I think the difference is it’s not quite as intuitively simple as geographic map. 
So you have to actually get people past a certain learning curve. I think that there are all kinds of tools for both
enforcement that can be developed technology-wise, as well as for other public health and violence prevention initiatives.
Again, so this has been done on smaller scales with HIV and needle-exchange programs, sex work, and hopefully the
same models can be applied, but it can’t be cut and paste. It has to be specific to the epidemic you’re examining,
right?  So crime is like, but not the same as, a needle exchange, right? So understanding the context is
essential. And that’s sort of the caution to moving forward.

SCHWEIG: 
And you mentioned also moving some of these initiatives during your talk toward Milwaukee and San Francisco, some
of that analysis. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, just sort of as a last point?

PAPACHRISTOS: 
Yeah, so I think that what I’m seeing these last couple years is more and more jurisdictions that are eager to try
something that’s much more directed, especially given the limited resources. But not just directed, but is directed
and can have a huge sort of effect for a small sort of intervention. I just received the NSF award to expand the
work in Chicago and Boston, to Cincinnati and potentially San Francisco, but even already cities like Atlanta, Milwaukee,
Minneapolis, Brooklyn Park, there are a bunch of cities that are already eager to do it and the capacity is just
not there. The big barrier is that it’s not a point and click approach just yet, right? So with crime mapping, you
put in a bunch of addresses you get your picture. There’s a—there’s quite a bit more backend to this type of technology
and we’re not at that stage yet, where people with basic computer skills can do it. So it requires an analyst. And
so as we train more analysts, it will become more pervasive, I think.

SCHWEIG: 
Great. Thank you so much for speaking with me today.

PAPACHRISTOS: 
My pleasure.

SCHWEIG:  I’m Sarah Schweig and I’ve been speaking
with Andrew Papachristos. To learn more about the Center for Court Innovation, please visit www.courtinnovation.org. 
Thank you for listening.

January 2012

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More