This podcast includes observations from the presiding judge, Alex Calabrese, and short interviews by Director
of Communications Robert V. Wolf with the Brooklyn D.A.’s Chief Assistant District Attorney Anne Swern and Captain
Kenneth Corey, commander of the 76th Precinct.

ROBERT V. WOLF:
Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. When the Red Hook Community
Justice Center was created in the year 2000, no one could predict its impact or how long it would last. But 10 years
later, we have some idea.

Crime is down significantly, countless people from around the country
and the world have visited, and the Justice Center continues to innovate.

What is the Justice
Center? At its core, it’s a multi-jurisdictional courtroom that combines housing, family, and criminal cases
before a single judge, who has at his disposal not just conventional sanctions like fines and jail, but an array
of on-site social services to address issues like addiction, employment, and housing.

Justice
Center staff hosted a small reception in April to celebrate the center’s 10 year anniversary. Among the speakers
was Judge Alex Calabrese, who talked about the remarkable drop in crime in Red Hook.

JUDGE
CALABRESE: Most importantly, in 2006 and 2007, the 76 precinct, our local precinct, had the highest
percentage in New York City. And the 2008, 2009 numbers have remained relatively flat and low.

And
so when people feel safer, it raises public confidence in the justice system. And so when the traditional court system
had an 88 percent unfavorable rating before we opened, in a 2004 survey, 78 percent of the community gave a favorable
rating to the Justice Center and in a 2009 survey that number increased to 94 percent of community members giving
the Red Hook Community Justice Center a favorable rating.

That’s an amazing number if you
think about it. In fact, maybe it’s time to retire because there’s only one way that number can go

WOLF:
After the judge and other speakers, I caught up with two people whose agencies are key collaborators in the center’s
work: Kenneth Corey, Commander of the 76th precinct, and Anne Swern, First Assistant District Attorney to Brooklyn
D.A. Joe Hines. First Commander Corey.

COREY: The Justice Center
is a tremendous asset for us, you know, from the host of programs that they provide to the alternative sentencing,
and just being a partner to us in this ongoing battle, so to speak, to keep the community safe. Just having this
one-stop shop, you know, where you know, the low-level crimes and the sentences, and the housing issues all get worked
out together by the same judge. The results speak for themselves. It’s truly been tremendous.

WOLF:
Well let me ask you, how long have you been a police officer?

COREY:
22 years.

WOLF: So 22 years ago, when you started, you know, what
was your thinking about how much influence the criminal justice system could have on quality of life in the community
and crime?

COREY: 22 years ago, we didn’t, we didn’t focus
on community, on quality of life crimes at all. You know, it was all violent felonies and that was about it.

You
know, we used to term it ‘Big Justice’ because you’d lock somebody up, they’d go through the revolving
door and be out the next day. You know, when I was—actually in the mid-90s I was a sergeant in the 72nd precinct,
which also sends cases here. And one of the biggest quality-of-life-type crimes we had was street prostitution along
3rd Avenue under the Gowanus Expressway.

I had a team of cops, and we would lock up, without
exaggeration, more than 100 a month of prostitutes. And we’d lock them up on Monday night, and we’d lock
them up again on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday night and everything else.

So in 2005 I actually
went back to the 72nd precinct as the executive officer. That’s one of the first things I noticed is that the
prostitutes were gone. The problem had largely been eradicated. And you know, I come to find out that a lot of that
had to do with the Justice Center and getting these people drug treatment, job training, and things like that.

WOLF:
It must be very exciting to be a police officer at this time.

COREY:
It’s wonderful, it really is. I mean it’s – and again, it’s completely different from what it was
20 years ago when I started.

WOLF: And what do you think are the
key elements of, of what has made the difference? What are the ingredients? If someone wanted to package it, you
know, what would you put in that package?

COREY: Well you know,
I’ve always believed that one of the most important things is that the police and the community, in this case,
the court, all have to work together. You know, the police can’t be viewed as an occupying army in a community;
they have to be partners with the community.

The community has to tell us what their problems
are and work with us to solve their problems, and we have a lot of that going on. There are a lot of people who are
actively involved in the community, from coaching a little league baseball team, to other kinds of volunteerism and
again, just letting us know what’s going on so that we can address their concerns.

WOLF:
Just one more thing, the remarkable turnaround in terms of the number of murders in the, in this area, like what
do you attribute that to, because that’s such a – that seems so much removed from the quality-of-life business
that comes through the Justice Center.

COREY: Yeah, but a lot of
that was just – it is far removed from it, but it was the same people. It was, you know, the problems with the kids
hanging out on the corner which affected quality-of-life problems; those were the same people who may have either
been the perpetrators or the victims of a homicide.

You know, it escalated as a dispute and instead
of fighting with their fists, they went to guns. So the crackdown on the quality-of-life crimes removed a lot of
guns from the street, either because they got arrested or people were afraid they were going to get arrested and
left the gun in the house, and by the time they went and got it, cooler heads may have prevailed.

WOLF:
Great, thank you so much. That was Kenneth Corey, commander of the 76th Precinct.

Afterwards
I spoke with Anne Swern, first assistant district attorney to Brooklyn D.A. Joe Hines.

What has
changed in terms of the potential you feel a prosecutor has to make a neighborhood safe? ANNE SWERN: Well, I think
Red Hook signifies some of those changes that are more global. Red Hook, for example, uses a lot of drug treatment,
uses a lot of alternative sentencing. Looks at the collateral consequence of a conviction to see—Does it undermine
a person’s ability to get a job, or to be employed? Does it help with employment?—All of those things to create
an environment where people can succeed after their case, become productive for their communities and their families,
and create a safer neighborhood.

So all of those things occur in Red Hook. Hopefully they occur
downtown. One of the wonderful things about Red Hook is that everyone here is really committed to excellence. The
building is committed to excellence; the people within it are committed to excellence; all of the wraparound service
providers are committed to excellence.

WOLF: With crime rates going
down, down—in the ’90s they went down and everyone was like ‘Wow, look what we did. Let’s pat ourselves
on the back.’ And then they have continued to go down. I wonder how far, knock on wood, how far can we go with this?

SWERN: Well first, I’m happy to report that since 1990 serious
crime, the index crimes, is down almost 80 percent in Brooklyn. So people should know that. And we are much safer
and much more secure in our persons, and our property, and much freer to walk about, play about, go about, establish
businesses, establish lives, and families, and residences here than ever before.

How far can
it go? I would like to say no crime. I would like to say, no homicides, no robberies, no rapes. But unfortunately
I don’t think that’s possible.

I think the best thing we can do is hedge against it.
Have proactive programs for education, preventive programs, so that we look at people most likely to offend or get
into trouble and give additional services to those people, and warn against it so that it doesn’t spike again.

How low can it go? I wish 100 percent. What I’m most concerned about is keeping it low and
doing the best that we can to keep it low, and I think we do that with preventive programs and targeting people most
likely to re-offend.

WOLF: One last thing. I just want to ask you
in this climate of budget cuts—national, state, city—are we at risk, perhaps, of, just because there isn’t the
money there, going backwards? I mean is there a way to consolidate these gains and move forward with the knowledge
we have learned and the experience we’ve acquired in fighting crime?

SWERN:
I would hope that we’re all smart on crime and smart on public safety and smart on public policy. But some of
these things, like this beautiful Red Hook court cost money.

When we’re talking about replicating
it, there are things you can and can’t do if you don’t have the money to do so. If the social service providers
are not given adequate funding. If the court system is not given adequate funding, if prosecutor and defender offices
are not given adequate funding, how do you staff a place like this? How do you build a place like this?

So
while we’re smart on consolidating and using resources wisely, there is a point where the rubber meets the road
that is resource-based. And we all have to decide where our precious few resources belong in order to keep us safe
and keep us productive and thriving.

WOLF: That was Anne Swern,
first assistant district attorney to Brooklyn D.A. Joe Hynes. We’ve been talking about the Red Hook Community
Justice Center, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. To find out more about the Justice Center or the
Center for Court Innovation, visit www.courtinnovation.org. I’m Rob Wolf, thanks for listening.

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Kristine Herman of the Center for Court Innovation spent three months in Afghanistan helping the attorney general
establish the nation’s first unit dedicated to prosecuting cases of violence against women. She spoke with the
Center’s Director of Communications Robert V. Wolf about her experience.

ROBERT
V. WOLF: Hi. I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation. And today
I’m talking with a colleague of mine, Kristine Herman who’s the director of Global Gender Initiatives and also our
associate director of Domestic Violence Programs. Kristine spent three months in Afghanistan from September to December
2009. Thanks, Kristine, for taking the time to talk to me.

KRISTINE HERMAN:
My pleasure.

WOLF: Tell me about this. You went to Afghanistan for
three months. What brought about this trip?

HERMAN: Well, there
is an international organization called the International Developmental Law Organization, and they had reached out
to me here at the Center to ask if I’d be interested in going to help the attorney general of Afghanistan create
the first violence against women prosecution unit.

WOLF: So tell
me, how do you go about designing and establishing a unit like this? What sort of resources are at your disposal?
What about the laws? What about staff? And perhaps this is too much for one question, but what is it like for you
coming in internationally, not speaking the language, and not even necessarily knowing their particular legal system?

HERMAN: Right. Well, I mean that is a very big question. I think
in some respects this was a perfect project for me to be able to do coming from nine years at the Center for Court
Innovation and the expertise that we have here because the skills and the principles in creating a specialized project
of any kind were very transferable.

So the issues, you know, that come up in creating this and
the challenges and the process were not that different from working with folks in Australia or in Michigan or, you
know, really those kinds of things were perfectly transferable. I was able to do a process that was step-by-step
what I would want to do in any jurisdiction.

WOLF: Just give me
a quick overview what some of those steps are and you’re landing, you had three months.

HERMAN:
Yeah, yeah.

WOLF: So what are some of the steps that you went through?

HERMAN: So the very first step was having a planning team created.
And so, some of that is sort of who we would identify as needing to be at the table to plan this, but also having
the Attorney General’s Office decide who are they appointing to be part of this planning process and working closely
with them.

Then, of course, what we do at the Center all the time, we wanted to look at what’s
happening right now with any of these cases: what happens, what’s the current practice? so finding out what
the problem looks like there on the ground from the victim’s perspective, the social service providers’, you know,
and then how many cases make it to the police, then the prosecutors, and then eventually the courts.

And
what’s interesting trying to do that kind of analysis in Afghanistan is there’s no data-collection system. So there
isn’t an ability to do a caseload analysis for someone who’s looking up in a database, how many cases were reported
last year. This really required us to have individualized meetings with every piece of the process and ask them questions
about what they do keep as far as data, which is all on paper, and what anecdotally they think is happening.

And
some statistics and numbers exist. The Attorney General’s Office keeps some loose statistics in one department for
one area what it’s sort of, you know, and you can kind of infer from that what the problem really is.

The
next part of the process was really a combination of logistics like supports around space, office stuff, supplies,
the idea that they will need to have staff, how many staff?

In addition to that kind of logistical
stuff, we set apart to really draft protocols and procedures and policies around every issue that’s meaningful to
a specialized unit. So this planning document envisions what are the screening processes, what is the case eligibility
requirements, how they will flow through the unit from referral all the way to disposition and appeals.

Every
step of the way that I’m talking about was done through translators. Every piece of paper was written in our
native languages, translated through a translation department, and then given to the other partners to comment on
in their native language, and translated back into the other language.

WOLF:
How many languages were you working with?

HERMAN: Well, a grand
total of three although the dominant one was there was Dari, and then my language English, but there were some folks
who speak Pashto.

WOLF: You didn’t mention anything about having
to change the laws. And I know from previous conversations, you said that in fact the laws are on the books to protect
women. But perhaps you could talk to me about some of the cultural obstacles you encountered or the observations
you have about the culture or the lack of enforcement for these laws in the past.

HERMAN:
Yes. Absolutely. I mean the fascinating thing about Afghanistan is that on the books, on the face of it the laws
are really good. The constitution is new and cutting edge. It’s very, you know, egalitarian and anti-discrimination;
so it’s really a powerful constitution. And in fact, while I was there, right before I got there, they passed a Violence
Against Women Act.

So they have a law now that’s specifically around eliminating violence against
women which even specifies further crimes against women, very detailed; so forced prostitution, child marriage.

What’s
interesting about it is that despite these laws being on the books, there has been in the past zero enforcement of
these laws because of really traditional cultural practices and attitudes and beliefs about the status of women in
society.

WOLF: So for example?

HERMAN:
So for example, there are some traditional cultural practices called “baad” and “badal”. And what those—each of those
means respectively is that if you have a dispute with your neighbor, with a person in another village or there’s
a land dispute or a fight between families, one way to settle that is to trade daughters.

Those
daughters who are traded become not just servants and slaves within the new household, but then they’re also married
off to some much older male family member within the home often. So you’ve got, you know, forced labor; you’ve got
child or forced marriage. And that’s a cultural practice that exists. Selling of girls and daughters, it’s also
a traditional practice.

The number one reason women in Afghanistan are in prison is for a crime
that is not on the books—of running away. So running away from home is a crime simply because you don’t have the
right to not be in the home that you live in or were bought into or sold into. So that’s some of the cultural practices
that are in direct conflict with the law.

WOLF: So the law says
you, a woman, can choose where she wants to live.

HERMAN: Absolutely.
The law says that practices of baad or badal are illegal. The law says you cannot beat your wife, for example. However,
it is a very common practice to beat your wife in Afghanistan; and it is culturally acceptable if she behaves in
a way that you don’t find acceptable, that’s your response.

WOLF:
The law now protects them. How recent are these laws? Is this all a result of the Taliban being removed?

HERMAN:
Right.

WOLF: And under the Taliban’s code, it affirmed these cultural
practices?

HERMAN: I think that the Taliban really reinforced, perpetuated,
and even hardened some of these cultural practices. You know, some of the laws that are good laws aren’t actually
brand new. I mean the constitution is new, but some of the criminal laws are actually from the 60s and from earlier
times.

And so, you know, in the U.S. when we talk about domestic violence, we are necessarily
having to create a new law. In New York you are prosecuted for assault, right?

WOLF:
Right.

HERMAN: And similarly, in Afghanistan they could always apply
that crime in a case of violence against women. There’s been a horrific assault or beating or, you know, some of
the horrible cases where I interviewed women who had their nose chopped off by the husband’s family and their ears
chopped off by the husband’s family. Those family members were never prosecuted.

And of course,
under the law, even from the ’60s they could have been prosecuted and they were not. So it’s really application of
existing law that is lacking there and that sort of cultural will to address violence against women in a meaningful
way.

What was – I want to not be too negative here. What was very, very, very promising and optimistic
was that women in society 100 percent recognized this chasm between on the books and application. And they 100 percent
were totally self-aware of the problem culturally and traditionally with the practices that women and girls were
being subjected to and what they deserved under the law on a basic human rights level. They understood that huge
difference.

And so, there is a very big community of women who are working on this issue in Afghanistan,
who are writing about this issue, who are opening up shelters to help women victims of violence.

And
you know, there is not a lot of attention paid to it as sort of on the larger political sphere. But it is definitely
not something that’s been imposed from the outside, but it’s something that within the country itself that, you know,
50 percent of the population is well aware that there is maltreatment.

WOLF:
You finished your work in December. The unit—you established it. I understand when you came back that they have yet
to actually have a case. What’s the latest word that you’ve heard from your colleagues in Afghanistan?

HERMAN:
Right. So in January they finished a 20-hour training for the nine Violence Against Women prosecutors and an additional
seven key defense attorneys that we wanted to be really, really aggressively trained on violence-against-women issues.
These are defense attorneys who frequently are the attorneys for the women because often these issues get very muddied
and muddled and women victims of violence often are prosecuted (a) for running away, or (b) if they’re a victim
of rape but they can’t prove the rape case but you can prove intercourse outside of marriage, then the victim herself
is the one who goes to prison.

So you’ve got frequently the women victims of violence have their
own attorneys to help them with this very complicated issue of criminal issues and family issues and divorce issues
because you really can’t easily divorce or separate in Afghanistan or leave home. And they opened a unit, and
they started receiving referrals. I think the first two big cases they got were both cases of rape of children, girl
children within families; so by some extended family members, by brothers-in-law and multiple uncles. And so, by
taking these early cases that are really so egregious that most people would look and go, ‘This isn’t an okay practice.
Culturally, it’s not okay. You know, society is not okay.’

WOLF:
Because it’s involving young children.

HERMAN: Exactly. It’s a little
bit more of a sympathetic population.

WOLF: Right.

HERMAN:
You know, it’s helping to set the tone that these cases are important and we should be taking them seriously and
they’re going forward with those. So they started to receive their first cases. We’re pretty excited about it.

WOLF:
Do you think you’ve taken anything back with you, whether it’s lessons learned, things that didn’t work?

HERMAN:
Well, there’s certainly two things that come immediately to mind. The first one is simply that you can do a lot in
a short amount of time if you have very willing partners. So you know, we often, at least in the projects I worked
on, engage in a planning process that can take six months, nine months, 12 months. But truth be told, I really found
out from my experience there that you can do a lot in three months if you are meeting three times a week and five
days a week you’re trying to, you know, draft new agenda, you know, exchange documents, give each other draft versions
of things.

We did in three months what it normally would take me back here, you know, 10 to 12
months. So I felt very comfortable and confident that we can do a lot more with what we’re doing if we decided that
we wanted to and that we had partners who are really engaged as much as we’re engaged. So that’s a really exciting
thing.

WOLF: And you were cut off from family and friends.

HERMAN: Yeah. And then the other lesson I guess I learned was one I knew going
into it, but it was just so reinforced coming back. It was the importance of the community engagement piece.

And
I think that no one there really knew or thought that there was that much value in engaging the community as part
of the process for planning the unit. And I kind of had learned from my experience with the Center that this is something
we do, and there’s a real valid reason for doing it. And I don’t know if I could articulate it as well as I can now,
which is that, you know, the success of this unit hinges upon victims of violence against women and their lawyers
or their shelter workers.

And so, if we hadn’t engaged the community on an aggressive level by
meeting with them individually, by doing focus groups with women victims of violence, by visiting the shelters, by
us laying the groundwork to really have the community feel like they helped shape it, it would be a unit that existed
with no referrals.

WOLF: I’m very curious to know what life was
like for you there. Can you give me a sense of what your day-to-day life was like?

HERMAN:
Sure. Sure. Well, first off, as a woman there, it was very important to be respectful of the culture. So for that,
it meant that I always covered my hair. I always wore very loose clothes that often came to my knees.

Towards
the end of my time there at the Attorney General’s Office, the head of the Violence Against Women unit actually gave
me a head scarf as a present. And she said she was so thrilled to see that I was wearing head scarves throughout
this planning process. It just made her more comfortable like we were on – I was willing to come to some common ground.
It didn’t hurt me to do it. And she was – it basically opened the doors a little bit for us to talk.

So
the streets of Kabul are fascinating because you can’t walk on them if you’re an international. There’s generally
rules that you cannot and should not ever walk on the street. And in fact, with the organization I was with, you
could be sent home if you walked on the streets because the risk is so great for kidnapping and death.

So
you don’t walk anywhere. You drive everywhere or you’re driven I should say. You’re driven everywhere. And so, on
the one hand, I really relished the times when I got out and got to go to meetings. And when you drive to the streets
of Kabul, I would see daily life and see people shopping and doing what they do. On the other hand, it’s also very
nerve-wracking because it’s a really the most dangerous times as a foreigner when you’re in the roads.

WOLF:
I have a million more questions, but we’ve run out of time. I’ve been talking to Kristine Herman, a colleague of
mine here at the Center for Court Innovation. She’s director of Global Gender Initiatives and the associate director
of Domestic Violence Programs here at the Center for Court Innovation. And she was talking to me about her recent
three months in Afghanistan where she was helping the Attorney General’s Office create a specialized violence against
women unit.

HERMAN: Thanks for having me.

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

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Lauren Abramson explains how the Community Conferencing Center, which she founded and leads, provides communities
with the structure and support they need to address certain crimes and conflicts on their own.

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District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., following his keynote address at a Harlem
Parole Reentry Court graduation, answers questions about reentry, crime prevention, and community prosecution.

ROBERT
V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation. This
is New Thinking, a podcast about innovations in justice. At the beginning of 2010, Manhattan, which is where the
Center for Court Innovation is headquartered, got its first new district attorney in 35 years, Cyrus Vance, Jr. After
less than two months in office, Vance served as the keynote speaker at a Harlem parole reentry court graduation ceremony,
where parolees receive certificates for successfully completing the reentry court’s requirements. In his remarks,
Vance expressed strong support for reentry initiatives and explained that he was establishing a new bureau called
Crime Prevention Strategies.

CYRUS VANCE, JR: Reentry is that area
of the law that I am most convinced we can do the best job, in terms of helping people succeed. And to that effect
I have asked, in my office, for us to start a bureau called Crime Prevention Strategies.

WOLF:
After the ceremony, I asked Vance a few questions about his interest in both reentry initiatives and community prosecution.

WOLF: Tell me, why reentry? Why is a prosecutor like yourself interested in
the issue of reentry when that really comes at the end of the criminal justice system and your role, traditionally,
as a prosecutor is towards the beginning to after the arrest.

VANCE:
Well I think there are several reasons and they really are related to the job as a prosecutor. I mean the job of
a prosecutor, ultimately, I think like all law enforcement professionals, is about reducing crime and public safety.
And that’s our responsibility, and when we are successful with people in reentry programs, that obviously has
a direct impact on reducing recidivism. So, to the degree to which our office can support those efforts, we reduce
crime. And then there’s, of course, there’s the human responsibility. I believe that every time we send
someone to prison, we have a responsibility as a criminal justice community to have an exit strategy. And so without
an exit strategy, and an exit strategy when they come home, as they all do, uh, we aren’t really doing our job
as humans responsible for not just the case that we prosecuted, but for success in the life of everyone we deal with
in the system.

WOLF: And what role do you see your office playing?
You did mention that you created a new division or a new area of responsibility about crime prevention strategies.

VANCE: We will work in  reentry to have our office involved, supporting
the work of reentry providers, helping in ways that are useful—understanding who’s coming back, how can our
office provide assistance in matching them up with services, and I think Joe Heinz has given us a model to you know,
to look at, and I believe we’ll—I want to build on Joe’s work and make sure that we, we’re helping
4,500 people coming back to New York City so that they don’t re-offend.

WOLF:
And how do you incorporate the idea of alternatives to incarceration into the everyday working responsibilities of
your assistant district attorneys?

VANCE: I think that as we handle
cases, we need to look at what offenses can be better sanctioned through programming ATIs as opposed to incarceration.
And so I think simply, number one is education. It’s making the assistants aware that I, as the district attorney,
support their looking for the end game. We obviously have to address the victim concerns, but it’s not a success—the
greater success is to pursue that sentence which reduces the chance of recidivism because that is a public safety
issue.

WOLF: Let me ask you one more question about community prosecution
philosophy. What is your feeling about community prosecution and do you have any plans to incorporate some of those
strategies?

VANCE: I do. I think community prosecution is something
I embrace. And by community prosecution, there’s a whole range, obviously, of community prosecution strategies.
I embrace the idea of our assistant DAs, as lawyers, becoming involved in understanding the communities that they
serve—we serve, we’re privileged to serve—and working closely with them. I believe as a strategic matter, having
our office lined up with communities so that we can effectively understand crime patterns and crime prevention strategies
block by block, building by building. And so if we remain downtown at One Hogan Place, and don’t engage the
community, we miss an opportunity to do our job better as crime prevention experts and as people involved with our
decisions as prosecutors that affect people’s lives.

WOLF: Do
you plan on having, for instance, neighborhood prosecutors opening offices in the neighborhood?

VANCE:
I’ve talked about opening up an office in Washington Heights, which I do intend to do. We have an office in
Harlem and I don’t know if we’re gonna have neighborhood prosecutors, in a sense that every neighborhood,
but I do believe we are going to have prosecutors who are responsible for geographic zones—not necessarily all the
prosecutors in the office, but making sure that we have a, you know, strategic understanding of what’s going
on in the neighborhoods so that that can inform our prosecution strategy and handling of individual cases.

WOLF: And also, inform I suppose prevention efforts too—

VANCE:
Very much so, yeah. Very much so.

WOLF: Thank you very much for taking
the time. And thanks for coming to this event.

VANCE: My pleasure.

WOLF: You’ve been listening to an interview with Cyrus Vance, Jr., who
was the keynote speaker at the February 23rd graduation ceremony at the Harlem Parole Reentry Court. To learn more
about the reentry court or other Center for Court Innovation demonstration projects, visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org.
I’m Rob Wolf. Thanks for listening.

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Gretta Bush and Bobby Davis of High Point Community Against Violence explain how the Drug Market Initiative–a
program developed by David Kennedy of John Jay College of Criminal Justice–offers a sustainable and effective strategy
for ending the violence associated with open-air drug markets.

ROBERT V.
WOLF: Hi, this is Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. And I’m
in High Point, North Carolina, speaking with Gretta Bush, who is the president of High Point Community Against Violence.
Ms. Bush has played an integral role in a program called the Drug Market Initiative, which is designed to close overt
drug markets. Thanks so much for taking a few minutes to talk to me.

GRETTA BUSH:
You’re more than welcome, glad to do it.

WOLF: What is the
Drug Market Initiative?

BUSH: The Drug Market Initiative is an endeavor
taken on by the citizens of High Point, along with the High Point Police Department, to deter drug buys, sales, violence
in our community, to stop the drug initiative on the street.

WOLF:
And it was initially started in the neighborhood called West End. Can you tell me what conditions were like there
in 2003 before the Drug Market Initiative?

BUSH: Before the Drug
Market Initiative, our West End was the hottest spot in High Point for anything negative that dealt with drug markets
in the High Point area. Gun play, murders, assaults, domestic violence, prostitution, you name it, it went on. And
it was our hottest area and the highest crime area for the High Point area. And it was identified for that reason.

WOLF: Who first told you about the Drug Market Initiative and what
did you, as a citizen of High Point, think of the idea?

BUSH: We
were approached as a group, somewhat semi-organized, trying to just tackle violence in High Point. We found out that
drugs was the biggest entity that was a part of the violence that was occurring here in High Point and with the research
and a gentleman coming to High Point to work with the High Point police department, Mr. Kennedy, we took a plan of
action and worked with him to initiate this in the High Point area to see if it would work.

WOLF:
So David Kennedy brought this idea to you? Could you tell me how it differs from the kind of old-fashioned or traditional
police approach to drug dealing in a neighborhood?

BUSH: Well usually
in a community where you have negative activities such as drugs, the police don’t ask the community for their help
as far as confronting an individual.

In this particular case, working with the police department,
we actually sit down with the police department. We actually sit down with the police, evaluate the situation, put
a plan of action in place. The police department reaction to this is to the community: how can we better serve you?
How can we better do what we do in our policing? And in turn we learn what the police do.

It’s
not just about putting handcuffs on someone and arresting them. It’s research toward a solution toward the problem,
to help make sure that the violent offenders are not going back to the street and we’re continually working
together to deter the negative drug activities going on in the High Point area as well as West End and the individual
communities.

WOLF: One of the key features of the Drug Market Initiative
is something called the “call-in.” Can you tell me what the call-in is?

BUSH:
The call-in is a notification given to violent offenders in the community that are dealing drugs. They are identified
and called-in by the chief to the station to meet with law enforcement and the community.

Once
they’re there and identified, we give them a spiel or a conversation about their activities and identify them,
telling them that we do not want it to continue to happen and offer our services and our connection to resources
in the community as an alternative.

The other spiel they are supposed to—what law enforcement
would do if they do not change their way of life—so they have a choice that night to make a decision to either continue
to sell drugs and eventually end up in jail, dead, or change their lifestyle to do something positive in the community.

WOLF: We’re being joined now by Bobby Davis, who is a retired
police officer and also a board member of High Point community Against Violence and thank you, Mr. Davis, for joining
us.

BOBBY DAVIS: Yes, you’re welcome. My pleasure.

WOLF:
So what is it you actually say, Mr. Davis, when you’re at the call-in and you stand up before these group of
people who have been identified as troublemakers in the community, people who have broken the law, that are being
offered a second chance? What do you say? What’s the message you send?

DAVIS:
One of the things that I say, I let them know in the very beginning that they are human beings but just went a different
way to the extent that they felt like they—it was in violation. And the reason we are there as it was fore stated
that certainly we are there out of concern for them and to let them know that we are concerned and we—yes we do live
in the neighborhood and you too can live a type of life, if once you decide you’re gonna turn your life around,
and if you do decide to do such, whatever reason or whatever can cause you to – or whatever your needs are, we are
there to assist you in those needs.

And we try to stress that because—and we let them also know
that certainly we are in partnership with the police department, as well, so if you do not choose to take our assistance,
then so be it, law enforcement-wise.

WOLF: The program has been
very successful, hasn’t it? The Drug Market Initiative?

What difference has it made in the
four neighborhoods in High Point where it has been applied? Initially in West End in 2003, and since then I understand
it’s been in three other neighborhoods. What changes have you seen in those neighborhoods after the Drug Market
Initiative?

BUSH: We found out statistically-wise that the felons
or the offenders are definitely not going from one community to another. They take the message.

We
don’t have a 100 percent turnover and a success rate, but we have at least a 50 to 75 percent success rate,
so we know everybody’s not always gonna hear and understand clearly what the alternatives are, but you also
have to make believers out of some, so –

WOLF: So you’re saying
50 to 75 percent of people actually get the message and stop… ?

BUSH:
And stop.

WOLF: … dealing drugs? And another, and the other 25 to
50, maybe don’t and they end up going to jail?

BUSH: They end up
in jail, and we’ve had several that have actually lost their lives, you know, after the notification because
they continued in the drug market, and that violent life actually takes them out, so –

WOLF:
And how has life in these neighborhoods changed as a result of this? I know in West End, you know, there was open-end
overt drug markets and people on the street selling drugs, and prostitution. What is that neighborhood and other
neighborhoods like now?

DAVIS: Mr. Wolf, that’s overwhelming
because people feel more relaxed and more comfortable and enjoying their environment and since the environment is
a clean atmosphere to the extent that you’re rid of these violators, they feel comfortable in sitting on their
porches and coming in their yards, and even children outside playing and just outside activity has increased because
of this Drug Market Initiative program, to the extent of clearing of, clearing this activity up in these neighborhoods
that people just feel comfortable, and they feel comfortable in seeing the police riding in their neighborhoods because
they realize that it’s still enforcement being enacted to the extent of making sure that this type of clearance
continues.

They just feel, the attitude toward the – from the community toward the police department
has changed tremendously.

WOLF: And before people didn’t trust
the police.

DAVIS: Not to the extent of—no, not at all.

BUSH:
There was a lady that came to visit from the Washington, D.C., area home, in one of the initiative areas, which was
South Side, and she did not know her neighborhood. And she was actually talking to my sister –

WOLF:
She was from, she was originally from South Side and she came back to visit?

BUSH:
Right, from the South Side, and she actually went through the Ville, (Inaudible) Street area, she didn’t see
the same type of activity, she didn’t see the same people. The atmosphere had totally changed and she actually
had to look at street signs. She said “I couldn’t believe this was South Side”. And she was talking to my sister
and she was like, “I couldn’t figure out what was going on. She said, where did all the people go?” And I began
to explain to her what had happened. She was like, you know, “This is fantastic.”

WOLF:
And so now the Drug Market Initiative is being replicated in 25 cities at least around the country. How do you guys
feel about being the role model for other places?

DAVIS: Wonderful.
It makes us feel good and it even allows us to know that we’ve done something that has attracted the attention
of others, and the program works to the extent that they want to be a part of it and they, too, can clean their communities
up as well.

BUSH: Most definitely. It’s like a good recipe,
where you try something and it comes out great, you want to share it so everyone’s getting a taste of it.

They’re
adapting it and we’re working together to make sure that their program, you know, footmarks after what we’ve
done but we don’t want to get to a point where we feel like what we’ve done is okay, it’s working,
and we get relaxed. It’s an everyday endeavor, things that you have to continually grow and tweak, and we even
visit and take information from other cities that are trying things that are new and different, so that we can continue
to have the growth in the positive way that we’re having.

WOLF:
I guess you can’t ever just sit on your laurels, you have to keep working.

DAVIS:
You have to keep working at it and you have to be willing to be involved.

WOLF:
Well, I want to thank you both very much for taking the time to talk to me. I’ve been talking to Bobby Davis,
who is a board member of the High Point Community Against Violence and a retired police officer after 30 years on
the High Point police force. That’s quite an achievement.

And I’ve also been talking
to Gretta Bush, who is the president of High Point Community Against Violence and she’s also a 30 year veteran
of the High Point Parks and Recreation Department as a Senior Park Supervisor.

BUSH:
Recreation Center Director.

WOLF: Recreation Center Director.

BUSH:
Right.

WOLF: All right, thank you very much. I’m Rob Wolf with
the Center for Court Innovation in High Point, North Carolina. Thanks for listening and to find out more about the
Center for Court Innovation visit www.courtinnovation.org.

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Joan Petersilia, a law professor at Stanford University explains what ex-prisoners need to successfully reintegrate
into society, and how California’s correction system–once a national model–lost its way.

ROBERT
V. WOLF: Hi. I’m Rob Wolf, and welcome to “New Thinking,” a podcast produced by the Center for Court
Innovation. Today I’m talking to Joan Petersilia, a law professor at Stanford University and one of the nation’s
foremost criminologist.

She’s the author of 11 books about crime and public policy. And her research
on parole reform, prison reintegration and sentencing policy has fueled changes in policies throughout the nation.
A criminologist with a background in empirical research and social science, Dr. Petersilia is also faculty co-director
for the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.

Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me.

JOAN PETERSILIA: My pleasure.

WOLF:
It seems to me that California is the perfect place to be for someone with a professional focus on parole reform
and prisoner reintegration. You, in fact, have described California’s prison system as a paradox of excess and deprivation.

I gather you mean by that and I’m quoting your article that appeared last year in the University
of Chicago’s journal, Crime and Justice, “no other state spends more on its correction system and gets back less.”
I thought maybe you could elaborate a little bit on that idea for me.

PETERSILIA:
Well, California spends $49,000 a year per inmate and that’s compared to the annual national average, which is about
$24,000.

So we spent twice as much and yet our recidivism rate is 70 percent, meaning that 70
percent of everybody who leaves the California prisons will come back to prison within three years. And that compares
to a national average of about 40 percent.

So we spend more and we actually get less in terms
of reduced recidivism and reduced crime. And that was what I meant by kind of a paradox. You would think if you’re
spending the most, it would in fact be doing the best. But we’re spending the most and doing the worst.

WOLF:
Maybe you can bring me up to date on what has happened in California regarding this recent federal court ruling that
requires the state to bring the prison population down from about 158,000 to 115,000. And I understand that would
still leave the state’s prisons at about 137 percent of their designed capacity.

PETERSILIA:
You will find two court cases that we have had in litigation for over 15 years in California that finally reached
kind of the end point in terms of the judges saying enough is enough. They have asked the Department of Corrections
to basically give better medical care and dental care. So that’s what the two cases revolve around.

And
the courts have said that the overcrowding in California prisons is such that there’s no way an inmate can get adequate
medical care or dental care. So the case has evolved but now become a test of overcrowding. And so, courts have ruled
that in order to be able to deliver the adequate medical care, the prison system must in fact become uncrowded. And
in the judge’s opinion, that means reducing from about 170,000, which is what we have today, to about a 135,000 or
so within the next two years.

WOLF: You have recognized in your
research and your writing and advocacy that prisoners suffer disproportionately from health problems, mental illness,
addiction; and clearly, would benefit and need medical care. But I imagine you feel that just releasing them without
any kind of treatment services doesn’t really address the underlying issue or the deeper issue of reintegration.

PETERSILIA: Well, prisoners, as you’ve said, are an incredibly sick
population. They are physically about 10 years older on average. If you take a 50-year old, (their health) will look
like a 60-year old.

So what’s happened to the U.S. prison population as sentences have gotten
longer and as the population has aged, and as medical costs, all medical costs, not only for prisoners but for people
outside of prison, have escalated over the last decade, this has just kind of become a perfect storm.

We
actually spend in California $14,000 per inmate for medical care. In the outside free citizens the average is about
$4,000.

WOLF: It’s interesting because again that’s another example
I guess of your – the paradox of excess and deprivation. I mean to spend so much more on prisoner healthcare and
yet get so little really.

In your research, in your work, you know, you focused a lot on prisoner
integration. What’s at stake here? Why is it important to focus on this issue and is it being lost now in the budget
crunches that so many states, including California, are facing and issues like overcrowding?

PETERSILIA:
Well, through that article that you mentioned—and I love the word “excess” leading to kind of less than public safety
because another example of this is in the parole system, which we’re now addressing.

California
is the only state that everybody who leaves prison goes on formal parole supervision for one to three years; usually
an average of about two and a half. Other states, again, send maybe 30 to 40 percent of prisoners to parole. So when
people get out, they in parole in most states select the most dangerous, put them on parole supervision, drug test
them, watches them closely, and then violate them if they commit a new crime or serious violation of parole.

California
has, again, incredible excess. Everybody—and that means 120,000 people who leave prison in California each year—goes
on parole supervision, which means that nobody really gets watched very closely.

So again, we
have excess of kind of what you would imagine kind of legal control, but very little public safety because it really
means, you know, one size fits all ends up meaning one size fits no one.

Here we saw a classic
example of Phillip Garrido, a sex offender who, you know, abducted Jaycee Lee Dugard and kept her as a – I guess
you’d have to call it a sex slave in his backyard and he fathered two of her children. And people have to ask the
question: how is it that he was on parole for 10 years and nobody knew he was doing this kind of thing?

And
when you know the parole system, it didn’t – wasn’t surprising to me at all because of the 120,000 people in California
the parole agents are trying to watch, and we only have about 5,000 parole agents, so they’re just simply spread
too thin

WOLF: I actually had read something a few years ago; I
think it was in 2005. California was experimenting I thought with putting fewer people on parole.

PETERSILIA:
Well, we are actually right now as we speak, our legislature is voting this week on a major, major – I mean it’s
the most important thing I think that has happened to California corrections in at least 20 years. Our legislature
is now voting on a parole reform package which will do three things.

It will place only high
risk people and moderate risk people on active parole supervision. Then it will shorten the length of time that people
are on parole. So people who are doing well on parole can actually discharge their parole at one year instead of
three years.

And then, probably most importantly, is the third aspect: if you violate parole
in California and your violation is only a technical violation, meaning you tested positive for drugs, let’s say,
or missed an appointment, you no longer will be sent to prison. You’ll only serve time in a local jail. That will
cut our prison population significantly.

WOLF: Are you concerned
that in cutting the number of prisoners on parole the result will not necessarily be higher quality supervision for
those who are still on parole, but it will just be the same kind of supervision that’s already being delivered?

PETERSILIA:
Well, I think the next major issue that criminologists and those interested in crime control have to face is that
what happens when prisoners are released back to communities where the services that are necessary for their success
are in fact being cut. And so, many of us who studied re-entry know that it wasn’t just about getting them off parole.
That really was not the intent.

The intent was to get them simply off surveillance and getting
them into some services plus surveillance. We know that what works is not simply sending somebody to treatment alone.
That hasn’t worked, and also, doesn’t work if you simply, you know, put them on electronic monitoring without services.

So a lot of the research shows that you must combine treatment with a kind of deterrence or surveillance.
Unfortunately, what is now happening is in most states, because of the pressure to reduce people from prisons, we’re
all going to see a lot of releases. We’re going to see releases from prison; we’re going to see releases from parole;
and we’re going to see technical violators not being sent back to prison.

Now I’m in favor of
doing that if the offender is low risk. But I was never in favor of it to simply let them out without anything. And
that doesn’t do anybody any good and threatens public safety, so the plan was always to provide services. So what
we’re getting is kind of half of the plan but the key ingredient missed.

WOLF:
You’ve participated in discussions here at the Center for Court Innovation that explored the topic of failure and
what we can learn from failed initiatives. With that in mind, I was wondering if you could tell me what re-entry
reforms have you tested in California that you think work or perhaps don’t work but tell us important lessons.

PETERSILIA:
Well, I’ve become involved in a small project that is counted across California as being one of the most successful
re-entry projects at a local level. And I’ve learned the lesson about what it takes to make re-entry successful.
And it’s more than simply programs. You know, an offender is more than the sum of his program.

And
we used to think if we just got them into the right program, whether it be a drug treatment facility or an employment
or work training, that that would be enough. It clearly isn’t enough. Even once you get those three things, and I
think the three keys of re-entry are addiction under control, stability and housing and a job. If you get all those
three things going, it’s still kind of isn’t enough we’ve learned. And you’ve really got to have kind of that community
support.

And with law enforcement, with children, with families, they’re all part of kind of
this network or constellation of support for offenders who eventually go straight and stay straight. We have some
success of what it means to get somebody to go straight in the short-run. We actually have pretty good success at
getting somebody to go straight for 12 months to 24 months, even 36 months.

The real challenge
is getting somebody to refrain from crime for the rest of their lives. And what we’ve learned about that is it eventually
is about families and children and parents and a broader community. And when it really works, all of that kind of
comes together.

So we know a lot about what it takes. The problem is it’s not easy and it’s not
inexpensive; and we need to acknowledge that. Community corrections, if done right, is actually probably as expensive
as prison in the short-run. But what we’re looking for is those lifetime cost benefits.

WOLF:
I think it’s fascinating that California once had what was considered the nation’s premier corrections system. I
guess that was from about the ’40s to the ’60s. So I’d like to ask you, in your view what happened? What can we learn
from where California is today? And do you think California will ever get back to that?

PETERSILIA:
Well, California, as you said, used to be a national model. And in fact, many of the programs that are being used
today, not only in California and the United States, but internationally, in fact, came from ideas developed in California
corrections in the period between the ’50s all up through the end of the ’70s. So there was a 25-year period where
California was really a model system of how to treat juveniles, in particular, as well as adults and how to bring
community into sanctioning, if you will.

And then you have to ask, well, how did it go from this
model to now I would think what everybody would recognize is probably one of the most dysfunctional systems we have?
And I think nobody could have foreseen how we just chipped away at it at every level. We chipped away at it in terms
of giving control over to a huge prisoner guard union so that, in fact, their money became very “money still talked.”
They were able to give large amounts of money to legislators running for office. Those legislators turned around,
ran on tough-on-crime platforms, passed things like three strikes, lengthened sentences, sent more people to prison.
And as a result, funding for programs had to be reduced.

So we were simply building, building,
building and cutting programs. And so, over the years what we go was, in fact, overcrowded, dangerous – 50 percent
of our prisoners never participated in any program at all for their entire stay in a California prison.

WOLF:
Ultimately, I guess we can see it as a blessing, the kind of overcrowding, in a way because it encourages a search
for alternatives. And hopefully, I guess we would hope effective alternatives that guarantee or promote the public
safety and a successful reintegration of ex-inmates into communities.

PETERSILIA:
Well, I think I see the current times as a crisis for sure. But in every crisis, there’s the potential for opportunity.
And I would like to think that what this does do for us is it makes us rethink and realign who should be in prison.

And I think most people and the public want dangerous, violent people in prison. And they’re
willing to pay for it. And they kind of really are also—the public opinion polls—willing to rethink what we do with
non-violent, particularly drug offenders.

So I think that we will be having those debates and
the poor economy kind of got those debates to the forefront. But the real question is “what do we do with the third
of the prison population that are there primarily for drug use, drug addiction, drug sale?” We simply can’t let those
people go without any treatment or any programs. Then we will simply have kind of a short-term gain and a long-term
blip in the crime rate, which will happen two, three, four, five years out.

I think we’ve got
to really think hard about “if not prison, what?” and that to me is the key question that we now need to address.

WOLF: Well, it’s been fascinating talking with you. And I really
appreciate again your taking the time. I’ve been talking with Joan Petersilia, a law professor at Stanford University,
the author of 11 books and an expert in the area of parole reform, prisoner reintegration and sentencing policy.

PETERSILIA: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

WOLF: I’m Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for
Court Innovation. To learn more about the Center for Court Innovation, you can visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org.

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Derek Miodownik, restorative systems administrator for the Vermont Department of Corrections, talks about the state’s innovative experiments
in community and restorative justice, including Citizen Reparative Boards, which give panels of community members
a role in working with misdemeanor offenders, and Circles of Support and Accountability, which link community members
with parolees convicted of serious crimes.

ROBERT V. WOLF:
Hi. This is Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation, and welcome to another New Thinking
podcast. Today I’m speaking with Derek Miodownik who is the restorative systems administrator for the Vermont Department
of Corrections.

DEREK MIODOWNIK: Hi. Thanks for having me.

WOLF:
Absolutely. Vermont has quite a reputation for innovative thinking in the area of corrections. And so, I was wondering
if you could tell me a little bit about the philosophy that guides you and about some of the interesting things that
you’ve been working on.

MIODOWNIK: Absolutely. Yeah. I think Vermont’s
a state that’s had to play to its strengths, and one of our strengths is our relatively small size that we still
have a real sense of community and town, and active citizen participation in all sorts of civic life.

But
specific to corrections, one of the ways that’s becomes expressed for years now has been through citizen reparative
boards that have been operating since at least ’95, I think, here in Vermont, where individuals who’ve been convicted
of misdemeanors have for a long time now been required to appear before a volunteer citizen board. So, of course,
you’re talking about a restorative justice approach and philosophy that has really taken roots here in Vermont.

And
we have, over the past several years, begun to apply that not only on the low level of the offense scale but also
on to the more severe cases, and specifically, the re-entry process.

WOLF:
So you started with the reparative boards in Vermont, which focused on misdemeanor offenses. Is that correct?

MIODOWNIK:
That’s right. I’d say that’s where, as a state, we kind of cut our teeth.

WOLF:
And how widespread are they now? MIODOWNIK: We’ve got 76 individual community reparative boards.

WOLF:
What does that consist of? These are volunteers who do what with the offender?

MIODOWNIK:
Well, it’s really predicated on the notion that the person is showing up and at the very least saying
“Yes, I did it.” So they’re not fact finding. The conversation begins from the perspective of “How do you think other
people were harmed?” And it’s done not in a didactic way but I would say in an educational and informative and
a very personal way. And then, “What do you think you have to offer in the way of repairs?”

And
if they’re individual victims who’ve chose to participate in this process, first and foremost, what do they want,
what are their needs?

WOLF: Give me some examples of the kinds of
the kinds of misdemeanors and then the kinds of responses that panels come up with.

MIODOWNIK:
So yeah, again, we’re talking primarily about low-level offenses. That can include shoplifting, DUIs.

WOLF: And what would the sanctions perhaps be?

MIODOWNIK:
An example might be—I know there is a guy who had shoplifted from a video store. This is a guy struggling to keep
his store going. He came to the board and expressed just that, that this isn’t just a business to him, but that it’s
a business that’s hard for him to run, that he built at a time when that medium, frankly, was a lot more popular,
that he’s got children.

So all of a sudden, when you have somebody removing the barricades of
their life and saying “Hey, your decision to take six DVDs? Let me tell you about my 16-year-old daughter and let
me tell you about my 18-year-old that I sent to college.” And you know, all of a sudden, in a way a gift is being
offered, a gift of connection.

You know, in this case, ultimately, the guy who ran the store,
he needed some help. He needed some help at home. He was working a lot. He had injured his back, which prevented
him from mowing his lawn.

And you know, an agreement was reached that this guy would work off
his obligation through, you know, through a prescribed number of hours, just showing up, mowing this guy’s lawn.
In terms of a happy ending on this one, a fairy tale ending, this guy ended up getting a job working at H—- Video
in South Burlington, Vermont.

WOLF: And H—- Video was the victim?

MIODOWNIK: Yes.

WOLF:
The victim owned that store?

MIODOWNIK: That’s right. That’s right.

WOLF: Well, it is a happy ending because I was going to say that
it sounds like a lot of effort on all parts to resolve something that sounds like a rather minor offense.

MIODOWNIK:
You know, on one hand, there is definitely an outlay of effort. But on the other hand, the absence of that helps
to contribute to some pretty larger-scale matters that we see play out time and again with folks who don’t respond
very constructively to low-level misdemeanor sanctions, and ultimately, either continue at the same level of severity
or sometimes ultimately escalate.

So from a prevention perspective, it’s effort and the time
well spent, and it’s primarily driven by volunteers who are doing that because, again, they live in that town, and
it’s not academic to them.

WOLF: We’ve been talking about the response
to misdemeanor –

MIODOWNIK: That’s right.

WOLF:
…offenses and the Department of Corrections of Vermont is also addressing re-entry issues, offenders who have committed
more serious crimes who are right now returning to the community. You’ve developed a program there that’s also rather
creative and involves the community as well. So maybe you can tell me a little bit about that.

MIODOWNIK:
We responded in 2002 to what was called the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative. This was a federal initiative
to provide states with money specifically to enhance or promote their best thinking around offender re-entry. And
to us, it became a natural extension to build upon this culture of restorative justice, of relational justice, if
you will, and apply that where frankly the stakes are higher.

So we have, over time, created
an infrastructure of what we call community justice centers. And these are actually the places where many of the
volunteers that I mentioned on these reparative boards are organized and trained. So basically, we sub-granted the
first round of money to justice centers to do a design phase.

WOLF:
So did you end up with different programs all across the state?

MIODOWNIK:
Well originally, there was some variation. Yeah. And to some degree, there’s still some. One community adopted a
mentoring approach. But several other locations began to get excited about a model that was coming out of Toronto
called COSA.

COSA stands for Circle of Support and Accountability. And basically, some folks
up in Toronto began working with sex offenders who had maxed their sentences and were being released with no support
whatsoever or no accountability for that matter either. And so, the COSA model is rooted in the notion of “no more
victims”. And the COSA methodology is rooted in a blending of accountability and support.

Again,
this goes back to some pretty basic restorative principles that say if you provide a lot of support for somebody,
i.e., encouragement, positivity, but accountability so direct limit setting, having to answer for, you know, in this
case your whereabouts or your behaviors. Then you’re into an area that has the greatest potential for effecting positive
change.

WOLF: So how has it played in Vermont? How many of these
teams, these COSA teams do you have, and are they, in fact, working with sex offenders?

MIODOWNIK:
We didn’t restrict them just to sex offenders although we definitely worked with many sex offenders.
But we took a look at just what was the level of connectivity that these folks have when they’re coming back
to a place of very few connections. That was the main kind of driver of whether or not it made sense to invest that
type of volunteer resource.

Basically, about 50 individuals who came out during 2005 through
2007 were involved for at least a year. Out of that original 50 most, over at least a year period, were very successful.

Guys who had come in and out many times before were staying out far longer than they ever had.
Those who were re-incarcerated were re-incarcerated for really harm reductions behaviors and I actually think that
this is one of the best things that COSA is doing, frankly. They preempt the more severe offending behavior by virtue
of their knowledge and relationship to the offender so that if the guy has a condition that he can’t drink but goes
out and violates, he may tell his COSA “I went out, you know, I had beers last night.” Or they may start asking him
questions that yield that information. And that’s actionable information.

There is no secret
kept between the “core member,” who’s the offender, if you will, and the volunteer. So people have been but back
in jail but not because they went out and reoffended, but rather because they began to engage in the behaviors that
had, at another point, may have very well led to a re-offense. And that’s how you create no more victims.

WOLF:
Do the COSAs still exist now that the grant money has long expired?

MIODOWNIK:
Well, yes, several of the justice centers had very robust programs and coordinators that were hired, who ultimately
were not able to stay on. Several other programs were still develop COSAs for one or two offenders who they just
feel it’s the right thing to do, and even though they’re not being supplementally resourced for it, they, frankly,
have the knowhow and the volunteer base to do it.

WOLF: Well, let
me ask you. It seems to me one of the big advantages of the program is that you have volunteers who are doing a lot
of the work.

MIODOWNIK: Absolutely.

WOLF:
So where’s the cost? I mean why can’t – why isn’t this more easy to replicate or sustain beyond an initial startup
grant period?

MIODOWNIK: What we found is that you really do ideally
need a singular coordinator who really could work effectively between the volunteer world and the corrections world.

WOLF: So the cost is the staff person who’s there to support the
COSA, the volunteers who are making up this team of support and accountability.

MIODOWNIK:
Yup. And you know, for the cost of what it takes to incarcerate one person a year, that’s what we would actually
get, you know, frankly, that $50,000 will get us a full-time coordinator, who can really kind of tread both of these
waters very effectively.

WOLF: Right. And hopefully, prevent, who
knows how many countless repeat crimes.

MIODOWNIK: Oh, yeah. The
math is a no-brainer when you do it. Yup.

WOLF: So give me a sense.
I mean we sort of ran out of time, but I would like to get a very quick sense of what it is like for a volunteer
who’s participating on a COSA team. I mean here’s someone who’s actually volunteering to develop a relationship with
someone who, for instance, might have sexually abused a child.

MIODOWNIK:
Yes.

WOLF: What does that consist of? I mean is it like “Come on
over to my house for dinner?” Or is it just, “I’ll drop by once a month with a checklist and make sure that you are
following a curfew or thus and such?” I mean how intimate do they get and what is the relationship like?

MIODOWNIK:
You know, I think like in any relationship, Rob, it progresses and they probably set the typical boundaries.

One
of the strengths of this model is the strong connection back to corrections and back to the probation or parole officer.
So a volunteer might think “hey, you know, I’ve been working with John for eight months. You know, my wife and I
would like to have him over for dinner.” Again, going back to the coordinator—they’d probably run that through the
coordinator. The coordinator will call the probation officer and say “what do you think of that?”

And
you know, we talked about sex offenders a little bit before. Sex offenders, you know, broad topic. To begin with,
there’s lots of typologies and a lot of MOs, if you will. So depending on a specific offender, something like “come
on over for dinner” may be a no-go because, yeah, you know, sometimes there’s somebody who lives in that house
that fits the original victim profile or it may not be a problem at all.

But basically, what’s
happening is that a personal relationship is being developed through reciprocity. Our volunteers have had tremendous,
tremendous experiences. I mean I think it’s a testament to the strength of the volunteers that several are still
doing this, like I said, even though we haven’t had a full-time coordinator so that the directors themselves have
taken over that coordination responsibility in some cases. But people tend to really – people who signed up for it
get a lot out of it.

WOLF: And just to be clear, I mean we’re talking
about teams here, so people aren’t being asked to have a one-on-one relationship with people. There’s a team of people,
of volunteers working together with one offender.

MIODOWNIK: Yes.
Usually, a COSA consists of at least three and sometimes about three to five individuals. Now sometimes within that
structure, maybe just one of them will get together with that core member for coffee or something like that. But
the primary structure is that they all get together as a group.

And they start that before the
person comes out ideally. That’s no small detail, too. There’s also just some public information too that we do,
Rob, which is the fact that people have to come out. And you know, like it or not, over 92 percent of people, I think,
nationally who are in prison are coming out of those prisons, right? So you can only be an ostrich for so long before
one of these folks is going to be your neighbor.

And at that point, are you better off knowing
them and having them care about what you think? The answer, you know, ultimately for many people in Vermont is yes.

WOLF: And Derek, if people want to find out more about what you’re
doing in Vermont, where can they go?

MIODOWNIK: Go on to the Vermont
Department of Corrections website, doc.vermont.gov. Now that doesn’t have any www in front of it. It’s just http
or double backslash.

WOLF: Okay. Well, thanks so much, Derek. I
appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.

MIODOWNIK: It’s my
pleasure. Thank you very much, Rob.

WOLF: I have been speaking with
Derek Miodownik who is the restorative systems administrator for the Vermont Department of Corrections. I am Rob
Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation, www.courtinnovation.org.

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Legendary entertainer Harry Belafonte congratulates graduates of the Harlem Parole Reentry Court for satisfying
the program’s rigorous requirements.

ROBERT V. WOLF:
The 10^th graduation of the Harlem Parole Reentry Court featured a special guest.

HARRY
BELAFONTE: I was born in Harlem. I grew up in Harlem. I’m in my 82^nd year of
life and I’m still alive.

(APPLAUSE)

WOLF: That
was Harry Belafonte, singer, actor, and activist as he congratulated the Reentry Court’s graduates on satisfying
the program’s rigorous requirements.

BELAFONTE: And I am grateful,
very grateful to be here to meet you for the first time. You bring a gift. It is my responsibility to wrap my arms
around your gift, to make this program, this courtroom, all of the people you see here, feel that they have been
rewarded in the investment they make to get people to come out of the incarceration system.

WOLF:
The Harlem Parole Reentry Court helps parolees returning from incarceration make the transition from life in prison
to responsible citizenship. The court, housed in the Harlem Community Justice Center, and operated in cooperation
with the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services and the Division of Parole, links parolees to a wide
range of social services. To promote increased accountability, participants are required to return to the Justice
Center frequently to meet with case managers and parole officers and appear before and administrative law judge who
closely monitors their compliance with court orders. Judge Grace Bernstein outlined some of the graduates’ accomplishments.

JUDGE GRACE BERNSTEIN: You have really accomplished major things. At some point
within yourself, you have decided that you wanted to move on with your life. You have been able to stay away from
the lure of easy money, the lure of drugs—

WOLF: In addition to being
a top selling singer, Emmy and Grammy winner, Belafonte’s long been an outspoken advocate for many causes. He was
active in the civil rights movement, he served as a Goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, he’s helped to raise money and
awareness across Africa about AIDS, poverty, and the needs of children. Closer to home, he makes regular visits to
prisoners in Sing Sing.

BELAFONTE: I am very much engaged in the
criminal justice system, and I got involved with the politics of America. I got involved with racism and became an
activist. And in that activism, I saw what was happening to us in the justice system. So I figured I’d focus on that.

WOLF: Belafonte told those assembled in the courtroom at the Harlem Community
Justice Center on 121^st Street about some of the hardships he faced growing up in that very
neighborhood.

BELAFONTE: I was a high school dropout. I never finished
high school. As a matter of fact, when I left high school I could hardly read or write. The compelling circumstances
and the opportunity to meet people who are indigenous to my community, who have done a lot with their lives, gave
me a chance to see alternatives.

WOLF: Other speakers at the graduation
included Program Director John Megawl, who described some of the challenges the reentry court’s graduates had overcome.

JOHN MEGAW: Our ceremony tonight is about 17 men who have made changes and
make decisions every day since they were released from prison that will allow them to remain free and enjoy the rest
of their freedom. But not everyone who started our program has made it. Some are back upstate thinking about bed-check
or writing a letter home. I wish they could be here with us. But for these men, it has meant returning from a series
of correctional facilities upstate, often after many years of incarceration, figuring out where to live, how to afford
the rent, how to find a job when you have a broken work history, staying away from drugs and alcohol, building relationships
with your children, your brothers and sisters, and your mother and father.

WOLF:
As they handed out graduation certificates, parole officers Devon Oliver and Carmen Levine spoke movingly about the
specific achievements of the participants, including the jobs they’d found, apartments they’d located, and their
studious observance of curfews and other rules.

CARMEN LEVINE: This
is a special group because a lot of you have shown me that, you know, you’ve taken a lot of initiatives. A lot of
you have gotten jobs, a lot of you have gone back to school, which is wonderful.

WOLF:
That was the voice of Parole Officer Levine at the 10^th graduation ceremony of the Harlem
Parole Reentry Court, which took place on September 1, 2009, and I’m Rob Wolf, director of Communications at the
Center for Court Innovation. For more information about the Center for Court Innovation or the Harlem Parole Reentry
Court, visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org.

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West Huddleston, CEO of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, talks about his group’s new
web site, why the nation’s 2,300-plus drug courts reach only 10 percent of the people they’re designed
to help, and what’s next on the horizon for the drug court movement.

ROBERT
V. WOLF: Hi. My name is Rob Wolf and I’m director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation.
Today I have the pleasure of talking with West Huddleston who is the executive director of the National Association
of Drug Court Professionals.

WEST HUDDLESTON: Thanks, Rob, for the
opportunity.

WOLF: I thought maybe we’d start off talking about
the new website for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals. The address is www.allrise.org.
HUDDLESTON:
That’s right: allrise.org.

WOLF: What’s the thinking behind the
name and behind the new look for the website?

HUDDLESTON: Well,
the short story is although I’ve worked here at NADCP for the last 11 years, I’ve never – until three years ago when
I took the helm as the CEO, I was really not put in a position to sell drug courts to the general public.

When
I became CEO three years ago, I realized that those two words “drug court” or even if you put “treatment” in the
middle, “drug treatment court,” it still sells a problem; it doesn’t sell a solution. And it basically creates a
whole lot of questions.

So what I sought out to do is to find a public brand, if you will: if
our industry brand is drug court, you know, what would be a brand for the general public that would sell the solution?
And it struck me about a year ago that the two words “all rise” really do that for us.

I was
sitting at a drug court graduation one night in Jackson, Mississippi, and as the bailiff bellowed out those two words,
it struck me that those—that “all rise”—really carries with it an implicit and solemn promise that drug courts will
help those that come before it.

WOLF: You’ve always been an advocacy
organization to some extent, but are you putting advocacy and sort of promotion of the drug court concept more front
and center than in the past?

HUDDLESTON: Yeah, Rob. You’re hitting
it right on the head. You know, we’re 20 years old; drug courts are 20 years old. And the National Association of
Drug Court Professionals, which started in 1994, did exactly what its name implies, which was to focus on professionals,
focus on the courts, change the system from within.

What I wanted to do when I became CEO is,
in addition to that, which we will always do as a primary function of NADCP, but in addition to that, you know, it’s
my belief that drug courts are deeply under-utilized, are the most effective strategy for drug-using offenders and
need to be put within reach of every American in need.

And so, if we’re only serving 120,000
at any given time, and there are 1.2 million who need it, we need to tell our story to the general public. We need
to tell our story to the media. We need to tell our story better on Capitol Hill and in state capitol buildings.

WOLF: Before we continue, I guess I’m taking it for granted that
people listening know what a drug court is. But maybe in the simplest terms, could you just explain what the typical
drug court model is?

HUDDLESTON: Sure. In essence, someone who is
charged with a drug-driven offense, that could be anything from drug possession to burglary, theft, even drunk driving,
those types of charges can be pled into a drug court.

And in essence, are objective is to get
people into treatment quickly and to keep them long enough for treatment to actually benefit them. We hold them accountable
by requiring them to come before a judge on a weekly or bi-weekly basis at first, and then it’s titrated down to
maybe monthly or quarterly. And the participants are rewarded for doing well and sanctioned for not living up to
their obligations.

WOLF: You know, with all the research that has
shown how effective drug courts are in reducing recidivism, I wonder why you think drug courts have sort of hit a
wall. I mean they really grew very quickly, expanded to many, to all states in the United States and are spreading
internationally now.

And yet, as you say, they’re reaching only 10 percent of the potential population
who could benefit. And their growth seems to have slowed and I wonder what factors you think have played a role in
that. I wonder if the current economic crisis is having any impact. If you think the Obama administration policies
might have a positive impact down the road. What are your thoughts on this issue?

HUDDLESTON:
Well, I think that drug courts definitely stalled. And it was kind of shocking to us in that as the research, as
you said, was coming out in clear fashion that they reduced substance abuse significantly, they reduced recidivism,
and they saved money.

The funding for drug courts at the federal level went from 40, for instance,
at the Department of Justice, $40 million really all the way down to right at $10 million just three years ago. The
economy coupled with the federal investment dropping really hurt drug court’s ability to take on more clients, take
on more participants.

So what do we look like in the future? Drug court funding started to hit
back up under the former administration and certainly because of Congress. And funding last year was restored at
the federal level—went from about $10 million to $15.3 million two years ago. Then it was increased to $40 million
last year. And this year where we stand this afternoon, drug court funding at the Department of Justice, $64 million
which is a historical high.

And there’s another roughly $24 million at the Center for Substance
Abuse Treatment at SAMHSA. In the president’s budget for next year, it even looks better. The president requested
a total of about $120 million for drug courts and other problem-solving courts at the Department of Justice and at
CSAT.

I think that the new administration and the Congress in place recognizes that these courts
return a significant cost benefit. And by investing upfront, we’re going to see, you know, some significant return
anywhere from $3.36 to $12 depending on what variables you count for every dollar invested.

So
yeah, I think the future looks very good for drug courts and other problem-solving courts like mental health courts
and domestic violence courts and all the other types of courts that, you know, your own organization really helped
us think through.

WOLF: I’m wondering about all the research that’s
gone into drug courts. And we do some of that here and we also research other problem-solving courts. One thing some
of our researchers are trying to do are isolate some of the factors. Is it the role of the judge and the interaction
the judge has with the defendant that is one of the key ingredients? Is it the monitoring? Is it the kind of treatment,
and sort of trying to hone the model and find out what are the key elements. And I wonder as elements are identified
as being paramount or the most effective, I wonder if the money that’s coming in can be spent in such array to sort
of invest strategically in those things that work best.

HUDDLESTON:
Well, you know, we think a little bit differently about it. There was a remarkable report published March of last
year by NPC Research out of Portland, Oregon—So that’s Dr. Mike Finigan and Dr. Shannon Carey. This report explored
the 10 key components of drug courts which were written and published in 1997. And it is what defines a drug court
from any other court, distinguishes our model.

And it’s a comparative study of 18 drug courts
on, you know, practices, outcomes and costs. And what that study tells us is that the 10 key components, the courts
that follow the 10 key components do far better in terms of outcomes and costs than the drug courts that don’t.

And
so, what this study has taught us and what we’re, in turn, teaching the field is that you can’t water down the 10
key components. If you do, you will start significantly losing your impact.

WOLF:
Are they saying that all the components are equal though? I mean if someone has limited resources, and they want
to do eight of the components perhaps, are you saying that they shouldn’t think that way, the should… ?

HUDDLESTON:
That’s right. If you want good, if you want extraordinary outcomes, maintain the 10 key components. I am not convinced
that you can select, you know, drug testing, regular drug testing and treatment, which are two of the 10 key components.
I’m not convinced you can take those two key components and distill down or import them into everyday court practice
and expect to have very good outcomes.

What drug courts need to do is reorient themselves from
low-level offenders to a high-risk, high-need population meaning people with long histories of substance abuse, long
histories of criminality, people who really need this level of intervention because it’s very intensive. So you know,
I think our best outcomes according to NIDA’s research that Doug Marlowe published, you know, really looked at who
fares best in drug court. And the clear answer to that are individuals who need it the most, high risk-high need
people, people who failed out of treatment multiple times, people who have a long, you know, criminal record, those
are the people who do the best in our model.

WOLF: Are a lot of
drug courts avoiding that population for whatever reason?

HUDDLESTON:
Well, they certainly did at the beginning. I mean it’s, you know, much more politically palatable to take low-level
offenders and low-risk offenders, first time possession charges. That’s where drug courts started 20 years ago.

WOLF:
So I mean it’s an interesting irony I guess that the population that initially seemed most attractive politically,
drug courts are least effective with.

HUDDLESTON: Yeah. I mean that
is a 100 percent accurate statement according to the literature, according to the research.

You
know, I think the good news is drug court professionals are in that business to make a difference. And when they
were introduced to this research, I believe it was three years ago, maybe two and a half years ago, we really saw
a shift in population, in a drug court population, target population.

I think the tough road
is still ahead of us because assessment for risk and need is not done before disposition typically. Typically, disposition,
the court decides on what happens to the offender, and then the assessment kicks in. Well, it’s too late. You really
don’t know who you have sitting in front of you. If you’re really going to have what we know as evidence-based sentencing,
we’ve got to do assessment upfront at pre-trial level before the court decides or the prosecutor decides where the
individual goes.

WOLF: So you’re saying …

HUDDLESTON:
That’s a very radical change.

WOLF: But you’re saying right now
the problem is that quite often they’re saying “You’ll get a year of treatment; okay, and this is the jail alternative
if you don’t complete it. OK, agreed. Now let’s assess you if you really need a year or not”?

HUDDLESTON:
That’s exactly what happens. It happens as a result of, you know, plea bargain. And it happens because the justice
system tends to create eligibility criteria, not just for drug court but, you know, for DTAP, or any – for – pick
your alternative.

WOLF: You’re talking about other alternative sentencing
programs for drug treatment.

HUDDLESTON: Other alternative sentencing,
even probation, OK? Eligibility is based on the crime, not on the person. So assessment is thought of as kind of
“what are their clinical needs after we figure out legally where they belong?”

And you know,
we’re really wanting to see the justice system do it almost opposite of that, that individuals need to be assessed
for what they need and what is their risk and then make an appropriate decision on where they go.

WOLF:
That sounds like it’s going to be awfully hard to bring out or bring a change around that.

HUDDLESTON:
You know, it will be; it will be tough. But you know, we’ve added a million prison beds in this country in the last
20 years.

I mean it doesn’t make sense what we’re doing now. So I mean we’re – I think we’re
at a real tipping point. If not now, when will this tipping point occur, you know, where there really does need to
be some radical change in terms of who really does need to go to prison and jail versus who needs to go to a community
alternative and which community alternative?

WOLF: I appreciate
your taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I’ve been speaking with West Huddleston, the CEO of the National
Association of Drug Court Professionals, which can be found now on the web at www.allrise.org.

HUDDLESTON:
Yeah. It’s a real pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on.

WOLF:
Good luck with your work.

HUDDLESTON: Very good. Thanks so much.

WOLF: I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for
Court Innovation, which can be found on the web at www.courtinnovation.org.

July 2009

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Ronald B. Adrine, the administrative and presiding judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court talks about differentiating
between defendants who are habitual batterers and defendants who are one-time perpetrators (such as those acting
in self defense).

ROBERT V. WOLF: How, I’m Rob Wolf, director
of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. Today I’m speaking with Ronald B. Adrine, who is the administrative
and presiding Judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. And he’s here in New York at the Center for Court Innovation
at our open house, visiting some of our projects and meeting people involved with domestic violence courts and domestic
violence dockets around the country to share ideas and share best practices. Welcome to New York and the Center for
Court Innovation.

JUDGE RONALD ADRINE: Thanks, Rob. Thanks for having
me.

WOLF: I wanted to ask you about some of the interesting work
you’re doing in Cleveland. I thought we could start with how you first got involved with the dedicated domestic
violence docket. I understand that you volunteered to assume leadership in the docket when it was first created.
Maybe you can tell me about that.

ADRINE: Well I’ve been active
in the area of trying to come up with effective interventions revolving around domestic violence issues since the
early 1990’s, and actually before that. I’ve been on the bench since 1982 and have had domestic violence as
part of my docket ever since. Beginning in the early 90’s I’ve been working at it on a national level. So towards
the end of the 90’s an opportunity came to Cleveland to receive some money from the federal government to put together
what, for all intents and purposes, was a vertical prosecution pilot program. The police and prosecutor’s office,
as well as the Witness Victim Service Center in Cleveland, had all agreed to handle misdemeanor violations of the
domestic violence laws in such a way that the same detectives, the same prosecutors, the same advocates would all
service a certain percentage of cases. So when I heard that they were gonna do that, I volunteered outside the grant
to allow them to have all of those cases to be heard on my docket because otherwise they would have gone to 12 judges
throughout the courthouse and it would have just been maddening to try to keep up with the whole lot. So that’s
how it started.

WOLF: So I understand that recently, the program
has been expanded and you’ve added to it an interesting element—the deferred judgment initiative, which as far
as I know is unique to domestic violence courts and domestic violence dockets around the country. So maybe you could
explain to me what that is.

ADRINE: The deferred judgment portion
of the docket came about as a result of some conversations I’d had with a lot of people. I’ve worked in
the advocacy community, as well as in the prosecution and, and the police community, which pointed out that there
were people who were being arrested, charged, and convicted of domestic violence who clearly were not batterers.
And in my mind, the domestic violence laws in the United States were put together specifically—not to reach every
person that involve themselves in violence in an interpersonal relationship—but those people who were using violence
for purposes of control and power. A lot of other people get swept in because of the definitions that are used across
the country of what constitutes domestic violence. So, for instance, if I know that a person that I’m involved with
has been building up towards striking me, and they come towards me with their fist balled up, I might pick up a pot
and I might strike them before they strike me. Technically speaking, I’m guilty of domestic violence, even if
there are years that have gone on when I’ve just taken it. So knowing that there are some people who are out there
who fall in those—that kind of a category—the real challenge is to try to look at every domestic violence situation
and determine whether or not we’re dealing with someone who is truly a batterer, or whether we’re dealing
with someone who is reacting to stimulus that they know is going to result in their own injury.

WOLF:
How do you get the knowledge you need to differentiate?

ADRINE: What
we did was we created a series of screens, beginning with the police, who are the first responders. Asking that they
fill out a very short kind of checklist questionnaire that would identify whether or not somebody is likely to have
been the primary physical aggressor. The prosecutor can then compare what they got against the police report and
make a second screen as to whether or not the right person has been charged. If they decide that the wrong person
was charged, they can indicate that this person should not be the primary physical aggressor and move on. Their lawyer
has the opportunity to agree with the police, and the prosecutor could ask that the court take a look at this situation
and see whether or not their client is eligible for the deferred judgment initiative. We then give it to the probation
department, which conducts yet another screen to make a determination as to whether or not this is an appropriate
person. And then they give it to the court, and the court goes to the final screen. There’s only a small number
of cases that are going to have all the predicates on the front end that will cause them to get a second look past
the police department’s initial determination.

WOLF: I see.

ADRINE: So it’s only those cases where you know, there’s no prior
history of violence, there is no history of emotional battering that we’re able to determine. There is no history
of, of severe problems in the individual’s background, because all of those things are done by the probation
department at the final check to make sure that we’ve got people who are unlikely to engage in the kind of conduct
moving forward. Because what we’re trying to do with that group is to save them the types of problems that they
otherwise would face if they are convicted of domestic violence. That is, they could be prevented from engaging in
certain kinds of occupations, like healthcare. They might be prevented from getting certain kinds of licensing and
bonding in certain states. They may be cut off from certain kinds of federal assistance. We’ve got a list of
close to 20 different collateral damages that can be done to individuals convicted of domestic violence. So if somebody
is a batterer, I don’t have a problem with that individual having to deal with all of that. But if you’ve
got somebody who really is not a batterer—and worst case scenario is really a victim, who on one occasion has decided
to fight back, I’ve got a problem with that individual having to suffer that long list of collateral damages.

WOLF: And is it always—do they always fit that category, if they do pop up
with the program? That they were predominantly a victim, except in this situation?

ADRINE:
It might be a situation, for instance, where you’ve got a couple of folks that were involved in an argument
that actually got out of hand. Where—just to use as an example—one person pushed another, maybe against a wall, and
as a result, a picture fell and there’s a cut on the head. Okay. Bad business, no doubt about it. But one shove,
resulted in an injury, technically guilty of domestic violence, actually guilty of domestic violence under the way
that the law is posited. But is this person likely to engage in that kind of conduct again? Well, maybe yes, maybe
no, but that’s the reason to do the scrutiny on the front end, rather than letting this person go all the way
down through the system and ultimately end up with this kind of conviction. In Ohio, for instance, once they have
a domestic violence conviction, you know, if it’s for a first degree or misdemeanor or higher, they can’t
come back into court later and ask that that record be sealed or expunged. So they’re stuck with that record,
you know, forever more. So that being the case, I think that we want to be careful as to who we put in. And we’ve
been extremely careful. I think in the close to two years that we’ve had this deferred judgment initiative,
only about four people out of the several hundred that we’ve seen have qualified for placement.

WOLF:
You’ve made a persuasive argument that there are clearly people who would benefit from this and who should benefit
from this. I wonder why it’s not more common that we hear about this, more—programs like this, you know, trying
to make that differentiation between types of defendants.

ADRINE:
In the last two years, there has been an awful lot of discussion, particularly in the advocacy community, but I think
also in other parts of law enforcement and the criminal justice community about the context of violence between intimate
partners. And the one constant in all that is how difficult it is to make these determinations. And I think that
the reason why you’re not seeing efforts to do this is that a lot of people are saying, “We don’t think
we could make those determinations.” The thing that I guess I was doing with regard to this program, and it’s
the thing I’ve had to explain to judges who have followed me going in, is that a program like the deferred judgment
initiative is an exclusive program, not an inclusive program. When I’m looking at individuals, I’m looking for
reasons to put them into the regular criminal justice process, not reasons to put them into the deferred judgment
initiative. This deferred judgment initiative should only be for a limited number of people who we are confident
that we have screened in such a way so that within the parameters of human fallibility, we are pretty sure that they
are not going to engage in any more violent conduct. If we can’t say that almost to the high standard of beyond
a reasonable doubt, then they shouldn’t be placed in the program.

WOLF:
Let me ask you just about your experience here in New York. What have you found most valuable over the last couple
of days here?

ADRINE: As always, it’s an enlightening experience
because the things that you learn here are cutting edge. Yesterday we were looking at Integrated Domestic Violence
Courts, it was really interesting to see how both criminal and civil cases can actually be melded together and the
issues involving one family be heard by one judge, in a way that allows for a constriction of the number of court
appearances, and which allows that one judge to know just about everything that he or she needs to know about the
dynamics of that family to make good judgments, not only in the criminal case, but also in matters having to do with
custody, having to do with the matrimonial thing—that is, divorce—and all in one shot. It’s really kind of phenomenal.
And the complexity of trying to put that together in a way to make it work, and the dedication of the judges and
the other court actors, from the public defender’s office to the prosecuting attorney’s office, to the
court officers themselves, it’s just—it’s breathtaking. So I mean it’s been a really eye-opening experience.

WOLF: I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. This is Rob Wolf, I’ve
been speaking with Ronald B. Adrine, who is the administrative and presiding judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court.
I hope you have a safe trip home.

ADRINE: Thanks, Rob.

WOLF: It’s been a pleasure.

ADRINE:
Same here.

June 2009

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