But the Justice Center isn’t only about punishment. The Justice Center also links offenders to treatment—drug treatment, mental health treatment, counseling. The prosecutors at the Red Hook Community Justice Center rely heavily on creative sentencing strategies and non-traditional approaches to crime. Prosecutors work with Justice Center staff to identify offenders’ problems and to craft sentences that reflect the concerns of the victim and the needs of the community while also contemplating educational and rehabilitative needs of the defendant.
The Justice Center has a clinic onsite that performs assessments, makes treatment recommendations, and even offers direct services to offenders, victims, and anyone in the community who comes in seeking help. Sentences frequently include intensive drug or alcohol treatment, mediation, batterer’s programs, anger management classes, GED classes, youth groups, vehicular programs, “John School” and more. At any given time, the Justice Center monitors over 100 defendants in court-mandated treatment, usually for low-level drug offenses. And the Justice Center can offer these services at low or no extra cost to the justice system because it works closely with community-based partners: city agencies, nonprofit treatment agencies, and other social service providers.
Red Hook is also a multi-service court. It hears housing cases and family cases—and it brings those cases, along with criminal cases—before a single judge. Because there’s only one judge, that judge gets to understand the community’s problems and gets to know the people who live there. He often attends community meetings, speaks at civic events, and helps serve as a catalyst for solving people’s problems.
In addition, the Justice Center created Operation Toolkit, which brings together on a monthly basis representatives from my office, the Police Department, the city Housing Authority, other government agencies, and community groups to discuss neighborhood problems as they arise. The Justice Center’s multi-agency “team” approach represents a radical departure from an old way of doing business—prosecutors’ historically reactive methods of dealing with crime. Prosecutors play an essential role in coordinating activities at the Justice Center and also participate in task forces and community events designed to target crime problems and improve safety.
