Community Courts and the Fight Against Quality-of-Life Crimes
by Brian Gilbert, Summer Intern with Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice
On June 27th of this year, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported here, five-term Alderman Michael Zalewski proposed a bill to raise the fines for adult graffiti taggers from $750 to $2,000, and to mandate a minimum of three days in jail or up to 2,500 hours of community service. Moreover, since the City hearing officers who currently oversee graffiti cases are unable to sentence offenders to jail, Zalewski seeks to expedite the process by routing vandalism cases directly into the Circuit Court of Cook County.
The Alderman’s reasoning for the change is fairly straightforward:
“If some of these kids sit in jail for a few days instead of getting hit with a fine they never pay, they’ll think twice about doing it again,” he stated after a Father’s Day mass for the families of fallen police officers.
Considering the Cook County Jail is already nearing its 10,000-person capacity and its offender recidivism rate has reached the 50% mark, there is no worse time to continue piling on sentencing mandates for nonviolent misdemeanor crimes.
How can we be more efficient and more effective in handling low-level offenders?
In the early 1990s, a series of jurisdictions, beginning with Midtown Manhattan, started to implement problem-solving and community-based methods in order to disrupt the revolving door of misdemeanor offenders. Since then, over three-dozen jurisdictions throughout the Country have replicated what has come to be known as the community court model.
Community courts can shorten the time from arrest to arraignment to as little as 19 hours, meaning graffiti taggers can be sentenced to community service–i.e. removing their own graffiti–within 24 hours of offending.
By minimizing jail time and transportation needs, community courts are able to cost-effectively devote more time to more cases, while also accounting for the social idiosyncrasies of different neighborhoods within the city. Moreover, research has shown that community courts can improve compliance rates by around 25% while maintaining recidivism rates equal to or less than the traditional criminal justice system.
These courts are strategically placed in or near neighborhoods with high rates of crime. They typically contain a dedicated judge, prosecutor, and courtroom staff, and often times a dedicated public defender, police team, and group of local community service agencies. With the courtroom closer to the crime, offenders can receive more face-time with the judge and their attorney, and swift access to a variety of nearby community services.
Finally, community stakeholders (residents and business owners) are encouraged to create an ongoing dialogue with community prosecutors and community probation officers to determine which crimes and which areas of their neighborhood should receive attention. Prosecutors, policemen and judges are also encouraged to attend local neighborhood meetings, and make their presence known to the community.
There is reason to believe these methods will work in Chicago. Before Midtown Manhattan implemented its Court, it was dealing with a problem similar to the one faced by Circuit Court of Cook County today: a gang culture in a populous and ethnically diverse city, based around drugs and prostitution, had led a small group of offenders to commit a swarm of violent and nonviolent crimes. Today, using the community court model, Midtown Manhattan has been almost entirely restored. And while New York and Chicago each present unique social and political issues, community courts are shown to have adapted to a diverse range of cities like Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Seattle.
This summer Chicago has seen very public (and very offensive) quality-of-life crimes, but hasty mandatory sentencing initiatives are not the solution. Instead, the crime fighting organizations of Chicago should recognize the repercussions of the “tough on crime” mentality, and start seriously considering options for how to reform the misdemeanor courts in Chicago through tried and tested community-based initiatives.
Click here for access to the Alderman’s amendment to the City’s vandalism code.