Responding to the Community: Principles for Planning and Creating a Community Court. Bureau of Justice Assistance Bulletin

摘要

For many years an important element has been missing from the criminal justice system. Although courts, police, and prosecutors have become increasingly modernized in recent years, they still often fail to meet the needs of the justice systems primary consumers: the neighborhoods that experience crime and its consequences every day. This problem was first recognized by advocates of community policing, who argued that police officers could address neighborhood crime and disorder more effectively if they established a close relationship with community residents and neighborhood groups.The idea of community justice has since spread to other branches of the justice system including courts, probation departments, prosecutors, and corrections offices. What is community justice. The concept takes many practical forms, but at its core are partnership and problem solving. Community justice is about creating new relationships both within the justice system and with stakeholders in the community such as residents, merchants, churches, and schools, and testing new and aggressive approaches to public safety rather than merely responding to crime.