Shane Correia

n 1994, Greg Berman was hired as the lead planner for the Red Hook Community Justice Center. The following are excerpts from his Planning Diary, which he wrote as a record of how he negotiated some of the challenges of early planning, including community needs assessment, fundraising and program design. To read the entire document, click here. Siting a new project is almost always a tricky business, particularly in a city like New York, where real estate is an extremely precious—and political—commodity. Thankfully, Red Hook offered one major advantage in this regard. Because of the dramatic population and business flight out of the neighborhood over the preceding 25 years, Red Hook has a number of vacant and abandoned properties. After investigating all of the city-owned sites in the neighborhood—and inspecting several privately-held properties as well—eight sites emerged as viable options. Each was close to public transportation and each was large enough to house both a courtroom and social service programs. In an effort to narrow the list further, we organized a bus tour for local community leaders from the Community Board 6 task force. After looking at all of the possibilities, their clear first choice was Visitation School, a vacant parochial school that had closed its doors in the 1970s. Visitation struck their fancy for several reasons. First, it was located in between "the front" and the "the back." In Red Hook parlance, "the front" signifies the public housing projects. "The back" is the area closer to the waterfront, which is composed of single-family row houses that are occupied primarily by Italian and Irish Americans. Visitation, in effect, is situated in neutral territory—it "belongs" to neither the front nor the back. This is an important political consideration in Red Hook.  On an emotional level, many residents were drawn to Visitation because it had once been an important community resource. They looked at the Justice Center as an opportunity to bring back to life a magnificent old building. And magnificent is precisely the word to describe it: built at the turn of the century, Visitation School has the kind of dignified street presence that you might expect from a neighborhood courthouse. And, as it turned out, Catholic Charities, which owned the building, was willing to lease it to us for a reasonable price and play an active role in making the project happen. End of story, right? Wrong. Visitation was not without its drawbacks. Although the structure itself was in good shape, the interior was a disaster. Asbestos and lead paint were major problems. The roof needed to be replaced. None of the windows were worth saving. It took several months to investigate the building properly—conducting tests, analyzing results, meeting with engineers and construction managers, preparing preliminary architectural drawings. After all was said and done, we got the bad news: it would cost several million dollars to renovate the building.

In 1994, Greg Berman was hired as the lead planner for the Red Hook Community Justice Center. The following are excerpts from his Planning Diary, which he wrote as a record of how he negotiated some of the challenges of early planning, including community needs assessment, fundraising and program design. To read the entire document, click here. Many good ideas founder on the shoals of poor fundraising. No program, no matter how well-intentioned or creative, can survive without adequate resources. I won’t lie about this: raising money for the Justice Center was not easy. There were days, even months, when I thought that the project would wither on the vine as we waited for grant proposals to be reviewed. The initial planning of the Justice Center was underwritten by small grants from a couple of sources—the Fund for the City of New York, the Schubert Foundation, the Scherman Foundation and, in what might have been a first in this country, the local housing authority. While this was enough to keep me employed, it was not nearly enough to support a multi-million dollar renovation project. The question quickly became: where do we find that kind of dough? The answer came at the end of 1996. After several months of conversation, site visits and proposal writing, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance agreed to pay for the soft costs associated with renovating the Visitation School—primarily fees for architects, engineers and renovation managers. With this money in hand, we were able to make a much stronger case to the Mayor’s Office in New York City. Red Hook all of a sudden had attracted the interest of the federal government, which had shown its commitment to the project by making a two-year, $1.2 million grant. Would the city step up to the plate as well? The decision was made at the highest possible levels: New York State Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye and New York City Mayor Rudy W. Giuliani were personally involved in the conversations. Finally, after more than two years of reaching out to the community, building the concept and developing the site, in December 1996 the City announced that it would cover the full cost of renovating the school.

Before developing a community court project, planners need to define the major problems a neighborhood faces. This article breaks down that process into six steps. 1. Ask Residents What They Think Purpose: To get an understanding of the community, and the issues residents feel are important; and to identify community assets that could help in developing solutions. How to do it: The basic techniques of community engagement—stakeholder interviews, focus groups, attending community meetings, administering community surveys—will help you get the information you need. Some helpful tips are: Engage a broad spectrum of local voices, including youth. Seek out those with special knowledge of the community, in addition to the average citizen. Ask people to identify possible solutions as well as problems. Find out what people think of the criminal justice system. Make firsthand observations and assessments of the neighborhood. 2. Gather Hard Data About the Problem Purpose: To obtain quantitative data that will sharpen the understanding of problems identified by community members.  How to do it: Relevant numbers are available from an array of sources, including the United States Census Bureau, the state and local court systems, police departments, district attorneys' offices, welfare agencies, departments of education, health and social services, housing authorities and other government agencies. You can also collect your own numbers by: Observing court proceedings and recording dispositions over a week or a month to understand how judges respond to particular cases. Polling defendants held prior to arraignment to find out what kind of problems they have. Talk to system insiders who might be able to accurately estimate numbers that are otherwise unavailable. 3. Analyze the Current Response  Purpose: To understand what is working and what is not working with the current ways of addressing local problems. Planners must study the current procedures in-depth, identifying weaknesses, gaps in service, inefficiencies and unsatisfactory outcomes. How to do it: You can interview key players in the criminal justice system (police, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, court clerks, probation officers, etc.) and outside the criminal justice system (social service providers, health care staff, etc.) who might have valuable insights. You can also review statistics with system insiders and undertake first-hand observations of key processes. 4. Share Idea with the Community  Purpose: To ensure that all stakeholders understand what problem or set of problems the project will address, and that there is a general consensus that this is the right approach. How to do it: This step not only helps focus the planning effort, but it also demonstrates to the residents that the community is a real partner in the project. You can get the word out by: Drafting a problem statement that can be circulated among key stakeholders. Conducting follow-up community meetings to share what the data revealed. Sending letters to stakeholders. Checking in with key stakeholders by phone. Contacting elected officials and fill them in on what you're doing and learning. 5. Develop Solutions  Purpose: To craft concrete solutions to the local crime and public-safety problems identified by the community and criminal justice stakeholders. How to do it: Once the problem is defined, planners can start brainstorming potential solutions. No doubt some ideas are already in hand. More can be found by talking to system players, such as judges, attorneys, cops, parole and probation officers, court officers and service partners. Ideas often come from other jurisdictions that are handling similar problems in creative ways. Planners should also find out what's been done in the past—what worked, what didn't and why? return to map 6. Monitor Results  Purpose: To study the effectiveness of the project as it moves to implementation and to continue to identify new problems and appropriate solutions on an ongoing basis. How to do it: The most successful projects pursue reflection and self-improvement on a regular basis. This requires collection of data for self-evaluation and can be done a number of ways. Here are some ideas: Survey community members regularly. Form a collaboration with a local university to engage in ongoing research of your project. Devote project resources and personnel to monitoring program results. Develop and maintain on-going communication with the community your project serves through newsletters, formal and informal meetings, and involvement in your program.

 “Talk to everybody. Get the vision of the stakeholders, community boards, the business community, cops, every single block association and everybody in and out of the system.” – Michele Sviridoff, deputy director for research at the Center for Court Innovation Whether it originates out of the local police department, prosecutor’s office, probation department or court system, a community justice project must be tailored to the neighborhood it serves. And since the focus of all community justice projects is solving local crime and public safety problems, one of the foremost tasks for planners is to identify the key problems that the neighborhood in question faces. Planners can go about that in a number of ways, starting with direct outreach to local stakeholders. Planners should talk with both community leaders and a cross-section of average citizens. In addition to individual conversations, focus groups, surveys and attending community meetings are excellent ways to take a community’s pulse. It’s best to ask a broad range of questions, covering general attitudes about the neighborhood and issues related to crime, safety and youths. Planners should also ask people to identify a community’s assets. Planners can round out their picture of the community by walking through the neighborhood. Planners need quantitative data to sharpen their understanding of the issues identified by the community. Planners find it useful to know the number of people in the catchment area; profiles of residents, as well as offenders, including their socio-economic status, ages, level of schooling and employment; types and locations of crimes; types of housing; the annual number of violations, misdemeanor and felony arrests and case outcomes. Once the problems have been clearly defined, planners start generating solutions. By this stage, many good ideas have probably already surfaced; others can be harvested by talking to local members of the criminal justice system, and by turning to other jurisdictions that are handling similar problems in creative ways. For more, read Steps to Defining the Problem, which breaks down the process.