Shane Correia

Developing a community court is a complex undertaking. By definition, community courts embrace a variety of stakeholders. These include not only the usual suspects like judges, police and prosecutors, but also tenant groups, victims organizations, businesses, schools and block associations. Reaching outside the walls of the justice system to involve new players and create new partnerships complicates both planning and implementation. Among the obstacles that developers of a community court are likely to encounter are: Neighborhood Issues Shifting the focus of criminal justice from case processing to community-mending is easier said than done. While a community's quality of life is eroded by waves of smaller offenses, the justice system does its work one case at a time. That tends to obscure neighborhood-specific patterns. Furthermore, communities are understandably reluctant to accept arrested offenders back onto their streets. While supporting the benefits of community service, neighbors worry that an impersonal justice system won't be sensitive to their concerns about supervision. Discomfort With New Roles While the need to bridge the gap between communities and courts seems obvious, some judges, attorneys and police may believe that greater involvement with the community will compromise their objectivity. In an effort to maintain impartiality, judges have traditionally insulated themselves from the communities and victims affected by the issues they adjudicate, while prosecutors and police have restricted the discretion of front-line attorneys and officers on the beat. In addition, most criminal justice professionals feel too overwhelmed by the daily pressures of their jobs to reach out to the community. They are reluctant to take on new responsibilities when they are unsure they will receive the tools they need to get the job done. Reconciling Disparate Philosophies The underlying assumptions and guiding philosophies of law enforcement and social service differ in fundamental ways. Criminal justice professionals are used to a system of escalating sanctions in which defendants are punished more severely each time they fail; criminal courts are not comfortable giving offenders a second chance. Treatment professionals, on the other hand, expect relapses and consider it critical that clients remain in treatment regardless. Addicts may have to hear the same message several times over before it finally sinks in. The community court's approach can work only if criminal justice and social service professionals are willing to adjust their outlooks and work in a coordinated way. Information Roadblocks Providing timely and accurate information may also prove problematic. Although many criminal justice agencies are automated, their computers are rarely designed for courtroom use. Information managers typically organize and track transactions after they occur, rather than using information to improve the quality of decision-making as it takes place. Also, courtroom decisions often hinge on information maintained by several different agencies—police, the probation department, social service providers, the court—whose computer hardware and software may not be compatible. Finally, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, court clerks, and social service staff each need different sets of information, yet they must all be able to get it from the same system. To make matters worse, criminal justice staff rotate frequently, meaning that any system will constantly confront new users. There is a real need to encourage a greater level of comfort with technology—and a greater sense of community—among the diverse professionals who comprise the criminal justice system. New Family-Related Concerns Architectural innovation doesn't come easily. The space needs of the various criminal justice agencies are often in conflict; correction authorities, police, attorneys, court officers, and judges each have special needs for physical space. The planning of new courthouse space is sure to enliven these ongoing conflicts. And the need to accommodate outsiders, such as community groups and treatment and education professionals, further complicates the process.

While obstacles shouldn't be minimized, they can be overcome if all parties have a commitment to the process and share an understanding of goals and principles. The experiences of the Midtown Community Court, Red Hook Community Justice Center, and Harlem Community Justice Center suggest a number of practical strategies that can assist in the development of any community court project. Early Planning For Community Involvement Before launching the Court, organizers met with scores of block associations, business groups, local political leaders and police officers. These early meetings made it possible for Court planners to identify stakeholders, define existing quality-of-life problems in the neighborhood and articulate specific goals. From these early meetings, organizers built a corps of supporters willing to donate resources including community service supervision, social service staff time and supplies like paint and plantings. The early outreach also made it possible to recruit the Court's community advisory board, which helps identify crime patterns in the neighborhood and potential community service projects while providing feedback on the Court's relationship with the neighborhood. Understanding Victim Concerns Victims expect a lot from courts. They want to see justice done, but what this means depends upon the individual victim. For some, "justice" may mean having their pain acknowledged by the offender, the court system or the community. Others may want courts to rehabilitate the offender and make a concentrated effort to improve the neighborhood conditions that lead to crime. Still others may want offenders to express remorse and take responsibility for the harm they have caused. And some victims will want all of these things. Community court planners will want to make special efforts to understand victim issues. In so doing, they can insure that the community court provides constructive channels for victim involvement and that it offers victims both information and services. Identifying Key Political and Financial Stakeholders A community court project won't get very far without enthusiastic support at the highest levels of both the executive and judicial branches of state and local government. The court's planners can expect to invest significant time and energy explaining the idea and its merits to the governor's office and leaders of the state court system, to the mayor's office, to the local district attorney and the head of the public defenders' office, as well as to judges and the local bar association. Fundraising efforts for the court should take advantage of its capacity to make a visible difference in community life, appealing to local businesses and non-profit groups who stand to benefit directly. Foundations might also welcome the opportunity to help a promising program likely to demonstrate the value of innovation. In addition, community courts are capable of attracting a new audience of potential funders: those interested in economic development. After all, meaningful and lasting economic development rarely takes place in areas where residents, merchants and employees fear for their safety. By addressing neighborhood blight, improving public safety and providing social services, a community court can be a valuable addition to economic development efforts. Businesses, government agencies and foundations with a stake in neighborhood economic development can be a crucial constituency for community court planners. Risk Minimization Communities won't be comfortable with community service, and judges and prosecutors won't utilize it, without some attention to risk assessment. Common sense dictates that violent felony offenders are probably not good candidates for community service. At the Midtown Community Court, only misdemeanor offenders are sentenced to community service. Work projects are classified as high, medium or low supervision. Each offender is matched to the appropriate level of supervision based on a review of his or her criminal history, background and crime of arrest. Offenders with more extensive criminal histories and those considered less likely to complete their sentences are assigned to projects that take place in the courthouse (building maintenance, staffing a bulk mailing operation); those considered lesser risks are assigned to more visible outdoor projects (cleaning graffiti, painting fire hydrants and streetlights). Short-term Interventions A community court's social service program necessarily involves more than placements in long-term drug treatment. Since many criminal court defendants are low-level offenders who face little or no jail time, the court must set up punishments that are proportional to the defendant's record and crime. The Midtown Community Court created an array of short-term interventions that take place in the courthouse itself. They include: A four day treatment readiness group that introduces defendants without serious records to drug treatment and prepares them for long-term help. Counseling group sessions for prostitutes; the short course includes basic health screening and a meeting with an outreach counselor who offers support for women who want to escape their pimps and life on the streets. Job readiness sessions that put chronically unemployed defendants together with employment counselors who make them aware of job training or placement programs. While the immediate goals of these short-term interventions are modest, the Court has already seen hundreds of defendants use them as stepping stones toward changing their lives, many of them returning voluntarily for continued counseling after completing their sentences. Beyond the Courtroom Many quality-of-life problems in a community are not violations of the law and do not come to the attention of the police or courts. The Midtown Community Court has sought to address these problems in three ways: First, it established a mediation service to resolve neighborhood disputes—for example, the opening of an adult movie house or the operation of a noisy repair shop—before they escalated to legal battles. In addition to helping the community deal with such problems, the service conveys the Court's commitment to the community and its quality of life. Second, the Court set up a street outreach unit—staffed by police officers and case workers from the court—to enroll potential clients in court-based social service programs before they get into trouble with the law. Four mornings a week, the outreach teams scour the neighborhood, engaging likely clients—prostitutes, substance abusers, the homeless—in conversation and encouraging them to come in for help voluntarily. Finally, the Court launched Times Square Ink, an on-the-job training program for ex-offenders who have "graduated" from community service. Participants in the program learn job skills by staffing a copy center that does copying work for local businesses and non-profits. By providing ex-offenders with job training and assisting them in finding jobs, Times Square Ink. seeks to address the related problems of unemployment and crime. Research and Publicity Police and community groups lose heart in fighting low-level crime when they lack any reliable way to measure progress. A community court should deploy researchers, compile results, and publicize success. Besides the traditional work of caseload and sentencing outcome analysis, research staff at the Midtown Community Court study problems raised by neighbors. The Court's researchers monitor patterns of prostitution and drug-dealing, as well as street sanitation. They have developed neighborhood-specific computer software to map arrests, complaints, and other quality-of-life indicators; the mapping helps neighbors and police target resources. Where the research confirms success, a community court should be ready to make it known. A court can create its own newsletter and Internet web site. It can also promote media coverage to ensure a regular flow of feedback to the community. Staffing A community court necessarily requires a larger, more diverse staff than a traditional courthouse. In addition to clerks and security officers, community courts may need social workers, victim advocates, job developers and managers for community service work projects, along with additional research and public information officers. For example, community outreach—introducing the court to local merchants, community groups and elected officials and managing the court's on-going relationships with its community service partners—may require a full-time ombudsman. A court that installs a computerized data sharing system may need a technician to install the necessary hardware and software and adapt them for the court's particular needs. A mediation service, should the court decide to offer one, would require a staff of its own. The court's need for current information about a defendant's legal and social service status requires a staff of interviewers who are able to compile basic data quickly. These new staff people need not be court employees, however. At Midtown, planners convinced several social service providers—both non-profit organizations and government agencies—to out-station personnel at the courthouse. The reasoning was simple: service providers should bring resources to where the problem is, rather than vice versa. Everyday, the court has physical custody of dozens of people who are in dire need of services. These are the same people who drug treatment providers, adult education programs and health care providers aim to serve. The Midtown Community Court also grew to depend on a new party to the legal process: the resource coordinator. His job is to keep track of the range of available sentencing options and help the judge and attorneys match each defendant with the right program. The resource coordinator binds criminal justice and social service professionals together. Sitting in the well of the courtroom, he is integrated into the case processing system. At the same time, he is part of the Court's clinical team, aware of treatment issues and the risks of success and failure. Over time, lawyers and judges have come to rely on the resource coordinator and trust his recommendations.

Street Outreach Services, or SOS, was officially launched in 1996, when one counselor from the Midtown Community Court paired up with a community patrol officer from a precinct station located next door. When it soon became clear there was too much referral work for a single ad hoc team, the Court started the SOS program and worked with the New York Police Department to launch it in three local police precincts. Along with Broadway theaters and other tourist attractions, the familiar sights of New York City's Midtown neighborhood in the late 1980s and early 1990s included low-level crime, such as drug abuse, theft, prostitution and vandalism. The impact of these offenses was felt by residents, shopkeepers, employers, commuters and tourists. Once a source of civic pride, Times Square had become a symbol of New York's decline. The Midtown Community Court was launched in 1993 to address these problems by sentencing low-level offenders to perform community restitution and receive on-site social services like substance abuse treatment and mental health counseling. The Court also had a mandate to test new approaches to problems in Midtown. Over the years, the Court has housed such unconventional programs as community mediation, job training and medical services. However, none of these initiatives directly addressed a highly visible neighborhood problem: the continued presence of large numbers of homeless people and the threat they posed to neighborhood order. Knowing there was a good chance that many of these individuals would find themselves in court sooner or later, court officials and local police wondered if it was possible to aid them before they broke the law. Solution Planners saw in the persistent homeless problem a chance to expand the Court's work. They proposed an outreach program that paired police with case workers from the Court's social service clinic. The idea was to "engage in aggressive crime prevention, meeting the problem where it is and intervening," explains John Feinblatt, then the coordinator of the Midtown Community Court. Police precincts usually send out community patrol officers to get to know the people who inhabit their beats. The twist here was to send out case workers along with the police, to walk the streets together in outreach teams. Unlike typical police patrols, the outreach effort wasn't going to be about arrests or "sweeps" of the homeless from sidewalk encampments. Instead, the outreach teams were going to focus on getting the word out about services at the Court and persuading people to come in for treatment and counseling voluntarily. Implementation Street Outreach Services, or SOS, was officially launched in 1996, when one counselor from the Court paired up with a community patrol officer from a precinct station located next door. When it soon became clear there was too much referral work for a single ad hoc team, the Court obtained a grant from the Open Society Institute to institutionalize the program in three local police precincts. Currently, three counselors divide their time between searching for clients on the street, working with clients when they come to the courthouse for help, and tracking the project's results. SOS sends out six outreach teams each week, at various hours of the day or evening. One counselor typically accompanies one or two police officers. The team travels together in a police van to sites where the homeless are known to hang out. They make an average of 10 contacts with prospective clients during sessions ranging from one to four hours long. They describe services available at the Midtown Community Court and distribute business cards with their names and phone numbers at the courthouse. When clients show up at the courthouse, the outreach workers question them based on a form that yields a simple assessment: housing needs, employment, substance abuse, eligibility for benefits. The SOS workers then prioritize the issues requiring attention and devise a treatment plan. Positive word of mouth is a major sales point for the program: former clients are encouraged to revisit their old street haunts after being helped by SOS to explain the program to their friends. Obstacles The target population is notoriously difficult to work with. Helping them make positive changes is an incremental process and very labor intensive. Not all police officers are enthusiastic or suited for outreach work. Successful outreach depends not only on motivation but also on personality and general aptitude for chatting up the homeless on the street. Police officers patrolling in full uniform, with guns visible in their holsters, can be intimidating, hampering engagement with clients. Police from one precinct do outreach in plainclothes. In another precinct, police supervisors believed that cops on outreach assignment should be identifiable as cops. The officers worked out a compromise: they wear the polo shirts and shorts of cops who patrol on bicycles, and they keep their guns out of sight. The idea of police patrolling with counselors appears to raise a civil liberties issue. The presence of a police officer at the counselor's elbow may be inherently coercive, as the same officer might show up later to arrest the person who earlier refused an offer of help. The SOS experience indicates, however, that as police officers become versed in the outreach approach, the specter of coercion diminishes. "When I'm doing regular patrol, and I come across a homeless problem, I'm not looking to chase them away," says Officer Doug Delillo. "I refer them to the Court or to other places where they can get help." Results In two-and-a-half years, from November 1996 through August 1999, SOS outreach teams persuaded nearly 656 people to come in for help. Each client made an average of 4.1 visits—an encouraging sign that the program has succeeded in engaging clients over the long term. Overall, the SOS teams made more than 440 excursions and recorded about 3,900 contacts with people on the street. SOS has recorded at least 54 people who are "off the street" through their efforts—40 people who have been placed in transitional or permanent housing and have remained there for 90 days or longer, and 14 people whose return to locations outside of New York City have been facilitated by SOS counselors. SOS remains a work in progress. Areas needing further refinement include the size of the program (three outreach workers hardly meet the demand in the Court's catchment area), formal training for the police officers, the optimal schedule for outreach patrols, and evaluation of the program's impact. Such questions, however, reflect a successful start more than any fundamental flaw. SOS demonstrates that putting police together with counselors on patrol can help to connect clients with available social services, given a mutual commitment to the project and a willingness to communicate.

  One of the hallmarks of community prosecution programs is the search for new solutions to neighborhood problems. Here are three examples of community prosecution programs in action, excerpted from "Prosecution in the Community: A Study of Emergent Strategies," by Catherine M. Coles and George L. Kelling, from September 1998: Several types of problem-solving activities are currently being led by prosecutors: special programs or projects created to address a particular crime problem city-wide; special programs that target crime and public safety conditions generally, in one neighborhood; and ongoing problem-solving in community prosecution units and other special units in prosecutors' offices. Prosecutors also participate in efforts that are led by police, mayors, and other officials. We describe here two recent problem-solving projects that we have observed, and one example of how a prosecutor identified a problem that would lead to more formal problem-solving. Kansas City: Targeting Crime in a Neighborhood—the Paseo Corridor Drug and Crime-Free Community Partnership In June of 1998, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Best Practice award in the category of neighborhood transformation went to COMBAT [an anti-drug initiative largely controlled by the prosecutor, Claire McCaskill, and funded by a sales tax] for the Paseo Corridor Project. Formed in February 1997 under the leadership of the County Prosecutor, the partnership represented more than 60 property owners, community and neighborhood organizations, local, state, and federal officials (including the mayor's office, City Council and city departments, city, state and federal prosecutors, Kansas City Police Department, and Housing and Urban Development, the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, and Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms), and resident groups. Its goal was to clean up a 15-block area of Kansas City—once a beautiful boulevard, but more recently one of the worst crime areas in the city. The area has a concentration of assisted housing, with extensive drug and criminal activity. Although Kristen Rosselli, director of planning for COMBAT in the county prosecutor's office, organized the partnership and coordinated its work (also participating were the head of the Drug Abatement Response Team from the [prosecutor's] office), six committees were established to carry out particular functions: partnership agreement/monitoring, lease/rules and regulations, law enforcement, faith initiative, resident empowerment, and economic development. In a signed agreement, participants established a mission, which was to improve the quality of life for residents, business owners, and employees in the corridor, and a coordinated three-phase strategy. Phase 1 would focus on attaining safety, security and economic stability; Phase 2 on lifestyle enrichment and self-sufficiency; and Phase 3 on community development through economic empowerment. After the first year, the crime rate in the corridor had been reduced by 50 percent, and residents reported that they felt safer. A uniform lease agreement, rules, and regulations had been adopted by all multifamily properties. A nearby Weed-and-Seed area was expanded to include the corridor, and over 25 abandoned buildings, sites of drug activity, had been demolished. A neighborhood liquor store began carrying more groceries and changed its name to a market. The Kansas City Police Department was denying signature bonds for incidents in the area, and the courts agreed to stiffer conditions of probation for prostitution-related crimes. Property owners and managers helped to change the Missouri Landlord/Tenant Law to expedite evictions for drug-related crimes in rental housing, and a landlord-training program was set up to teach landlords and property owners ways of reducing drug and criminal activity in rental housing. Finally, according to Rosselli, "lines have blurred between public housing residents, those living in privately-owned Section 8 housing, and other inhabitants of this area. Residents have begun looking at each other as neighbors and community partners." Indianapolis: A Citywide Problem—Safe Parks Initiative In June 1996, Prosecutor [Scott] Newman, along with Mayor Steve Goldsmith, announced the Safe Parks Partnership, a program to curb criminal activity, especially drug dealing, public indecency, vandalism, and prostitution (mostly misdemeanors), in city parks in order to make them a "safe haven for kids and families." Newman led the planning for the project, which took place over the course of several months, and included the involvement of Street Level Advocates [also called community prosecutors] and municipal prosecutors from his office, Indianapolis Park Rangers, the Police Department, the Marion County Sheriff's Department, Indianapolis Greenways, the Corporation Counsel, and the Public Defender's Office. Once in operation, neighborhood groups and volunteers would also become involved. The law enforcement components of the initiative would be carried out through IPD [Indianapolis Police Department] and Ranger bike patrols, undercover operations in secluded park areas, and occasional curfew sweeps for late-night violence and gang activity. The Prosecutor's Office devised special plea policies for dealing with offenders: no pre-trial diversion would be offered for offenses committed on park property; mandatory community work service for acts of vandalism, graffiti and criminal mischief would be performed in the parks; offenders convicted would be banned from all parks for one year, and enhanced penalties would be applied for drug dealers and drug offenses. Cases involving public intoxication were to be filed. Plans were also made for citizen volunteers to be trained, and then under the supervision of Park Rangers, to begin patrolling nature trails with two-way radios, looking for violators. It was hoped that additional efforts would be taken by neighbors of the parks to increase their presence, and eventually push out "negative elements." Boston: Identifying a Problem—Juveniles in a MBTA [Subway] Station During the spring of 1997, large groups of high school age youth (up to 500 or more) were congregating after school in the Forest Hills MBTA (subway) station, near English High School. Secretaries from the Prosecutor's Office were talking about it—they were alarmed because of the rowdiness, and fights that sometimes broke out in the station, but could not avoid the area because they took the train home from work. The situation seemed more than what MBTA Police could handle, and Boston Police were called in. When Marcy Cass, director of community prosecution and chief of the District Courts, heard about it, she decided to investigate before taking part in a plan to turn the youth out and arrest offenders. She sent one of the PIPS (Prosecutors in Police Stations) prosecutors she supervised out to take a look—he talked with police, probation officials, street workers, and some of the kids themselves, and stumbled onto a surprising explanation. Kids were gathering in the "T" station, coming from a number of schools, because it was a safe place: there were too many police around for anyone to risk taking a weapon in, and so any fights that broke out would be "clean." A new project was born—the Forest Hills Safety Project—bringing together city and municipal police, prosecutors, street workers, probation officers, and school principals and police. Prosecutors began working on a committee formed to search for solutions: the goal would be to devise a plan—short of arresting and prosecuting the juveniles—for addressing the problem of how to provide a safe environment for the youth, while reclaiming the station for "T" passengers who had become afraid to use it. Several types of problem-solving activities are currently being led by prosecutors: special programs or projects created to address a particular crime problem city-wide; special programs that target crime and public safety conditions generally, in one neighborhood; and ongoing problem-solving in community prosecution units and other special units in prosecutors' offices. Prosecutors also participate in efforts that are led by police, mayors, and other officials. We describe here two recent problem-solving projects that we have observed, and one example of how a prosecutor identified a problem that would lead to more formal problem-solving. Kansas City: Targeting Crime in a Neighborhood—the Paseo Corridor Drug and Crime-Free Community Partnership In June of 1998, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Best Practice award in the category of neighborhood transformation went to COMBAT [an anti-drug initiative largely controlled by the prosecutor, Claire McCaskill, and funded by a sales tax] for the Paseo Corridor Project. Formed in February 1997 under the leadership of the County Prosecutor, the partnership represented more than 60 property owners, community and neighborhood organizations, local, state, and federal officials (including the mayor's office, City Council and city departments, city, state and federal prosecutors, Kansas City Police Department, and Housing and Urban Development, the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, and Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms), and resident groups. Its goal was to clean up a 15-block area of Kansas City—once a beautiful boulevard, but more recently one of the worst crime areas in the city. The area has a concentration of assisted housing, with extensive drug and criminal activity. Although Kristen Rosselli, director of planning for COMBAT in the county prosecutor's office, organized the partnership and coordinated its work (also participating were the head of the Drug Abatement Response Team from the [prosecutor's] office), six committees were established to carry out particular functions: partnership agreement/monitoring, lease/rules and regulations, law enforcement, faith initiative, resident empowerment, and economic development. In a signed agreement, participants established a mission, which was to improve the quality of life for residents, business owners, and employees in the corridor, and a coordinated three-phase strategy. Phase 1 would focus on attaining safety, security and economic stability; Phase 2 on lifestyle enrichment and self-sufficiency; and Phase 3 on community development through economic empowerment. After the first year, the crime rate in the corridor had been reduced by 50 percent, and residents reported that they felt safer. A uniform lease agreement, rules, and regulations had been adopted by all multifamily properties. A nearby Weed-and-Seed area was expanded to include the corridor, and over 25 abandoned buildings, sites of drug activity, had been demolished. A neighborhood liquor store began carrying more groceries and changed its name to a market. The Kansas City Police Department was denying signature bonds for incidents in the area, and the courts agreed to stiffer conditions of probation for prostitution-related crimes. Property owners and managers helped to change the Missouri Landlord/Tenant Law to expedite evictions for drug-related crimes in rental housing, and a landlord-training program was set up to teach landlords and property owners ways of reducing drug and criminal activity in rental housing. Finally, according to Rosselli, "lines have blurred between public housing residents, those living in privately-owned Section 8 housing, and other inhabitants of this area. Residents have begun looking at each other as neighbors and community partners." Indianapolis: A Citywide Problem—Safe Parks Initiative In June 1996, Prosecutor [Scott] Newman, along with Mayor Steve Goldsmith, announced the Safe Parks Partnership, a program to curb criminal activity, especially drug dealing, public indecency, vandalism, and prostitution (mostly misdemeanors), in city parks in order to make them a "safe haven for kids and families." Newman led the planning for the project, which took place over the course of several months, and included the involvement of Street Level Advocates [also called community prosecutors] and municipal prosecutors from his office, Indianapolis Park Rangers, the Police Department, the Marion County Sheriff's Department, Indianapolis Greenways, the Corporation Counsel, and the Public Defender's Office. Once in operation, neighborhood groups and volunteers would also become involved. The law enforcement components of the initiative would be carried out through IPD [Indianapolis Police Department] and Ranger bike patrols, undercover operations in secluded park areas, and occasional curfew sweeps for late-night violence and gang activity. The Prosecutor's Office devised special plea policies for dealing with offenders: no pre-trial diversion would be offered for offenses committed on park property; mandatory community work service for acts of vandalism, graffiti and criminal mischief would be performed in the parks; offenders convicted would be banned from all parks for one year, and enhanced penalties would be applied for drug dealers and drug offenses. Cases involving public intoxication were to be filed. Plans were also made for citizen volunteers to be trained, and then under the supervision of Park Rangers, to begin patrolling nature trails with two-way radios, looking for violators. It was hoped that additional efforts would be taken by neighbors of the parks to increase their presence, and eventually push out "negative elements." Boston: Identifying a Problem—Juveniles in a MBTA [Subway] Station During the spring of 1997, large groups of high school age youth (up to 500 or more) were congregating after school in the Forest Hills MBTA (subway) station, near English High School. Secretaries from the Prosecutor's Office were talking about it—they were alarmed because of the rowdiness, and fights that sometimes broke out in the station, but could not avoid the area because they took the train home from work. The situation seemed more than what MBTA Police could handle, and Boston Police were called in. When Marcy Cass, director of community prosecution and chief of the District Courts, heard about it, she decided to investigate before taking part in a plan to turn the youth out and arrest offenders. She sent one of the PIPS (Prosecutors in Police Stations) prosecutors she supervised out to take a look—he talked with police, probation officials, street workers, and some of the kids themselves, and stumbled onto a surprising explanation. Kids were gathering in the "T" station, coming from a number of schools, because it was a safe place: there were too many police around for anyone to risk taking a weapon in, and so any fights that broke out would be "clean." A new project was born—the Forest Hills Safety Project—bringing together city and municipal police, prosecutors, street workers, probation officers, and school principals and police. Prosecutors began working on a committee formed to search for solutions: the goal would be to devise a plan—short of arresting and prosecuting the juveniles—for addressing the problem of how to provide a safe environment for the youth, while reclaiming the station for "T" passengers who had become afraid to use it.