Shane Correia

It was clear to even a casual observer that there was a significant homeless population in downtown Austin. But what was not clear was how the community should respond. In analyzing the problem, community prosecutor Eric McDonald discovered, almost by accident, that the homeless population included a number of recently-released inmates.  “I’d been told by the Salvation Army, which runs the largest shelter in the area, that occasionally they would see law enforcement vans from neighboring counties drop off people at their place,” McDonald said. Then McDonald confirmed that the state jail was dropping up to 60 people a month on the street in front of the shelter. “That’s when it clicked, that there literally is a revolving door,” McDonald said. Many of the offenders had been arrested on drug charges. “Knowing that this area around the Salvation Army is a hot spot for crack, and knowing that so many of the offenders are addicted to crack, I couldn’t believe it was happening,” McDonald said. “I knew if we really wanted to have an impact on downtown on the vagrancy and crack cocaine, we’d have to do something about this because it’s creating an endless supply of these individuals.” Fortunately, the administrators of the state jail were willing partners. As it turned out, the state jail simply didn’t have the resources to ensure that every inmate had a discharge plan, or that those with plans actually followed them. The prison sponsored a day when social service providers would come to the prison and meet with offenders, but offenders were not required to attend—and those with discipline problems were actually prohibited from participating. And even those with plans to enter, say, a half-way house, were still being dropped off in front of the Salvation Army and told to make their own way to the half-way house. The state jail had selected that location because of its proximity to many of the city’s social service providers—but the reality was that few of the former inmates were finding their way to services. “Once they’re on the street, they can score crack in five minutes so the chances of making it to the half-way house on their own were pretty slim,” McDonald said. McDonald then contacted as many potential partners as possible, including the warden, halfway houses, drug rehabilitation facilities, AIDS service providers, homeless shelters and organizations that work with ex-offenders. “I tried basically to educate myself about all the potential resources for these guys,” McDonald said. McDonald found that there seemed to be enough resources; the only problem was making sure that just-released inmates were linked with the proper ones. With the permission of the administrators at the state jail, McDonald decided to meet with each inmate before his release.  At each session he talks about available services, reviews what benefits the inmate might be entitled to, and then explains the consequences of re-offending. “Many have multiple convictions, and I tell them that they could face the three strikes law. I also mention to them that they are prohibited from possessing any type of firearm for the rest of their lives and if caught doing so would be held accountable in federal court through the [Department of Justice-funded] Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative. But I also emphasize that I’m there to help.” After each meeting, McDonald arranges for post-release housing and the Austin Police Department provides donated clothes. Perhaps most important, upon their release the police drive each person to a temporary home. “Many say, ‘I keep telling the judge not to drop me back downtown after I serve my time, but I keep getting dropped back down there,’” McDonald said. To monitor the effectiveness of the program, McDonald periodically runs the names of participants through the criminal database to see if any have been re-arrested. Results so far have been promising. From September 2003, when the program began, to January 2004, McDonald met with 59 soon-to-be-former inmates (who collectively had literally hundreds of criminal convictions) and 53 agreed to go to a halfway house outside of the downtown area. Of the six who refused to participate, five have been re-arrested—some within days of their release and at least one has been re-arrested four times. Of the 53 in the program, however, only 10 have been re-arrested or received a field release citation for a new offense. “At this point it appears that the program is having an impact on reducing the recidivism in downtown and for the city as a whole,” McDonald said, noting that the 53 participants “are a very high-risk population—most are chronically homeless and some have literally 9 or 10 pages of criminal history.” 

    Community prosecutors in Denver have developed an expertise in the area of dealing with alcohol-related violations. That expertise was developed through their work in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, where crimes connected to alcohol are a top priority for stakeholders. Here’s how prosecutors addressed the problem: This first step was to ascertain priorities regarding crime and safety in the neighborhood. Community prosecutors did this by administering a survey, obtaining 247 completed forms from residents and other stakeholders in Capitol Hill. Based on the results of their survey and discussions with the Capitol Hill Community Justice Council, prosecutors and the council members decided to focus on three issues for the coming year:  family violence, drug sales, and crimes connected to alcohol. When it comes to alcohol, “Denver has an incredible saloon mentality, there are no checks and balances,” said Susan Motika, former Director of the Community Prosecution Division. In Capitol Hill, “We have scores and scores of bars and nightclubs, people vomiting on the street, cursing and swearing, and a city municipal code that’s doesn’t adequately address these problems.” Community prosecutors researched the problem, finding that the number of liquor licenses in Denver had exploded in recent years. In 1996, for example, there were 804 licensed liquor establishments in Denver, but by the spring of 2002, there were 1,304 such businesses. The residents of Capitol Hill acknowledged that most businesses were law abiding. But a few were linked to numerous problems, such as disruptive and unruly patrons staggering out onto residential streets, urinating and vomiting in alleys and breaking beer bottles. Residents also said that some stores were selling liquor to minors and visibly intoxicated people. These problems were compounded by procedural obstacles, so that even if residents wanted to raise objections before city regulators, it was difficult for them to do so. Residents were given little or no advance notice of liquor licensing hearings; they also were ill equipped on their own to meet the exacting standards for denying, revoking or imposing conditions on existing licenses. (One problem, prosecutors discovered, was that legal notices about liquor licensing are printed in a New Jersey-based publication that is available only by subscription in Denver.) Prosecutors decided to focus on a particular trouble spot—a liquor store that neighborhood stakeholders blamed for many community problems. The store was in an area saturated with businesses that sold liquor: in the 10-block radius surrounding the store, there were at least 113 liquor licenses. In addition, the liquor store had previously received three citations for violating the liquor code, and a hearing was scheduled to discuss the most recent violation (involving the sale of alcohol to a minor). Ultimately, Susan Motika, in collaboration with community members, the city attorney’s office and other city agencies, developed a multi-pronged response to the problem consisting of the following components: The Capitol Hill Community Justice Council came up with the idea of circulating a petition calling for the revocation of the store’s liquor license. When an applicant requests a liquor license, the Department of Excise and License requests signatures in support of the application. There is no provision in the regulations, however, for collecting signatures to make the opposite point. Nonetheless, the Justice Council thought signatures showing that the community wanted the store’s liquor license revoked might be persuasive to the hearing officer. Seventy-five signatures were collected. The prosecutors from the District Attorney’s Office and the City Attorney’s Office encouraged community members to attend the hearing on the violation. (Fifteen attended and three testified.) Prosecutors did legal research to support their arguments in favor of revocation at the hearing. (For instance, a fourth violation against the store had been issued in the interim, and prosecutors found a regulation allowing them to submit evidence about the fourth violation at the hearing at which, technically, only the third violation was supposed to be discussed.) The Denver D.A.’s Community Justice Unit wrote two legal education handbooks on the liquor code for community members. One handbook explains how businesses obtain a new liquor license; the other addresses the process of sanctioning licensees for liquor code violations. The community prosecution team, in collaboration with the Denver City Attorney and community groups, sponsored a community forum on new liquor licenses. An important part of any problem-solving initiative, of course, is the ultimate result. In this instance, community prosecutors logged a number of important outcomes. The most immediate and tangible result occurred shortly before the commencement of the hearing on the third violation when an employee of the store relinquished the liquor license at the Department of Excise and License. In other words, faced with a well-organized opposition, the storeowner called it quits. In a further effort to measure outcomes, the community prosecution team handed out a survey to community residents who attended the forum on new liquor licenses. Question 1 asked people to rate whether the provision of new liquor licenses was an important topic for education in the Capitol Hill neighborhood; 83 percent of the participants responded that this topic is very important. Another question asked if the handbook, “A Community Guide to New Liquor Licenses,” provided useful information; 88 percent of participants agreed that it did. The success of the initiative has led to additional long-term planning in this area.  The office is currently co-writing a guide with a national perspective (tentatively titled “Tactical Guide to Problem Bars and Liquor Stores”) with the Travis County (Austin, Texas) and Richmond County (Staten Island, N.Y.) district attorney’s offices, and also participating in the creation of a citywide task force on liquor licensing procedures. In addition, successful closing of a problem liquor store has spurred other neighborhood organizations from other parts of Denver to advocate for new rules to expand resident participation in the liquor licensing process and to enhance penalties for liquor code violations. Thus an issue that began with a neighborhood liquor store is evolving into a citywide grass-roots effort.  

A "virtual roundtable" of experts answers questions about community prosecution. How would you define community prosecution? Dr. Catherine ColesResearcher and Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts I see community justice as justice officials working directly with the community and giving high priority to the concerns and priorities of community members. Also, community justice attempts to build a capacity within the community for improving and maintaining public safety. Community prosecution is doing just that. There is a real commitment to citizen priorities. That means that citizen priorities can have an impact on the work that prosecutors do, whether it’s by affecting the weighting of cases that they process, the cases prosecutors choose to file and focus on, or how particular cases might be handled. To me, community justice also involves problem solving, carried out in a coordinated and collaborative fashion that involves justice agencies working together with various governmental bodies, the private sector, and citizens themselves. Citizens have described this to me as ‘a new way of government doing business in our community.’ So, I draw problem solving into the community justice framework, and see it as a central part of community prosecution as well.  click here to read full interview Susan Motika Former Director of the Community Prosecution Division Office of the Denver District Attorney Denver, Colorado Community prosecution is a proactive approach like community policing. It's about forming a partnership with the community and not being merely in a reactive mode of reporting on the progress of cases. The goal is to support community capacity-building efforts so that neighbors can identify problems and come up with effective strategies for dealing with crime and quality-of-life problems. We involve the community as a partner to develop solutions, and we develop partnerships with community policing so that community prosecutors and community police have a unified strategy.  Bart DickinsonFormer Community Prosecution Coordinator Frayser County Community Court Memphis, Tennessee I'm from a small town where people know each other. The police know everybody and the prosecutor knows everybody. And really, in a big city, a community prosecutor is like a small town prosecutor. You get to know the people in the community; you get to know the people who are concerned with the community; and the people who are violators and defendants in the community, as well.  Mike Kuykendall Former Manager of the Community Prosecution Program American Prosecutors Research Institute Alexandria, Virginia [Community prosecution is] a grassroots effort by the local elected prosecutor to get their assistant prosecutors, citizens, local government resources, police and other stakeholders in the community involved in identifying low-level criminal offenses and neighborhood livability issues and engaging in long-term solutions to those offenses. The emphasis is not on arrest and prosecution, but on learning new ways to prevent crime from occurring... That's the vision the federal government has embraced as have the majority of jurisdictions now practicing community prosecution... We do on occasion see prosecutors who claim they're embracing community prosecution by putting lawyers in the field to do just drug prosecutions or other traditional prosecution, but that's not really community prosecution because that's not involving the community in solving problems that affect their neighborhood.click here to read full interview How do community prosecutors communicate effectively with stakeholders? Wanda L. DallasFormer Assistant District AttorneyAtlanta, GeorgiaListening. When I go to meetings—and I go to 30 meetings a month—I don’t let them spend a lot of time complaining anymore. I used to in the beginning. What I realized is that the longer a person complains about what’s going on, the bigger it becomes in their mind, and they inflame the passions of the whole group, and by the time you’re done, you’re an hour into complaining and you’re no closer to the solution. As community prosecutors, we’re supposed to be problem-solvers. So the first thing that I do, is I go in there and say, “I want one person to tell me what the problem is—the short version.” I get the short version. And now we have so many partners. We’ve got at least 30 partners. We’ve aligned ourselves with everyone we need to in the City of Atlanta to really do some things. So I listen, and I make an assessment. I’ll say, “This is what it sounds like your problem is. These are the solutions I think we need to explore. I’m going to get in touch with some people and I’m going to come back to you.” All of our dialogue has to be about solving the problem. If we can cut all of the complaining and get straight to the problem, we’ll have a lot more room and time to deal with the solution. click here to read full interview

A "virtual roundtable" of experts answers questions about community prosecution. Is there a ‘right’ way to organize a community prosecution program? Dr. Catherine ColesResearcher and Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of GovernmentHarvard UniversityCambridge, MassachusettsThere are many different types of community prosecution units that have been started around the country… You might assign a certain number of prosecutors to work out in the community or at least to be a liaison to a particular area—to meet with residents/business owners and learn about their concerns. Then you assign responsibility for a particular geographical area, for handling all cases from that area as well as for maintaining community contact and working with police and other criminal justice agencies. I think something that’s been tried less often but would also work would be assigning particular prosecutors in an office to address certain types of problems of concern to a community—say prostitution, auto theft. click here for full interview Roxann PaisChief Community Prosecutor, Dallas City Attorney's OfficeDallas, TexasStart small. That’s what we did, we started small, and I think it’s a result of us starting small that we grew so fast. We took small successes, and we showcased them. But some of those successes were amazing. I mean you could find one problem property that had more than 100 calls for service during a six-month period. You could actually quantify that in money, if you think about how much money is spent on that particular property, and then you get the community prosecutor involved and now there are no more calls for service to the property. So start small. Don’t be afraid to share your success stories. Always give credit where credit is due.click here to read full interview Charles J. HynesKings County District AttorneyBrooklyn, New YorkThe police were already developing community policing strategies, so we started focusing on community prosecution. We took a look at the county: 84 square miles, 2.5 million people and we hit on the idea of restructuring the county into zones—basically, into five cities the size of Syracuse. By dividing the population into five zones and by reducing the land mass, you had some control over what was going on. Because we were working in a smaller area, we could develop better contacts with the police commanders, the community leaders, the political leadership, the education and religious leadership. The key is to have religious leaders involved. … When we finished the design—and it took awhile to get the courts involved because we had to convince them that every crime committed in this area should be prosecuted by the team of prosecutors assigned to that zone. Structuring it that way would speed up arrest to arraignment time, the disposition of the case; we’d also have a better handle on the flow of the case. It also gave us the benefit of identifying people who might be candidates for our DTAP [Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison] Program.  click here to read full interview Scott C. NewmanFormer Marion County District AttorneyIndianapolis, IndianaI didn't give a lot of direction to each district prosecutor. The only direction I gave was: 1) Two or three mornings a week you need to be screening cases with the district detectives; 2) You need to have a drug strategy; 3) You need to have a domestic violence strategy for your district, and 4) You need to identify a third major problem that is of concern to the particular neighborhood that you are assigned to. It may be residential burglaries, it may be prostitution, but you need to hear what that third problem is. I told them to develop a strategy for that area. We get out there in the neighborhoods and we perform. We do what we promise. We set reasonable, measurable, concrete goals for the community. Sometimes we deliver some ambitious projects, like the [Marion County] Community Court, which after two or three years of discussion we were finally able to open. We give community leaders in neighborhood associations terrific access to our prosecutors and, through them, to the justice system. click here to read full interview Thomas K. CullenFormer Assistant Commonwealth's AttorneyAlexandria, VirginiaWhen we went out to the community and asked them, “Why aren’t you cooperating? Why won’t you come to court?” we learned that there was the fear factor and the ignorance about how the system worked. But there was a third factor that I thought was the easiest one to deal with. For security reasons, the courthouse is open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the doors are locked at 5 p.m. Our office is in the courthouse. Most of the people in this neighborhood work day jobs. They are not salaried employees. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid. If they miss any part of the day, they miss the whole day. So in order for them to come to court for a hearing or an interview with a prosecutor, they had to miss a whole day of work and not get paid for it. And that was a major problem for them because they’re basically getting by. So what we decided was that we would have an office in the community and have extended hours, so three nights a week we’re open until 8 p.m. We also have Saturday hours and hours by appointment. That has increased our availability to the community. Also, to be a prosecutor is a big thing. Just to say you’re a prosecutor is to say, “Whoa, you must be important. You mean a prosecutor will be in our community and be here alone at night, allowing people to just walk in and talk to him?” The good faith in that alone really helped. And we sort of established ourselves as kind of the Shell answer man. Not that I can always give the answer to your question, but I can make referrals. We have a bunch of cards in English and Spanish that you can put in your wallet that have about 20 or 30 frequently-requested phone numbers that we hand out all the time. How can a prosecutor get his or her office more involved in community prosecution efforts? Mike KuykendallFormer Manager of the Community Prosecution ProgramAmerican Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI)Alexandria, VirginiaTypically, most assistant district attorneys are busy in courtrooms eight hours a day dealing with judges and lots of cases, and they look at community prosecutors going to night meetings and setting up task forces and see work they're not particularly interested in doing... But as an office moves deeper and deeper into community prosecution, everyone begins to see the benefits... It reduces caseloads, improves relations with the community and police, and often improves the actual cases in the system by building cooperation and confidence between the players. I believe it's a good practice to reward community prosecutors who have done a good job—that leaves an impression on the rest of the office that community prosecution really matters to the elected prosecutor. You don't want the community prosecutors to fall in salary or office status behind their peers who didn't go out in the community. One way to do this is for the elected prosecutor to ask their community prosecutors where they want to go when they are ready for rotation back to a trial unit. Another way is to provide additional compensation and comp time to those who agree to work in the community.  click here to read full interview Kathleen O’Connor Chief, Community Prosecution/Grand Jury/IntakeUnited States Attorney's OfficeWashington, D.C.I head up the intake and grand jury sections, where new prosecutors begin their rotation, and so I educate new hires about community prosecution as soon as they walk in the door. I have these junior-level prosecutors in my hot little hands for nine months, which allows me to show them the ropes and help them think outside the box. They see community prosecution as an integral part of our office from the beginning. We also have a professional development office that keeps track of people’s wishes and desires, and over the past year and a half there have been many more people who are adding to their wish list that they want to be a community prosecutor.click here to read full article Scott C. NewmanFormer Marion County District AttorneyIndianapolis, IndianaI choose respected deputy prosecutors to serve in the unit: people with some experience and credibility throughout the office. I give direct access to that unit: the supervisor of that unit reports directly to me. I've invited that unit to my house and had meetings with them on the back deck to strategize. They have a few little perks and cool stuff, like their own note pads and their own jean shirts. We give them a certain amount of flexibility in their hours and so on. Inside the agency I try to personally broadcast the achievements of the community prosecutors—we call them Street Level Advocates, or the SLA program. I try to emphasize, first of all, that when an SLA comes to you with a strategic need in a case, that those people have clout—both because they are credible people with some experience in the office and because I think their work is important. If they give direction to a line prosecutor on a case about revoking a bond or seeking a type of sentence or a certain type of community input, I'm going to be very unhappy if they don't listen. I also try to emphasize an ethos throughout everything I do in the office that we're not just case processors, we're law enforcement strategists.  click here to read full interview Dr. Catherine ColesResearcher and Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of GovernmentHarvard UniversityCambridge, Massachusetts...an important first step is an emphasis on education within the office. I find the most useful strategy in getting prosecutors to think differently is to send them out to other community prosecution sites because prosecutors really learn from each other. So, if you have an office that hasn’t done much yet, and the leadership wants to move into community prosecution, one of the things that they need to do is to bring experienced community prosecutors from other locations in to talk to their staff. Staff will also need to visit other sites where community prosecution is going on. Another key is improving the capacity and training of your prosecutors in civil law and encouraging them to think more broadly about using and applying remedies other than criminal case processing.click here to read full interview How important is it to develop partnerships with local police? Dr. Walter DickeyProfessorUniversity of Wisconsin Law School Community prosecution seems to work most effectively when it’s in synch with community-oriented policing and problem-oriented policing. To do it unilaterally as prosecutor without the police already engaged is almost impossible. ... [One successful initiative was] in Kalamazoo, Michigan, [where] the prosecutor’s office surveyed community members about problems and learned that dilapidated housing was a matter of great concern to them. What the prosecutors did was trace an enormous amount of the rundown housing being rented at excessive rates to three slum landlords, and then commence action against the three slum landlords in ways that would result in far greater possible penalty than if they had simply prosecuted a particular case of a code violation. Prosecutors were working closely with police, who had already established community offices in neighborhoods that were most affected by these problems. In working in concert with the police I think they were much better able to get information about the problems than they otherwise would have. Then they were able to work with community groups, too, because the police had established themselves very well. click here to read full interviewScott C. NewmanFormer Marion County District AttorneyIndianapolis, IndianaCommunity policing was being successfully implemented at that time [in the early 1990s] in parts of the city, and as I was going around to neighborhood meetings I saw police and citizens being drawn closer together. I also saw that they—both the police and the ordinary citizens—were feeling thwarted increasingly by the justice system. To the extent that their projects and initiatives weren't working, they tended to blame, in some cases rightly so and in some cases not, the justice system. It struck me that the prosecutor wasn't at the table and that many of the projects that the police and the community were contemplating would need legal input for them to work. The first thing I knew we had to do was to be there, in the neighborhoods, and a natural place to be, it seemed to me, was the district police stations. So I approached the Police Department and basically tried to give them something in exchange for what I wanted. What I could offer them was the convenience of being able to screen cases at the police district instead of coming downtown… [it gave] our criminal prosecutors a good finger on the pulse of what kind of crime was occurring in that district. It also gave them an opportunity to work with the police and the neighborhoods.  click here to read full interview Dr. Catherine ColesResearcher and Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of GovernmentHarvard UniversityCambridge, Massachusetts[…] where you have community policing and prosecution going on alongside each other, both police and prosecutors work directly with the community; both are involved in problem solving and devising strategies for crime prevention; and the need to work together is continual. The relationship is a close one, but each obviously has particular roles that only it can play—only prosecutors can prosecute cases, although with a great deal of assistance from police. Police do more work on the streets and in the community. There are limits on the extent to which prosecutors can be involved in investigations that police conduct.  click here to read full interview Susan MotikaFormer Director of the Community Prosecution DivisionOffice of the Denver District AttorneyDenver, Colorado… Community police and prosecutors should be allied. You don't want community prosecutors and police officers going to separate meetings, or maybe going to the same meetings and not knowing what the other's strategy and approach is and not develop a supportive and coordinated approach. What are some considerations to be kept in mind when hiring for community prosecution programs? Paul L. Howard, Jr.District AttorneyAtlanta, GeorgiaI think that [for a community prosecutor] you’ve got to have somebody who can take a vision and plan a systematic way to realize it, and not everyone has the ability to do that. Our community prosecutors will also actually prosecute some of the cases in the zone that are of interest to the community and the Police Department, so I think you need a person who can do that, too, because that develops confidence and rapport in the community. That’s when people start saying: “That’s our prosecutor. We’ve got our own prosecutor who can prosecute our crimes.” You also need someone with a personality that allows them to walk around the community and talk and get along with people. Our first couple of lawyers would go to a meeting and no one would even know they were there. You need somebody who’s willing to walk to the front of the room, even if everybody there is complaining about the district attorney, and say, “Hey guys I understand, but we’re trying to get better. Can you help us?” And not everyone has that type of personality. click here to read full interviewDr. Catherine ColesResearcher and Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of GovernmentHarvard UniversityCambridge, MassachusettsThe increased hiring of non-lawyer specialists in prosecutors’ offices is an important part of change in the organization. Elevating representatives of those staff to senior executive-level positions and developing new expectations for the role of prosecutors is very important. New recruitment criteria and performance measures have to be pursued, as well, and not very many offices have done that. They are doing a better job of recruiting than developing performance measures. These are just a few of the things that go into organizational change.  click here to read full interview Mike KuykendallFormer Manager of the Community Prosecution ProgramAmerican Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI)Alexandria, VirginiaA lot of really good trial attorneys are guard-dog types. They tear into a case, and drive and push and never take no for an answer; those people typically make good courtroom prosecutors, but don't always make good community prosecutors; good community prosecutors need to be able to listen, to not necessarily lead from the front but lead from behind. They also need to have good people skills and be willing to go the extra mile, even if it means going to community meetings until 10 at night. They need to be real problem-solvers who are self motivated and don't require a lot of supervision. They need to be creative thinkers capable of utilizing the law, both criminal and civil, to the communities' advantage.  click here to read full interview Charles J. HynesKings County District AttorneyBrooklyn, New York… I’ll tell you this, that I’m committed to hiring with a keen eye to diversity. And that’s what I’ve done. You can walk around this building and it will be readily apparent. There are many more women working here than when I started. There were also virtually no people of color, and I changed that… If you are running an office that doesn’t reflect the diversity of your community you have no credibility at all. And you have to work on it constantly, obviously. The key, though, is to have a hiring committee that really understands how critical it is to go out there and get qualified people who reflect each community; and, to remain responsive to all the individual communities.click here to read full interview