Case Processing

Center staff organized and hosted a virtual site visit to Midtown Community Court (MCC) for Luke Strong of the NYC's Department of Social Services. The site visit, hosted by Lauren Curatolo, the Project Director for MCC, included site tour and a discussion on the substance of work and programming at MCC.

Center staff organized and hosted a structured virtual site visit to Midtown Community Court for stakeholders from Fountain House (Mary Crowley, Senior Vice President and Chief External Affairs Officer; Alexander Baldassare, Coordinator; Nancy Young, Director of OnRamps). The goal of the site visit was to exchange information and resources regarding national work on community courts and clubhouses model( peer-based mental health support), identify shared jurisdictions that can make use of their resources.

Center staff organized and hosted a one-hour virtual site visit to Midtown Community Court for six stakeholders from the Fort Lauderdale Community Court (Claire Barker, Christopher Leonard, community court coordinator, Brian Blount; Monica Ferrer; Officer Sandi Downs-Keesling, Fort Lauderdale Police Department; Junia Robinson, case manager).

Center staff organized and hosted a virtual site visit to Newark Community Solutions (NCS) for Tom Duch, County Executive, Bergen County NJ. The site visit, hosted by Kelly Mulligan-Brown, the Director of New Jersey Programs, included an observation of the community court process as part of an ongoing assessment project for a county-wide community justice initiative in Bergen County.

Center staff organized and hosted a virtual site visit to Newark Community Solutions (NCS) for Aymen Amoushi, Corporation Counsel for the City of Paterson, New Jersey. The site visit, hosted by Kelly Mulligan-Brown, the Director of New Jersey Programs, included an observation of the community court process in preparation for a potential assessment contract for a community justice initiative assessment in Paterson.

This subgrantee seeks assistance in developing a two-day training aimed at honing criminal defense skill as well as fostering a sense of community among defenders. This reporting period we surveyed defense lawyers across the state to determine the best topics and format for delivering training. We also did outreach to the University of North Dakota Law in order to extend the training to include law students to create a pipeline to the defender community.

This TTA will focus on developing model practices aimed at increasing the diversity of juries in Harris County. We hosted a kick-off meeting on 10/26/2021 that included a number of public defenders from Harris County as well as jury expert, Professor Nina Chernoff. A letter was drafted so that we could begin discussions with other criminal legal system stakeholder on best ways to increase jury diversity.
Jan.-June 2022: Issued correspondence March, April, and June to no avail. Will issue a formal letter to determine whether TTA is still a needed and a possibility.

This was the fourth session of the community of practice: Behavioral Health Criminal Case Processing: Exploring Person-Centered Justice in the Courts. This community of practice is being coordinated with the National Center for State Courts. This session focused on the participating teams sharing their progress towards implementing a data-driven policy change to improve case processing for people with behavioral health needs while participating in the learning collaborative.

This was the third session of the community of practice: Behavioral Health Criminal Case Processing:Exploring Person-Centered Justice in the Courts. This community of practice is being coordinated with the National Center for State Courts. The learning objectives of this session,Implementing Data-Driven Policy Changes, on August 12, 2021, were to have participants identify all possible state and local resources and data to implement data-driven policy change, share progress about their team's TA plans, and understand basic formulas for analyzing individual case costs.

This was the second session of the community of practice: Behavioral Health Criminal Case Processing:Exploring Person-Centered Justice in the Courts. This community of practice is being coordinated with the National Center for State Courts.