Community Justice

CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Community Justice

A. Definition of community justice

1. The concept of community justice is a new idea that has gathered considerable support among practitioners and policy makers.

2. The growth in community justice project has arisen as a result of local desires to develop more proactive responses to crime and they funded with local resources, not large federal grants.

B. A philosophy of justice

1. As a philosophy, community justice recognizes that crime and the problems that result from it generally impede the quality of community life.

2. Not only does it respond to crime with traditional means, but it also sets as a goal the improvement of quality of community life.

C. A strategy of justice

1. Community policing: The community policing approach to law enforcement employs problem-solving strategies to identify ways to prevent crimes by getting to root causes. Community policing attempts to identify crime “hot spots” and change the dynamics of those places that seem to make crime possible. Police officers actively seek partnerships with residents and citizen groups in pursuit of safer streets.

2. Environmental crime prevention: The environmental crime prevention approach begins with an analysis of why crime trends tend to concentrate in certain locations and certain times. Then, environmental crime prevention specialists change the places crime tends to occur to reduce crime.

3. Restorative justice: The restorative justice approach to sanctioning offenders seeks to restore the victim, the offender, and the community to a level of functioning that existed prior to the criminal event. This approach calls for offenders to admit what they have done and take steps to make restitution.

D. Programs

1. Programs of community justice are varied

2. They can include crime mapping, citizen advisory boards, citizen and victim involvement in sentencing, and offender community service sanctions.

3. Community justice is concerned with taking seriously the problems faced by people who live with high levels of crime, some of whom are themselves involved in crime.

II. How Does Community Justice Differ from Criminal Justice?

A. How is Community Justice Different? (Table 22.1)

1. A neighborhood focus: traditional justice practices attempt to develop standardized approaches to crime problems applied uniformly across the legal jurisdictions; Community justice attempts to tailor strategies to fit important differences across neighborhoods within the same legal jurisdiction.

2. A problem-solving focus: the solution is sought under the problem-solving philosophy of community justice; it seeks to solve the underlying problems faced by offenders, victims, and others in the neighborhood.

3. A focus on restoration: it means that the losses suffered by the victim are restored, threat to local safety is removed and offender is restored to full membership of the community.

4. Justice reinvestment: Justice reinvestment is a strategy that seeks to funnel the vast resources of the criminal justice system into activities and projects that improve community life.

III. Arguments for Community Justice

A. Crime and crime problems are local: community justice concerns itself with the quality of life in the community.

B. Crime fighting improves the quality of life: if community justice advocates are correct, neighborhoods suffering repeated challenges absorbing the losses incurred as residents are removed, at the same time dealing with those who have returned to prison or jail.

C. Proactive rather than reactive strategies are needed: restorative justice is proactive and seeks to present crimes from occurring in the first place. This is based on the assumption that preventing crimes is the most efficient aim of justice.

IV. What Are the Problems of Community Justice?

A. Community Justice and Individual Rights: in a community justice model, different communities will vary in the ways they pursue public safety and improved quality of life.

B. Community Justice and Social Inequality: Inequality breeds crime; it would be a dismal irony if community justice contributed to the very dynamics that make those problems worse.

C. Community Justice and Increasing Criminal Justice Costs: We spend nearly $100 billion in the criminal justice system every year; community justice calls for justice organizations to augment current services.

V. Future Prospects of Community Justice

A. Community justice has proven very popular, but the important question of any new idea in correctional work is whether it has staying power.

B. The popularity of community justice derives in part from deep dissatisfactions with contemporary justice politics.

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