Title: Community Justice in Rural America: Four Examples and Four Futures.
Series: Monograph (6 x 9)
Author: Bureau of Justice Assistance
Published: February 2001
Subject: rural crime, courts -- general, corrections -- general
21 pages
50,302 bytes

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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
Bureau of Justice Assistance

Community Justice in Rural America: Four Examples and Four Futures

February 2001

Bureau of Justice Assistance
Monograph

Community Justice Series #3

NCJ 182437

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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
810 Seventh Street NW.
Washington, DC 20531

John Ashcroft 
Attorney General

Office of Justice Programs
World Wide Web Home Page
www.ojp.usdoj.gov

Bureau of Justice Assistance
World Wide Web Home Page
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA

For grant and funding information contact U.S. Department of Justice Response
Center 1-800-421-6770

This document was prepared by the Center for Effective Public Policy, under
grant number 97-DD-BX-K002, awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance,
Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings,
and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this document are those of
the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of
the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Office of Justice
Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National
Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention,
and the Office for Victims of Crime.

----------------------------

Foreword

Much of what has been reported about grassroots community justice efforts has
focused on initiatives in urban areas. As a result, little is known about
community justice in rural areas. Has community justice taken root in rural and
isolated towns? If so, what quality-of-life issues are driving it? Who in the
community and local justice system is involved? Are traditional actors in justice
systems that serve rural communities resisting change? And what is the likely
future of community justice in rural America? Will communities see their efforts
fade away, be co-opted by the system, or evolve into vehicles for collaborative
problem solving that transform the relationship between government and
citizen?

To find answers to these questions, the Bureau of Justice Assistance funded a
project by the Center for Effective Public Policy to study rural communities in
which community justice is thriving. This monograph reports what the center
found. The communities selected for this study--Boise County, Idaho; Jefferson
County, Oregon; Monroe County, Wisconsin; and Burlington, Vermont--have
different cultures, crime and quality-of-life concerns, and assets. But each
shares a desire to look beyond remedies traditionally offered by the justice
system for solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

Each community highlighted in this monograph provides an example of how
community justice grows in response to the unique needs it serves. In Boise
County, for example, the catalyst for community justice was the lack of
adequate dispositions available to the juvenile court. In Monroe County, the
spark came from the former chair of the county board, who questioned the
desirability of building a new jail in response to overcrowding in the local
corrections system.

We offer this monograph as a starting point for judges, prosecutors, public
defenders, law enforcement chiefs, and other local leaders searching for
examples of how frustration can be transformed into action, even in isolated
communities with limited resources.

Bureau of Justice Assistance

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Contents

I. Introduction

II. The Sites

o Boise County, Idaho
o Jefferson County, Oregon
o Monroe County, Wisconsin
o Burlington, Vermont

III. Analysis

o Beginnings
o Problem Solving and the Desire for Civility
o Tensions
o The Future of Community Justice

IV. Choosing the Future

V. For More Information

----------------------------


I. Introduction

Much of what we know about community justice in the United States is the
result of efforts in neighborhoods across the nation in cities like Austin, New
York, and Portland. We know much less about how community justice looks in
small towns and rural areas.

With that in mind, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) funded a project by
the Center for Effective Public Policy to learn about rural communities in which
community justice flourished. We wanted to understand the contours and shape
of their activities and how they began, and we sought to nominate some as
resource sites to which others could look who are involved or developing an
interest in community justice. 

We found projects in various stages of development. All had different starting
points, and all existed in varying landscapes. All had varying assets, liabilities,
and cultures. Yet, each shared the potential to improve the lives of community
residents. Indeed, we found that a key quality of community justice is the
unleashing of a community's energy to respond more effectively to its problems.

The four communities described in this monograph are but a few examples of
the small towns, rural areas, and Indian reservations in which community justice
is flourishing. We visited many on the recommendations of BJA staff and others
with an interest in community justice. These four are not closer to being "state
of the art" than others; all are works in progress. But each offers a different
example of the shape of community justice, a different way that it has grown in
response to the community where it began. We then suggest the significance of
our observations, identify the most important unanswered questions about rural
community justice, and describe four distinct possible futures for it. We offer
these examples as starting points for self-examination by communities pursuing
their own community justice initiatives and as suggestions of how these
impulses can manifest in concrete action.

It is not possible here to tell fully the story of community justice in Boise
County, Idaho; Jefferson County, Oregon; Monroe County, Wisconsin; and
Burlington, Vermont. We have sketched the story in each place, emphasizing,
for illustrative purposes, the experiences of Boise County, Idaho. 

----------------------------

II. The Sites

Boise County, Idaho

Boise County is a geographically large, rural mountain county that adjoins
Idaho's largest city, Boise. The county's population of 6,500 is concentrated in
three small towns: Idaho City, Horseshoe Bend, and Garden Valley. The scenic
mountainous terrain makes these towns more remote from one another and
from Boise than the 50 or so miles between each suggests. the county is poor,
with pockets of people living in remote places without electricity and running
water.

The spark for community justice in Boise County came from the county's
magistrate judge and juvenile probation officer. Concerned with the
impoverished array of dispositions available to the juvenile court, they convened
a series of meetings throughout the county to discover residents' attitudes
toward the justice system in general and the juvenile justice system in particular.
These initial efforts resulted in the creation of an electronic monitoring
program, a community service program, and a juvenile diversion program called
the Accountability Network, or ICAN. Through ICAN, juvenile offenders
work with panels of adult volunteers to agree on contracts in lieu of sentences.
The volunteers monitor the youth's progress in following through on the contract
terms. 

(In three of the four counties profiled here, the court has only one or two judges
who necessarily handle all cases--criminal, juvenile, family, civil, small claims,
child abuse, and neglect, among others. It seems no accident to us that the
judges are key sources of energy for community justice, given the breadth of
their judicial experience, their strong feeling of connection to and responsibility
for the people in their respective counties, their belief that progress is possible,
and their willingness to gather people to solve local problems.)

The judge and juvenile probation officer also helped create a community justice
committee, made up of citizens from Idaho City, Horseshoe Bend, and Garden
Valley. Initially serving in only an advisory role, the committee has since
become active in identifying community problems, setting priorities for
community justice efforts, and identifying and invoking resources to address
community problems. Although it has no legal status or authority, it has become
an important steering committee for community justice efforts.

The committee held public meetings in all three towns to identify problems in
each community. Although these meetings yielded expressions of concern about
matters that might fairly be called, in conventional terms, criminal justice issues,
their thrust turned out to be related to the widespread belief that a valued way
of life is slipping away from this rural community. Community members want to
preserve this way of life, if they can, or to at least manage or come to terms
with unavoidable changes in a more satisfactory way. Specific concerns about
the behavior of children and juveniles were most common, although by no
means was the referenced behavior necessarily delinquent. For example, one
member of the committee, the owner of a local restaurant, said she wanted
teenagers who come into her restaurant to treat her employees and restrooms
with respect. This theme, that a shared sense of values was being lost, recurred
in all four sites. The committee has achieved an energy, passion, and vision that
is hard to capture or convey in a simple description of its activities. Its members
are determined, and their energy is contagious.

The second stage of Boise County's community justice program was decidedly
noncriminal justice in nature. Drawing on the collective instincts of the
committee and the experience of the justice system, the project created a
Healthy Families Program to visit each pregnant woman in the county and to
prepare those most in need of help (primarily unwed teenage mothers) to be
parents. This foray into work with families led to the creation of an even more
ambitious Parents as Teachers Project, which provides information and training
about parent-child interaction as a crucial part of school readiness. The
committee started a program to work with the public schools on reducing the
frequency of student expulsions from the schools and on the nagging problem of
truancy throughout the county. The juvenile probation department became the
Community Justice Department, and, with a grant from the Albertson
Foundation, created the first preschool programs in the county. Boise County is
now the only county in Idaho to offer preschool to all children in the county.
The programs are located within the public schools, further cementing the
collaboration of these public agencies.

The third and continuing stage of Boise County's effort is community problem
solving. An example of this effort is the community justice committee's response
to the "dog problem" in a development of 67 homes in a remote part of Boise
County. Several members of this development allow their dogs to roam freely,
believing it is their right to do so. Several dogs have gathered in packs and,
according to some residents, terrorized adults and children in the development.
After several calls to the police failed to yield satisfactory interventions, a
community member poisoned two dogs after warning their owners that they
should be controlled. 

The owners demanded that the district attorney prosecute the man, who
admitted poisoning the dogs, for felonies. The prosecutor instead charged him
with two misdemeanors, expressing serious doubt that a Boise County jury
would convict the remorseful defendant because of the underlying
circumstances. The defendant, however, a federal civil service employee, is
very concerned about the consequences of conviction for his employment and
retirement, fearing that he will lose both if convicted. The dog owners are
dissatisfied that the most severe consequence that can be exacted by the
criminal justice system is prosecution of a misdemeanor. 

If the case goes to trial, the dog owners are likely to be unhappy with either
outcome, an acquittal or a conviction for the misdemeanors. Although the
defendant will likely feel relieved if the verdict is not guilty, a trial will be costly
and put his family's future at risk. For both parties, the outcomes offered by the
criminal justice system seem unsatisfactory, and the prospects for healthy
community life in this development will remain dim unless these issues are
resolved in a satisfying way.

Boise County's community justice committee is mediating this dispute. The
committee has identified community members who are respected by the parties.
They are working with the participants to reach a sensible resolution that will
allow them to live together in peace. Accomplishing this will require a measure
of shared responsibility and accountability. Having "imagined" what a sensible
resolution to the matter might be, the community justice group is trying to move
the participants toward it without dictating its ultimate shape and detail.

This is the most dramatic community problem the committee has mediated, but
it is not the only one. As a result of one of the community meetings, a group is
trying to bridge significant gaps in expectations and priorities between one
town's police chief and its citizens. Other groups are working to create circles
of parents who can share information about and better supervise their
teenagers' activities, and to create more recreational opportunities for youth. 

The contagious energy and vision of the community justice committee have
been taken up by new groups in these towns. Their efforts are likely the
beginning of many possible community-building initiatives in Boise County.

Jefferson County, Oregon

Jefferson County is a high desert county on the eastern side of the Cascade
Mountains, east and south of the city of Portland. It is the only county in
Oregon in which whites do not compose the majority of the population.
One-third of the population is white, one-third is Native American, and
one-third is Mexican American. The reservation of the Confederated Tribes of
Warm Springs, which operates its own tribal police and courts, is located in the
county.

The impetus for community justice in Jefferson County came from two judges
in the county's judicial district. Their initial concern was the adequacy of
dispositions available to them in juvenile cases. They responded by creating a
peer jury program that relies on young people to "sentence" juvenile offenders
in diverted cases. The judges created a merchant accountability board for
first-time retail theft offenders that forces them to confront the con- sequences
of shoplifting and take responsibility for what they did. In partnership with the
district attorney's office, the judges successfully advanced a domestic violence
initiative to strengthen and speed up the county's response to domestic violence.
This effort includes additional resources for the prosecution of domestic
violence cases, education and outreach programming, and diversion for
low-level offenders. The judges also created a drug court for adults and a
community service program for juveniles. 

Like their counterparts in Idaho, the leaders of Jefferson County's community
justice initiative soon turned to noncriminal justice matters. They broadened the
base of people involved in community justice by working effectively with the
Hispanic, American Indian, Anglo Bureau for Love and Advancement
(HAABLA), a community group dedicated to interracial understanding and
harmony. They created an education program for divorcing parents to advance
understanding of the repercussions of divorce on children. They created a
small-claims and eviction mediation program that relies on citizen panels to
resolve disputes more informally and rapidly than the courts. They were
instrumental in bringing a Boys & Girls Club to Madras, the county seat, to
create more recreational opportunities for young people. 

An example of more robust community-building efforts in Jefferson County is
the bicycle program, created as an incentive for children to attend school
regularly. The program was developed by HAABLA and involves various 
businesses, public officials, and agencies. Of particular concern was the high
dropout rate of Native American students in the county. Each student signs a
performance plan, which includes a contract to attend school and do his or her
schoolwork regularly. The prize for each successful child is a reconditioned
bike or rollerblades and instruction on their safe use. 

The circuit judges in Jefferson County have worked closely with the tribal
judges in nearby Warm Springs Reservation in their efforts to incorporate
restorative measures into the tribal courts' dispositions. Among the
contemplated outcomes is the transfer from circuit court to tribal court of
low-level offenders who are from the reservation as part of a diversion
program. The judges are working with a local state legislator to explore the
possibility of introducing legislation to allow some nondiverted cases to be
handled in tribal court, a more appropriate site for handling many matters. 

As the judges succeed in broadening the involvement of this diverse community
in their efforts, the possibilities for expansion of community justice in Jefferson
County seem strong. The participation of the Warm Springs tribal government
and courts may also lead to new dimensions in the programs that might be of
interest across the country.

Monroe County, Wisconsin

Monroe County is a rural county in western Wisconsin. It is primarily
agricultural, and its rolling hills and forests combine with its large dairy farms to
create stunning scenes of rural life. Although Monroe County has a community
justice coordinator and a 14-member countywide criminal justice coordinating
council, its community justice efforts were less developed than the other sites
we visited. The spark for the program came from the former chair of the county
board, who questioned the desirability of building a large new jail in response to
overcrowding in the current facility. She created a citizens committee to study
the need for a new jail and alternatives to confinement in some criminal cases.

The committee recommended the creation of a broad-based effort to examine
the criminal justice system and to look more closely at prevention-focused
activities. This effort led to the creation of a community justice coordinator
position and, more recently, a court service worker to help implement
initiatives. Among the most important initiatives currently under way
are an adult electronic-monitoring program; an effort to create pretrial services
for people otherwise held in the jail; the creation of a community service
program, including juvenile intensive supervision and electronic monitoring; and
a restorative justice program.

The coordinating council, working closely with the county's human services
department, has also created an initiative to respond comprehensively to those
convicted of drunk driving. Although the coordinating council is dominated by
people from the criminal justice system, strengthening prevention services is
becoming a high priority for the community. A large meat-packing plant has
drawn many Mexican-American workers to the county, creating racial tension.
The integration of these newcomers into the community has been filled with
challenges, and resolving the cultural differences and tensions remains difficult.
The coordinating council has begun a process of community meetings to expand
the range and ownership of the activities.

Burlington, Vermont

Burlington, with a population of 35,000, is the largest city in Vermont. It is
enthusiastically en-gaged in several community-based efforts. The impetus for
community justice efforts came from various sources, and the most predominant
were from outside the criminal justice system. The mayor's office had a variety
of neighborhood projects under way and believed that neighborhood disputes,
public concern about juvenile behavior, underage drinking, and the desirability
of more robust juvenile justice dispositions should be matters of government
priority. Nearly concurrent with these activities, the Vermont Department of
Corrections made funds available to communities throughout the state to create
citizen-run reparative probation boards as a dispositional alternative in low-level
criminal cases. 

The city hired a community justice coordinator and located a community justice
center in downtown Burlington. Through the guidance of the coordinator, the
Burlington Community Justice Center has become the hub of various activities
loosely defined as community justice. Like the other sites, Burlington moved
from criminal justice concerns to broader social, educational, and civic
concerns. Whereas the center is administering the Department of Corrections
Reparative Board process in Burlington, most of its activities do not focus on
criminal justice. 

The center created a focus group of formal and informal minority leaders to
help develop effective and respectful outreach strategies to communities of
color in Burlington. The center produces a bimonthly public access television
show to inform the larger community about its activities and to air relevant
justice issues. The center also supports the Neighborhood Action Project, the
goal of which is to develop preadjudicative neighborhood solutions, such as
community mediation panels and group conferences, for neighborhood
problems and low-level crime. The center hopes to learn from these efforts and
to move such activities into all neighborhoods in the city as an alternative to use
of the criminal justice system. 

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III. Analysis

It is tempting to suggest that some model for community justice exists, but such
a characterization would not do justice to the developmental and fluid nature of
community-based efforts in rural America, which might take an entirely different
shape in areas not discussed here. It seems best then to embroider the factual
stories with our analysis to tell more fully the stories of the four communities
we visited.

We see three distinct phases to community justice developments in the four
communities discussed in this monograph. The first is the effort to create more
nuanced sentencing dispositions. In the second, the community seeks to
address underlying social problems. Their greater exposure to the realities of
offenders and their offenses through the sentencing process fuels the desire to
prevent later delinquency and to create the possibility of better lives for its
citizens, especially its young people. Inherent in this phase is explicit recognition
of the desire to preserve a way of life, to re-create a kind of community that
nurtures, protects, and holds its young accountable. We call the third phase
community problem solving. It is directed at specific community problems (not
always well defined) and is a more immediate response to the desire for a
better life now for all citizens of the community.

Beginnings

Community justice initiatives often begin because people are dissatisfied with
the criminal justice system. In each rural community, frustration with traditional
remedies fuels a desire for a more nuanced and appropriate set of
consequences. This need for alternative dispositions explains the creation of
restorative justice programs, community service projects, merchant
accountability boards, peer juries, and electronic-monitoring efforts.

The principals' desire for more robust dispositions leads them to invite citizen
participation, in part because citizen involvement is thought to be powerful in
creating satisfactory outcomes. For example, it is thought that teenage offenders
are more attentive to the judgments of a peer jury and that those juries identify
sentences that are experienced more powerfully by young people. Community
service projects and restorative justice meetings between victims and offenders
are also thought to advance the purposes of sentencing more effectively than
conventional methods.

However, there are other reasons for dissatisfaction with the criminal justice
system in these communities. The system is viewed as slow and formal, unable
to cope with matters, particularly low-level offenses, that demand rapid and
informal responses. Diversion programs are created to speed up the justice
system's response and to allow for more measured, individualized approaches. 

Clearly, participants in these communities' criminal justice systems believe that
many of the matters that come into the system would be addressed more
appropriately through alternative sanctions. Truancy, for example, is a problem
in at least three of the four communities. Truancy tickets, although a common
response, seem particularly unlikely to be effective, especially when truancy's
diverse underlying causes are understood. This problem may yield instead to
specific problem-solving approaches such as dealing with bullies who scare
kids away from school, devising ways for children to get ready for school when
their parents are not at home in the early morning, and demonstrating the value
of education to parents.

Another reason for dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system is its
perceived unfairness. One sheriff noted that the only kids who receive underage
drinking tickets are the truthful ones. It is impossible, he said, to "convict" a
youngster for underage drinking in many cases unless the youngster confesses.
In his view, the system teaches young people the wrong lesson.

Frustration with the criminal justice system's capacity to respond effectively to
large-scale underage drinking parties and domestic violence is substantial in all
four communities. Enforcement of the problem, cited in each county as
intransigent, is regarded as ineffective. In some instances, efforts to crack down
seem to exacerbate the risks of drunk driving, fights, sexual assaults, and
property damage by driving parties to more remote spots.

In response, each site began a discussion of how to implement more carefully
crafted approaches that reduce specific harms. For many sites, an important
goal is to bring some measure of self-regulation to the drinking parties by
reducing or eliminating drunk driving and by educating youth, parents, and
other guardians. In this example, there is movement away from ineffective law
enforcement and toward control of harms.

Judges, prosecutors, and probation officers in the four sites see children who
have behaved inappropriately in juvenile court and believe their misbehavior is
explained in part by their dysfunctional upbringing. The participants, foreseeing
wave after wave of similar kids in the future, wish to improve parenting from
before birth through the high school years. 

To confront these problems, the four communities look to social service and
health programs that strengthen families. They have created parenting, teen
pregnancy, and healthy families programs that respond directly to important
community needs. Making these programs available is not conventionally
thought to be the business of the criminal justice system. However, because the
four sites are struggling with problems they feel are the product of social and
family defects, they believe it is critical to seek broad community involvement in
these programs.

In all of these efforts, the official actors in the criminal justice system are not
blind to its shortcomings, which explains in part why they seek to invent new
responses. There is implicit recognition that the system as presently configured
cannot deliver the outcomes desired. Instead, these actors seek methods of
social control that rely on relationships among people rather than those imposed
by government through the formal system.

Problem Solving and the Desire for Civility

In every community, increased community participation led to a broader inquiry
about community needs and desires. Many community members stated, in
various forums, that a cherished way of life was changing for the worse. Their
robust sense of community was shrinking, and their belief that they knew their
community's values and shared them was being undermined. They desired a
shared sense of rules that the community should live by, consequences for
violating those rules, and incentives and opportunities for those who lived by
them. They also desired a better and more harmonious quality of life. 

Most of the disharmony people were concerned about had to do with young
people and the perceived failure of parents to raise them properly. They did not
believe that government and the criminal justice system could return their
communities to the "state" they believe once existed but were determined to
improve the conditions of their communities.

We believe, then, that community justice is a condition of life that people desire,
a condition in which people agree to, know, and play by the rules. There are
negative consequences for not abiding by the rules and rewards for playing by
them, the most important of which is the opportunity to have a fulfilled, fully
realized life. The condition also requires solving problems that the justice
system does not seem equipped to handle--to see to it that young people are
properly socialized, for example, or to ensure that the places people inhabit are
safe and secure. Most people feel that the criminal justice system alone cannot
create this condition and that substantial progress requires community-based
involvement to create and preserve it. 

If community justice is to be created, two things must happen: The criminal
justice system's relation to the community must be realigned, and community
members must work to create civility. Realignment gives the natural forces of
social control (personal and work relationships, for example) a more vital role
in dealing with problems that yield to such involvement. The creation of civility
is everyone's responsibility, especially individual community members.

It is important to emphasize that these words--civility, harmony, and condition--
are the authors', not those of the community members with whom they worked.
However, when offered these characterizations and this overall analysis, the
community members viewed them as a fair characterization of what they want
and are in the process of doing.

When we discussed this realignment of responsibility with the communities, we
used examples to inquire how community members understood relative roles.
We offer them here to sharpen this point.

Example 1. Most communities would agree that a serial rapist should be
isolated from the community, ordinarily through imprisonment. Such a response
provides punishment, promotes safety, reduces fear, and creates the possibility
for healing and restoration of individual victims and the community. Other
measures also might be invoked to provide some of these values. Therefore, the
primary responsibility for imprisonment lies with government, although more
complex approaches that include community involvement may be needed to
promote healing and reduce fear.

Example 2. Imagine a fight between two 14-year-old boys in which a teacher
intervenes. Unless there is something extraordinary about the boys or the
incident, the teacher would probably call the parents of the boys, explain what
happened, and expect the parents to deal with the behavior. Ordinarily, we
would hope that the relationship of the parents to the two boys, the desire of
the boys to live within their family and community norms, and the boys' need for
their parents' understanding and respect would lead to informal, natural forces
working to restore order and teach lessons about living together. The exact
content of the social control exerted might vary, but some degree of
accountability, healing, and restoration directed toward the individuals and the
community could be expected. An important objective would be for the youth
to learn from the event and not repeat it. Ultimately, the goal of "fully realized"
people and communities would be paramount.

Although government plays a role in this example, it is minor compared with
government's role in dealing with the serial rapist. Natural forces of social
development and control probably would likely be much more powerful in the
lives of the two boys than would government in the form of the juvenile justice,
child welfare, or criminal justice systems.

Example 3. Imagine that there are frequent fights in a particular tavern. Several
responses are possible. One would be to arrest the participants after each
occurs and punish them, which is how the justice system would respond in most
communities. A more robust response would strive to repair the relationship of
the two individuals and repair the harm they have done to the community. 

Another response would be to examine the sequence of events in the tavern to
learn more about the fights, the time and place they occur, the participants, and
why fights are occurring with such frequency. This response would invoke a
combination of formal and informal social controls to prevent fights in the
future and to deal constructively with those that had already occurred. We can
imagine arresting some participants. We can also imagine educating the
bartender about how to stop fights when disagreements occur, when to refuse
to serve drinks so that people do not become so intoxicated that they fight, and
how to manage crowds, lighting, and other events in the bar that might
contribute to the outbreak of fights. In addition, we can imagine threatening
civil action to revoke the owner's liquor license if disorder persists.

In this example, government activity and natural forces could work together to
advance important private and community interests. The configuration of
government and natural forces most likely to achieve the purposes of the
community and be most appropriate is difficult to determine. Individual
circumstances, customized evaluations of assets and liabilities, and, ultimately,
customized approaches must be considered. At the heart of community justice
is the process of deciding what this configuration of government and natural
forces might be, who will decide it, and how it will be decided. Greater clarity
and specificity about what communities are engaged in, what assets and
liabilities they have, what values they hold, what they want, and why they want
it will greatly advance that process.

Our observation is that people are more likely to be in the condition they desire
if they are doing something about its creation. This seems like an obvious point:
that the "doing" itself contributes to the condition, in part because it gives
people the feeling they can do something for themselves and their communities.
Coming together to share concerns, to look for solutions, builds confidence in
shared values. Once the problem has a name, its dimensions are understood,
and the possible strategies for dealing are suggested, there is a feeling of relief,
and of energy. People think that together they can do something. So they do.
And the "doing" satisfies. It helps create the condition of community justice.

Tensions

Of course, everything is not all sweetness and light once community energy is
released and directed toward solving community problems. We identified
several tensions that affect the shape and progress of community justice efforts.

One readily identifiable source of tension is that many participants in the
criminal justice system are stuck in their roles. They are law enforcers,
prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges. They arrest, prosecute, de-fend, and
sentence. They are not necessarily problem solvers. This is by no means true of
all the participants we observed, and, to be fair, being stuck in the role is not
necessarily by choice. Some police officers, for example, believe that
enforcement alone will not solve the problem of underage drinking, but feel they
have few options absent support for a more nuanced approach. Simply, they
are not always appropriate or sufficient to solve community problems. 

A second tension revolves around the definition of community. In everyday use
in the sites, the term means those not part of government. However, each place
implicitly understands that there are distinct communities within a rural county 
because of their history, geography, size, culture, assets, and liabilities. When
assessing a problem and taking action, people know their differences and tend
to define community according to their perception of who contributed to a
problem, is affected by it, or has a role in solving it.

A third tension is the question of how to spur communities to act. We expected
to hear that the spark was an incident or event that galvanized action. Although
such events occurred in the communities we visited, the spark really was the
accretion of dissatisfaction over time. For the spark to become a flame,
however, the right mix of grassroots action and leadership must be present.
Top-down efforts to galvanize communities alone seem insufficient, but without
leadership, grassroots efforts may become muddled. Ironically, the leadership
comes from government, participants in the system who see the limits of what
they have the capacity and authority to do. 

A fourth tension involves the human instinct to reach for solutions readily at
hand. Doing otherwise--defining problems in terms of unknown or unavailable
solutions--would be daunting. Fortunately, communities can learn from one
another when their problems are similar. However, each community's assets,
liabilities, and culture are different, requiring local strategic thinking to solve
problems.

The Future of Community Justice

What is the future of community justice in rural communities? The experiences
of the communities studied for this monograph indicate that success will be
dictated by three factors: value, capacity, and authority. Community justice is
unlikely to develop and flourish unless it develops outcomes that have value in
the community. Development requires capacity--the will, means, and skill to
create value in the world. Finally, there must be authority to act. The authority
can be legal (the court's authority to fashion dispositions, for example) or
informal, with its legitimacy derived from its popular approval.

Community justice initiatives now in place have four possible futures. Some
communities will see their efforts fade away. In others, community justice will
become a minor adjunct to the system or a conventional prevention-focused
effort. Finally, a few will transform their efforts into ongoing problem-solving
endeavors.

Fade away. Community justice could fade away for several reasons. The
conventional criminal justice system might discourage and stymie efforts to
reorder its relationship with the community. Or the requisite leadership or
communal sense of urgency may not be present. If the participants in the
criminal justice system lack the imagination to see beyond the system's available
solutions, they will likely only give lip service to greater community
involvement. Because the community justice movement lacks legal authority, it
relies on community demand for its power and legitimacy. If such support is
lacking, the movement will be unable to survive resistance from the criminal
justice system or indifference from community leaders and members. In this
future, the community justice movement is likely to wither. 

Adjunct to the system. The community justice movement typically starts in
low-level cases, in efforts to create more robust dispositions, divert appropriate
cases, and enlarge community involvement in the dispositional process.
Manifestations include community service, peer juries, and reparative boards.
A second possible future for community justice is that it will continue as an
adjunct to the criminal justice system. Although it may appear that this
development will relieve the system and communities of business that ordinarily
is processed through the criminal justice system, this is not necessarily so. The
availability of more dispositional alternatives may lead to more business for the
system because more dispositional alternatives are available to it. Although
most efforts to enlarge dispositional alternatives through community justice
clearly are not designed to increase business, they surely have this potential. 

Prevention. A third possibility for community justice is that it will focus efforts
on prevention. In several of the communities we ob-served, the community
justice system devoted energy and attention to the creation and delivery of
social services, particularly in the areas of teen pregnancy and healthy families.
Most, but not all, such efforts quickly became government programs and no
longer relied on the energy of community members for their continued
existence. In this future, the efforts become institutionalized while continuing to
create great value.

Community justice as problem solving. A fourth possibility for community
justice is that it will evolve into a community problem-solving effort. The basis
for this conception of community justice is the notion that community justice
signals a reordering of the relationship between government and its citizens and
that natural forces of social control that exist in ordinary human relationships
have more power than does governmental authority. The community effort to
solve the dog problem in Boise County, Idaho, for example, shows that
informal influences on human behavior may be more apt to yield value,
satisfactory solutions, and stronger communities than the criminal justice
system. In this future, communities become a nearly inexhaustible supply of
informal possibilities for social control. This energy can be brought to bear and
may be more effective and satisfying than current efforts.

Some proponents of community justice see its ultimate goal as the building of
stronger communities. Stronger communities can be built on more robust
dispositional alternatives (the starting point), but this approach seems unlikely
unless efforts at prevention and problem solving that contribute to justice and
civility also occur.

----------------------------

IV. Choosing the Future

Reflecting on the experiences of the communities we have visited, we offer the
following conclusions about creating conditions in which community justice
thrives.

Creating opportunities and rewards. Communities are built on shared values,
and community justice exists when those values are honored and their rules
upheld. Our current justice system stresses the interdiction and sanctioning of
rule violations and ignores the necessity of rewarding abiding by the rules.
Community justice is a vehicle for creating rewards and reminding government
of the need for careful attention to the availability of opportunities for achieving
a decent life.

Honoring differences while reinforcing shared values. From Vermont to
Oregon, every town in America, no matter how small, holds within it a rich
diversity of cultures and ways to lead a fulfilling life. Community justice thrives
when those differences are acknowledged and celebrated. The process of
building community justice will succeed when opportunities are created to fully
explore what values are shared and what outcomes are desired. However,
community justice will be neither just nor community based if it signals a way to
enforce one group's notion of propriety on everyone else. 

Creating opportunities for participation. The value of community justice to the
whole community will likely be greater if the process by which it is built
includes ample attention to who is involved and how they are involved. Where
meetings are held, at what time, and with what support (such as child care and
transportation) all affect who can participate. How the meetings are structured
and how voices are acknowledged affect the power of the participation. Faith
institutions, workplaces, schools, coffee shops, barber shops, and social clubs
are but a few of the places where different parts of the community gather and
can be reached.

Making use of private resources. The addition of resources from
nongovernmental sources, whether grant funds, office space, staff time, or
goods and services, can play a vital role in changing the balance of influence
between government and the community and in keeping governmental
participants committed to the process. When private and public resources are
joined in response to problems identified collaboratively, the value of each is
enhanced.

Using the power of position. Frequently, those who sit in the highest positions
in the justice system have the clearest view of their community's problems. That
view, when backed by a desire to go beyond the limitations of their position in
the system, can be an important impetus for starting community justice efforts.
Judges, prosecutors, sheriffs, and police chiefs can call on others to begin
conversations, plan, and take action. Typically, they are also in a position to
seek assistance from state or federal sources or from their own professional
associations.

Supporting community justice. Foundations, professional associations, and state
and federal government agencies have roles in supporting the development of 
community justice. Providing funds for courts to create community service
programs or teen courts, funding a staff position in a probation agency to do
home visits, or offering training in mediation, dispute resolution, and community
organizing are ways that outside organizations can help. However, subtler and
simpler ways exist. Public officials engaged in building community justice need
the endorsement of the highest officers within the state, including the state
supreme court or the attorney general. State officials must encourage their
agents to think differently about their roles, adopt a more problem-solving
approach, and then lead discussion of these approaches at official meetings and
conferences. At a national level, professional associations can offer training,
materials, and ideas.

Individuals need the support of communities to lead safe and decent lives.
Communities need leadership, resources, and support to achieve community
justice.

----------------------------

V. For More Information

For more information about community justice initiatives, contact:

Center for Effective Public Policy
8403 Colesville Road, Suite 720
Silver Spring, MD 20910 
301-589-9383
Fax: 301-589-3505

Bureau of Justice Assistance 
810 Seventh Street NW.
Washington, DC 20531
202-514-6278
World Wide Web: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA

Bureau of Justice Assistance Clearinghouse 
P.O. Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20849-6000
1-800-688-4252
World Wide Web: www.ncjrs.org

Clearinghouse staff are available Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
eastern time. Ask to be placed on the BJA mailing list.

U.S. Department of Justice Response Center
1-800-421-6770 or 202-307-1480

Response Center staff are available Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
eastern time.

Bureau of Justice Assistance Information

General Information

Callers may contact the U.S. Department of Justice Response Center for
general information or specific needs, such as assistance in submitting grant
applications and information on training. To contact the Response Center, call
1-800-421-6770 or write to 1100 Vermont Avenue NW., Washington, DC
20005.

Indepth Information

For more indepth information about BJA, its programs, and its funding
opportunities, requesters can call the BJA Clearinghouse. The BJA
Clearinghouse, a component of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service
(NCJRS), shares BJA program information with state and local agencies and
community groups across the country. Information specialists are available to
provide reference and referral services, publication distribution, participation
and support for conferences, and other networking and outreach activities. The
Clearinghouse can be reached by

o Mail 
P.O. Box 6000 
Rockville, MD 20849-6000

o Visit
2277 Research Boulevard 
Rockville, MD 20850

o Telephone 
1-800-688-4252 
Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. eastern time

o Fax 
301-519-5212

o Fax on Demand 
1-800-688-4252

o BJA Home Page 
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA

o NCJRS World Wide Web 
www.ncjrs.org

o E-mail 
askncjrs@ncjrs.org

o JUSTINFO Newsletter 
E-mail to listproc@ncjrs.org Leave the subject line blank In the body of the
message, type: subscribe justinfo [your name]