Key functions of Community Justice
- Accountability – identifying the range of information available on the types of crime that are of community concerns, ensuring that the Criminal Justice System reflects these priorities and informing the community of the outcomes.
- Coordination – improving the work to engage local communities and tackle the problems leading to crime, by linking together the agencies responsible for community engagement and problem solving, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of their work and ensuring joined up solutions to make communities safer.
- Help – assessment of an individuals problems, ensuring there are interventions available to all those that need it such as drug treatment, domestic violence counseling, health care and job training to help individuals avoid further involvement with the Criminal Justice System.
- Reparation – providing information about the reparation and restoration work done by offenders for the damage done to the community as well as the individual.
- Oversight – keeping track of offenders’ progress and compliance through problem solving.
Focusing on involving the community is what makes Community Justice different from other functions of the Criminal Justice System. Community Justice meets the needs of people living in the local area, encouraging them to take ownership of their police, court, types of crime tackled and community payback.
The community are engaged, so that:
- criminal justice agencies learn which crimes most concern local people and take steps to tackle them
- information from the local people helps ensure criminals are caught
- local people understand the of the work of the judiciary and criminal justice agencies, and believe that they are working to meet their needs
- more local people become involved in efforts to tackle problem behaviour within the community by coming up with solutions or by contributing as a volunteer
- the community helps identify tasks for offenders on unpaid work orders
- improving the safety of the community becomes the joint responsibility of local people and the agencies working together
Processes that make up Community Justice within the court setting
Pre court meeting
Before the court sits, information is shared between all the agencies who are involved with the court process. The appropriate Community Justice approaches are identified and the magistrates or district judge are briefed about the cases they are to hear.
Reviews of Community Orders
In July 2007, Teesside Magistrates Court was granted the power to call offenders on Community Orders, back to court for a review.
The aim is to hold the offender accountable for progress made under the supervision of the Probation Service and is an opportunity for magistrates and district judges to discuss the reasons behind the offending, what is being done to make changes and encourage or remind the offender of their obligations.
Problem Solving approach
In the past, offenders who have been sentenced to a fine or discharge at court would not have been offered the opportunity to engage with the services that could help them overcome issues that have led to them to offending. Some have then gone on to reoffend or commit more serious offences and have come back into the criminal justice process.
The problem solving approach has been designed to bridge this gap and now offenders have the opportunity to access help and support to prevent them offending again in the future.
Pertemps People Development Group (PPDG) embarked on its joint problem solving initiative in East Middlesbrough to work with people convicted of minor offences to help identify and tackle issues that contribute to their offending such as drug-taking, family problems and homelessness.
PPDG’s coaches visit Teesside Magistrates Court to help offenders carry out a self-assessment questionnaire, which identifies areas where they need additional help.
Once these issues are outlined, PPDG coaches look to signpost the offenders to available help, which may include training and employment support, help to find a home and medical support to tackle drug or alcohol addiction.
Staff from PPDG’s Thorntree office stepped in and the problem solving approach has already proven a huge success with magistrates and court staff being impressed with the results so far. So much so that the process has been embedded in the day to day business of the Court.
Direct engagement in Court
In the past, the bench has asked questions of adult defendants through their solicitor and seldom had chance to talk to the defendant directly about their offending behaviour. Direct engagement means there is no hiding behind the solicitor and is the first step to raising victim awareness and the affects that the offender has had on their own community.
Direct engagement can also help the magistrates and district judges to gather more information about the offender and the reasons behind their behaviour, and helps to make the sentence relevant to both the offence and local concerns.
