U. S. Judicial System

drops all charges.

Community Courts/Neighborhood Justice Centers…continued

The successful resolution rate for community courts

(80%) is far higher than the successful resolution

rate of regular courts due to two primary factors:

1. Creation principle (people support what they create)

2. Mutual culpability/compensation principle

Advantages of Community Courts

1. Convenience:

a. time

b. place

2. Speed in which the disputes are addressed

3. Frees up judicial system personnel

4. Reduces court backlog

5. Jail overcrowding is eased

6. Community safety valve

7. Disputes are resolved

8. Promotes communal peace and cohesiveness

Problems with Community Courts

The American due process model adheres to the

principle of procedural consistency and uniformity,

and utilizes objective standards and substantive law

which yields, in aggregate and in theory, a high

measure of social justice, equity and fairness. The

Community Court, in contrast, adheres to the

informal, fragmented, de-centralized model which

yields high level of. We moved away from that

model 200 plus year ago. Why do we want to return

to it now?

Problems with Community Courts…continued

Substantive and procedural legal concerns:

1. The legal proceedings utilized by the Community Courts are

not consistent, but rather vary from court to court, from

neighborhood to neighborhood based on local legal and

socio-politico-economic cultures, and with the attitudes and

perspectives of the individual community court board member.

2. There are no consistent set of rights that victims nor

offender have in the Community Court proceedings.

3. Substantive outcomes vary tremendously from court to court.

The Community Courts do resolve cases faster than do the