Title: Community Prosecution Strategies
Series: Monograph
Authors: John S. Goldkamp, Cheryl Irons-Guynn, and Doris Weiland 
Published: August 2003
Subject: prosecution, case processing, court management
127 pages
323,584 bytes

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

Community Prosecution Strategies

Monograph

August 2003

BJA Bureau of Justice Assistance

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

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

John Ashcroft
Attorney General

Deborah J. Daniels
Assistant Attorney General

C. Camille Cain
Acting Director, Bureau of Justice Assistance

Office of Justice Programs
Home Page
www.ojp.usdoj.gov

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

NCJ 195062

This document was prepared by the Crime and Justice Research Institute
(under the working title Community Prosecution Strategies: Measuring Impact),
under grant number 1999-DD-BX-K008, 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.

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

Community Prosecution Strategies

by

John S. Goldkamp
Cheryl Irons-Guynn
Doris Weiland

August 2003

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

Acknowledgments

Arizona Phoenix City Attorney's Office: We are grateful to Hon. Kerry
Wangberg for his staff's help in preparing our report. We also wish to thank
division head Arron Carreon-Ainsa for taking the time to describe the program
in depth.

Pima County Attorney's Office: We are thankful to Hon. Barbara LaWall, Pima
County Attorney, for allowing us to speak with her staff. We greatly appreciate
the assistance of Deputy County Attorney Christine Curtis, who responded
enthusiastically to our requests for information.

California

Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office: Our thanks to Hon. Gil Garcetti,
former Los Angeles County District Attorney, for the cooperation provided by
his office. We are grateful to Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lidamore for
taking the time to answer our questions and provide information. 

Oakland City Attorney's Office: We greatly appreciate the kind invitation to
visit the office of City Attorney John Russo. We are very grateful to Paralegal
Sandra Marion for providing us with insight into the process of starting up a
community prosecution program and taking us on a tour of the pilot site in
Oakland. We also thank Deputy City Attorney Charles Vose for his informative
presentation at the Community Prosecution Conference-2000, for taking the
time to respond to our followup questions, and for facilitating our observation of
the pilot site.

Placer County District Attorney's Office: We thank Hon. Bradford R.
Fenocchio, Placer County District Attorney, for the cooperation provided by
his office. We wish to thank Assistant District Attorney Suzanne Gazzaniga for
her cooperation in spending valuable time answering questions about the unique
elder-abuse target of their program, and sending written program information
promptly.

Sacramento County District Attorney's Office: We wish to thank the office of
Hon. Jan Scully, where Assistant District Attorney Karen Maxwell generously
shared her time and expertise on their community prosecution program. 

Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office: Our thanks to Hon. George
Kennedy, Santa Clara County District Attorney, for the gracious attention of his
office. Our observation of the Santa Clara Community Prosecution site was eye
opening. Deputy District Attorney Chris Arriolla was generous with his time and
provided an invaluable glimpse of community prosecution at work. We are
grateful to Assistant District Attorney Marc Buller for his kind invitation to
observe, and the answers and information provided.

San Diego District Attorney's Office: We appreciate the cooperation received
from the staff of San Diego District Attorney Casey Gwinn. We are grateful to
Assistant District Attorney Joan Dawson, head of the community prosecution
program, who provided valuable indepth information. 

Colorado

Denver District Attorney's Office: Our thanks to Hon. William Ritter, Denver
District Attorney, for the cooperation of his staff. We appreciate the assistance
of Susan Motika, Director of the Community Justice Unit, for providing written
information and taking the time to discuss the program. She and her staff did an
admirable job of hosting APRI's Community Prosecution Workshop in April
2000, giving us an opportunity to see Denver's community justice program in
action. Our thanks to Community Justice Advocate Erin Sullivan Lange and
Community Justice Coordinator David Mrakitsch for answering our questions.
We also thank Christine Talley, co-chair of the Capitol Hill Community Justice
Council, for welcoming us to observe the council in action and answering our
questions.

District of Columbia

U.S. Attorney's Office: We are grateful to Hon. Wilma A. Lewis, U.S.
Attorney for the District of Columbia, for the assistance we received from her
staff. We thank Assistant U.S. Attorney Clifford Keenan for providing written
materials and valuable information on the U.S. Attorney's Office community
prosecution program in Washington, D.C.

Florida

Brevard/Seminole County State Attorney's Office: We are grateful to Hon.
Norman Wolfinger and to division head Phil Archer for the indepth interview
and materials they so generously provided in response to our many questions. 
Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office: Our thanks to Hon. Barry
Krischer, Palm Beach County State Attorney, for the cooperation of his staff.
Assistant State Attorney James Martz volunteered considerable time answering
our questions and explaining the process and policies of COMBAT. Our
thanks also to Assistant State Attorney Terrance Nolan for the informative
discussion.

Hawaii

Prosecuting Attorney for the City and County of Honolulu: We wish to thank
Hon. Peter Carlisle, Prosecuting Attorney for the City and County of Honolulu.
Our first contact with a community prosecution site was with staff member
Claire Merry, whose enthusiasm about the project and responsiveness to
followup calls were very helpful.

Illinois

Cook County State's Attorney: We are grateful to Hon. Richard Devine, Cook
County State's Attorney, for the courtesy of his staff. Conversations with
Assistant State's Attorney Neera Walsh provided information about community
prosecution in Chicago today, and insight and contacts for background
research on the original project from the 1970s. We are indebted also to
former Cook County assistant state's attorneys, Hon. Nancy S. Salyers and
Ray Grossman, Esquire, for describing what we believe to be the first
community prosecution effort in the United States.

Indiana

Marion County Prosecutor's Office: We are grateful to Hon. Scott Newman,
Marion County Prosecutor, for the assistance provided by his staff. We
especially appreciate the time and information provided by Program Supervisor
Diane Burleson and former Supervisor Melinda Haag.

St. Joseph's County Prosecutor's Office: We thank Hon. Christopher A. Toth,
St. Joseph's County Prosecuting Attorney, for the cooperation we received
from his office. Khadijah Muhammad, co-director of Strategic Prosecution,
took the time to explain the startup process of their project, and in a later
conversation, its implementation.

Maryland

Howard County State's Attorney's Office: We thank Hon. Marna McLendon,
Howard County State's Attorney, for the time she took to discuss community
prosecution generally and her project specifically. Her insights were invaluable. 

Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office: We are grateful for the
assistance and cooperation of the staff of Hon. Douglas Gansler, Montgomery
County State's Attorney. We also appreciate the assistance and cooperation of
Assistant State's Attorney Tom Eldridge.

Massachusetts

Plymouth County District Attorney's Office: We appreciate the cooperation of
the staff of Hon. Michael Sullivan, Plymouth County District Attorney, and
particularly Assistant District Attorney William Asci, who responded so
promptly to our calls.

Middlesex County District Attorney's Office: We extend our thanks to Hon.
Martha Coakley, Middlesex County District Attorney. We also appreciate the
help provided by Assistant District Attorney Kerry Ahearn, who explained the
structure and functioning of the distinctive program operating in her county. 

Suffolk County District Attorney's Office: We thank Hon. Ralph Martin,
Suffolk County District Attorney, for the courtesy extended by his office. The
dedication of Deborah McDonnah, head of Community Affairs for the
community prosecution project in Suffolk County, was evident in our
discussion.

Michigan

Kalamazoo County Prosecuting Attorney's Office: We are grateful for the
assistance provided by the office of Hon. James Gregart, Kalamazoo County
Prosecuting Attorney. Senior Neighborhood Prosecutor Karen Hayter was
extremely helpful and informative, both in phone conversations and in person. 

Minnesota

Hennepin County Attorney's Office: We appreciate the cooperation of the staff
of Hon. Amy Klobuchar, Hennepin County Attorney. The time spent with us by
Martha Holton-Dimick, Ericka Mozangue, and Terri Froehlke, assistant county
attorneys, provided great insight into the life of a community prosecutor, and the
types of issues that arise in the field.

Missouri

Jackson County Prosecutor's Office: We appreciate the cooperation of the
office of Hon. Robert Beaird, Jackson County Prosecutor. Chief Trial Assistant
Kathy Finnell's knowledge about community justice and her commitment to the
community were evident in our conversations, and we appreciate her input. 

New York

Bronx District Attorney's Office: We thank Hon. Robert T. Johnson, Bronx
District Attorney, and Susan Sadd, Director of Planning and Analysis, who
provided us with valuable information.

Erie County District Attorney's Office: We are grateful to the staff of Hon.
Frank J. Clark for taking the time to describe community prosecution as it is
practiced in their office. Thanks to Assistant District Attorney Michael
Drmacich for patiently answering our many questions.

Kings County District Attorney's Office: We are grateful to Hon. Charles J.
Hynes, Kings County District Attorney, for the information given by his staff.
We thank Lee Hudson, Director of the Community Relations Bureau, and
Deputy District Attorney Michael Vechionne, for providing information about
Kings County's program.

Manhattan, New York County District Attorney's Office: Our thanks go to
Hon. Robert Morgenthau, New York County District Attorney, for the
cooperation we received from his office. We would like to thank Executive
District Attorney Kristine Hamann and Community Affairs Department Head
Connie Cuchiarra for information about Manhattan's project. 

Nassau County District Attorney's Office: We are grateful to Hon. Denis Dillon,
Nassau County District Attorney, for the assistance provided by his office. We
appreciate the input of Assistant District Attorney Rene Fiechter, who spent a
great deal of time answering our questions, on more than one occasion. 

Westchester County District Attorney's Office: Our thanks go to Hon. Jeanine
Pirro, Westchester County District Attorney, for the courtesy of her staff. We
extend our appreciation to Community Justice Coordinator Yolanda Robinson
and Assistant District Attorney Robert Maccarone, with whom we engaged in
several discussions about community prosecution generally and their program
specifically.

Ohio

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office: We appreciate the cooperation of the
staff of Hon. William Mason. Assistant Prosecutor Richard Neff generously
shared his time to answer all our questions.

Oregon

Multnomah County District Attorney's Office: We are indebted to Hon.
Michael Schrunk, Multnomah County District Attorney, for the cooperation
provided by his office, and to Deputy District Attorney Jim Hayden for
answering our many questions about the pioneering program in Portland. Our
thanks also go to Staff Assistant Judy Phelan for her help. 

Pennsylvania

Lackawanna County District Attorney's Office: Our thanks go to Hon. Andrew
Jarbola III and to Christine Tocki for taking the time to describe community
prosecution as it operates in their office.

Philadelphia District Attorney's Office: We wish to thank Hon. Lynne Abraham,
Philadelphia District Attorney. We are grateful to George G. Mosee, Jr.,
Deputy District Attorney and Chief of the Narcotics Division, for inviting us into
his office to learn about community prosecution in Philadelphia. 

Tennessee

Knox County District Attorney General's Office: Our thanks go to Hon. Randy
Nichols, whose staff generously took the time to describe community
prosecution in their county. We appreciate Program Coordinator Rhonda
Garren taking the time to share her expertise with us.

Texas

Travis County District Attorney's Office: We appreciate the cooperation of the
office of Hon. Ronnie Earle, Travis County District Attorney. Assistant District
Attorney Meg Brooks provided us with valuable information about community
prosecution in Austin.

Washington

Seattle City Attorney: We are grateful to the office of Hon. Mark Sidran for
taking the time to speak with us and to Criminal Division Chief Robert Hood
for his kind cooperation.

We are extremely grateful to Barbara Boland and Catherine Coles, pioneers in
community prosecution research, for generously sharing their knowledge,
insights, and extensive research into community justice. We also wish to thank
Cynthia Tompkins, then-project manager and senior attorney at the American
Prosecutors Research Institute, for welcoming us to the first APRI-sponsored
Community Prosecution Workshop and APRI Community Prosecution
Program Director Michael Kuykendall for his interest in our efforts. 

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

Contents

Executive Summary

o Introduction
o Prosecution and the Community
o Emergence of Community Prosecution
o Typology of Community Prosecution Strategies
o Summary Descriptions of Community Prosecution Sites
o Measuring Impact: Challenges of Community Prosecution Strategies 

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Prosecutor and the Community
o Community and Criminal Justice
o Relevance of the Community Justice Movement
o Community Prosecution as a Community Justice Strategy

Chapter 2. Emergence of Community Prosecution Strategies 

Chapter 3. Chicago's Community Prosecutions Unit: An Early Community
Prosecution Prototype 

Chapter 4. Common Elements of Community Prosecution Strategies: A
Working Typology 
o Target Problems
o Target Area 
o Role of the Community 
o Content of Response to Community Problems 
o Organizational Adaptations in the Prosecutor's Office 
o Case Processing Adaptations to Community Prosecution 
o Interagency and Collaborative Partnerships in Community Prosecution  

Chapter 5. Community Prosecution in the United States: Descriptive Overview
of Sites 
o Limitations of This Preliminary Overview
o Purpose of the Preliminary Overview of Sites
o Manhattan, New York
o Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon
o Kings County (Brooklyn), New York
o Middlesex County, Massachusetts
o Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
o Marion County (Indianapolis), Indiana
o Suffolk County (Boston), Massachusetts
o Los Angeles County, California
o Seattle, Washington
o Howard County, Maryland
o Plymouth County (Brockton), Massachusetts
o Washington, D.C., United States Attorney's Office
o Denver, Colorado
o Erie County (Buffalo), New York
o Phoenix, Arizona
o Santa Clara County, California
o Pima County (Tucson), Arizona
o Jackson County (Kansas City), Missouri
o Honolulu, Hawaii
o San Diego, California
o Kalamazoo County, Michigan
o Cook County (Chicago), Illinois
o Nassau County, New York
o Knox County, Tennessee
o Travis County (Austin), Texas
o West Palm Beach, Florida
o Hennepin County (Minneapolis), Minnesota
o Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio
o Brevard/Seminole County, Florida
o Montgomery County, Maryland
o Sacramento County, California
o Placer County, California
o St. Joseph's County (South Bend), Indiana
o Lackawanna County (Scranton), Pennsylvania
o Westchester County, New York
o Oakland, California

Chapter 6. Community Prosecution: Thinking About Evaluation o A
Conceptual Framework for Evaluating Community Prosecution o Identifying the
Roles of the Prosecutor and the Community o Using the Typology To Organize
Evaluation Questions
o Distinguishing Between (Early-Stage) Implementation and Outcome
Questions
o Target Problems
o Target Area
o Role of the Community
o Content of Community Prosecution Strategy
o Organization of Prosecution
o Collaboration and Partnerships in Identifying Problems and Effecting
Solutions

Conclusion

References

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

Executive Summary

Introduction

Community prosecution strategies signal a major milestone in changing the
culture and role of the prosecutor by developing partnerships and collaborative,
problem-solving approaches with the community to improve the quality of life
and safety of citizens. The most innovative community prosecution initiatives
pose fundamental questions about the function of the prosecutor, the ways in
which the prosecutor seeks justice, and the organization and operation of the
prosecutor's office. These strategies suggest an important shift in traditional
prosecutorial philosophy, as prosecutors emphasize community-focused crime
strategies and adapt values and methods of other community justice
innovations, particularly those relating to community policing, court, corrections,
and restorative justice initiatives.

This monograph describes the emergence of community prosecution strategies.
It identifies some of their common elements in a working typology based on
features of innovations operating in diverse settings in the United States. This
discussion of community prosecution strategies draws on examples from 36
sites across the nation. The monograph concludes by proposing a conceptual
framework for evaluating and describing some of the challenges posed by
community prosecution strategies for assessing impact and measuring
performance.

Prosecution and the Community

Since the 1960s, the concept of community, variously defined, has continued to
surface as an important criminal justice element. For example, community
corrections, a concept dating back more than a century, was important in
correctional innovation during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s (Harris, 1995). In
the late 1960s, the relationship between the community and the police became
a primary focus of justice reform strategies (President's Commission on Law
Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, 1967; U.S. National
Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 1970). Problem-
oriented and community-policing initiatives of the 1980s and 1990s were
developed to ensure that community concerns were fully addressed by police
agencies (Davis, 1975; Goldstein, 1990; Rosenbaum, 1994).  

More recently, the traditional posture of the courts, purposefully aloof from the
problems of the community, was challenged with the establishment of the
Midtown Community Court in 1993. The Midtown Community Court sought a
closer working relationship with the community and served as a catalyst for
diverse community-oriented justice initiatives. All of these and other
community-oriented crime and justice foci form the background against which
current community prosecution strategies have emerged and can be
understood.

Emergence of Community Prosecution

Community prosecution has been described as a "grassroots approach to law
enforcement involving both traditional and nontraditional prosecutorial
initiatives" (Weinstein, 1998: 19). In several jurisdictions, community
prosecution initiatives were sparked by the implementation of community
policing and were logical, complementary extensions of the focus on community
issues to the prosecutor's function (Hankins and Weinstein, 1996). In locations
without community policing programs, community prosecution strategies were
developed to respond to community crime and public safety issues that the
police were not sufficiently addressing.

In many instances, community prosecution involves deploying prosecutors or
nonlegal staff in the community to identify residents' concerns and invite their
participation in developing strategies for addressing problems of crime and
social disorder that are their highest priority. Prosecutors involved in these
outreach efforts often find that community residents do not share the traditional
prosecutor's concern with the prosecution of serious crimes. Although the
community may assume that such matters always will be a priority, their
immediate concerns more often focus on the nuisance or quality-of-life crimes
that make life in the neighborhood unsafe or unpleasant. In short, prosecutors
have discovered--like policing and community court leaders--that problems
identified by residents as most important to them in their daily lives are generally
not the serious crimes that the criminal justice system appears most ready to
handle.

The emergence and diffusion of community prosecution as an innovation is
difficult to reconstruct because many prosecutors have been dealing with
community issues in various ways for some time. A good historical case can be
made that community prosecution preceded rather than followed from
community policing reforms, drawing its substance instead from the community
organization innovations of the 1960s. The establishment of Cook County
State's Attorney Bernard Carey's 1973 community prosecution program in
Chicago predates the first community policing program and was clearly
influenced by the active community organization initiatives in Chicago in the
1960s.

Current estimates vary as to the number of prosecutors' offices in the United
States that have adopted some version of a community prosecution strategy.
Certainly, the problems thrust on the criminal justice system by drug crimes and
drug enforcement during the 1980s and 1990s forced creation of new strategies
to cope with the overwhelming criminal caseload, including ways to free
neighborhoods of the problems related to crime. In 1985, for example,
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau instituted a community-
focused approach through a Community Affairs Unit in response to the advent
of crack cocaine in New York City, sending an experienced nonattorney
employee into the community to improve community relations and gather
intelligence to better prosecute drug crimes.

The origin of the contemporary community prosecution movement in the United
States is most often traced to the pioneering efforts of Multnomah County
District Attorney Michael Schrunk. In 1990, he established the Neighborhood
District Attorney Unit in Portland, Oregon, in response to the concerns of
business leaders that quality-of-life crimes impeded development of a central
business district (Boland, 1998a). Other community-oriented prosecution
innovations followed in 1991 in Kings County (Brooklyn), New York, under
District Attorney Charles J. Hynes and in Montgomery County, Maryland,
under then-State's Attorney Andrew Sonner. Both initiatives involved major
reorganization of the prosecutors' offices along geographic lines and established
new working links with the communities in each area. Also in 1991, the
Community-Based Justice Program began operation in Middlesex County,
Massachusetts, and in 1993, the Street Level Advocacy Program was instituted
in Marion County (Indianapolis), Indiana. After the early 1990s, the innovation
was adapted in additional jurisdictions and spread more rapidly. Table 1 lists
community prosecution sites and the years they began implementing community
prosecution.

Typology of Community Prosecution Strategies

The forms that community prosecution has taken across the United States are
evidence that there is no one-size-fits-all community prosecution model. As
with other community justice innovations, community prosecution strategies
have taken different forms in response to the needs and circumstances of
specific localities. They have been tailored to the problems of neighborhoods,
commercial districts, or other specific geographic locations within cities and
rural areas. Despite their diverse approaches, however, community prosecution
strategies share some underlying dimensions.

This monograph proposes seven critical dimensions focusing on common
features that appear to define community prosecution strategies and to provide
an organizing framework or working typology of community prosecution
strategies. They include:

o The target problem bringing about the need for the community prosecution
strategy.
 
o The geographic target area addressed by the initiative.

o The role of the community in the community prosecution strategy. 

o The content of the community prosecution approach to the community
problems addressed.
 
o The organizational adaptations made by the prosecutor's office for community
prosecution.

o Case processing adaptations.

o Interagency collaboration or partnerships relating to community prosecution
initiatives.
 
----------------

Table 1: Chronology of Community Prosecution Sites

Manhattan, New York 1985

Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon 1990

Kings County (Brooklyn), New York 1991

Montgomery County, Maryland 1991

Middlesex County, Massachusetts1991

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania1991

Marion County (Indianapolis), Indiana 1993

Suffolk County (Boston), Massachusetts 1993

Los Angeles, California 1993

Seattle, Washington (City Attorney) 1995

Howard County, Maryland 1996

Plymouth County (Brockton), Massachusetts1996

Washington, D.C. 1996

Denver, Colorado 1996

Erie County (Buffalo), New York 1996

Phoenix, Arizona (City Prosecutor) 1996

Santa Clara County, California 1996-97

Pima County (Tucson), Arizona 1997

Honolulu, Hawaii 1997

Jackson County (Kansas City), Missouri 1997

San Diego, California (City Attorney) 1997

Kalamazoo County, Michigan 1998

Cook County (Chicago), Illinois 1998

Nassau County, New York 1998

Knox County, Tennessee 1998

Travis County (Austin), Texas 1999

West Palm Beach, Florida 1999

Hennepin County (Minneapolis), Minnesota 1999

Seminole County, Florida 1999

Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio 1999

Sacramento County, California 2000

St. Joseph's County (South Bend), Indiana 2000

Placer County, California 2000

Westchester County, New York 2000

Oakland, California 2000

Lackawanna County (Scranton), Pennsylvania 2000

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

By focusing on the core ingredients of community prosecution strategies, this
framework can illustrate the shared structural elements of these initiatives and
highlight significant variations or differences as common elements are adapted to
meet local needs.

Table 2 details common elements that fall under these critical dimensions. 

Summary Descriptions of Community Prosecution Sites

By the end of 2001, the Crime and Justice Research Institute (CJRI) identified
and contacted 36 prosecutors' offices that appeared to be operating community
prosecution or community-oriented strategies (see table 3 on page xvii).[1] The
full report briefly describes the features of these programs. The descriptive
overview illustrates the differences among community prosecution strategies on
dimensions identified as critical in the working typology of community
prosecution sites. The description of community prosecution initiatives is
inclusive. We defer, for now, discussion of whether community prosecution is
an umbrella concept for all prosecutorial activities directed at crimes located in
the community or whether it has a narrower meaning tied to a new,
collaborative, and problem-solving relationship with the community. 

The summary in the full report is illustrative and descriptive rather than
complete. We identified prosecutors' offices involved in what appeared to be
community prosecution strategies from lists of grants awarded, available
literature, participants and presentations at conferences, and word of mouth
among prosecutors involved in community-oriented innovation. After candidate
programs were identified, representatives were interviewed to determine what
sorts of community prosecution initiatives were under way, if any. The
descriptions presented in this monograph rely on self-reported interview
information provided by representatives of each site.

The 36 highlighted community prosecution sites are described for two principal
reasons. First, the summaries illustrate common key ingredients of diverse
community prosecution strategies and provide the fundamentals of a community
prosecution model. Second, the descriptions serve as a draft accounting to the
field of current community prosecution programs for soliciting feedback and
additional information from sites that have been included and others that have
not. In short, we expect to develop more complete descriptive summaries with
supplemental and critical input from community prosecution sites, whether they
are in planning or operational stages.

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

[1] Since an earlier version of this report (under the working title Community
Prosecution Strategies: Measuring Impact) was released in February 2000,
CJRI has contacted and profiled nine additional community prosecution
initiatives, which are included in this monograph.

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

Table 2: Critical Dimensions of Community Prosecution Strategies 

1. Target Problems
o Quality-of-life offenses. 
o Drug crime.
o Gang violence.
o Violent crime.
o Juvenile crime.
o Truancy.
o Prostitution.
o Housing and environmental issues.
o Landlord/tenant issues.
o Failure of the justice system to address community needs. o Community
alienation from the prosecutor and other justice agencies. 
o Improving community relations for better cooperation of victims/witnesses. o
Improving intelligence gathering for traditional prosecution of serious cases.  

2. Target Area
o Urban/inner city.
o Rural/suburban.
o Business districts.
o Residential neighborhoods.
 
3. Role of the Community
o Recipient of prosecutor services.
o Advisory role.
o Core participants in problem solving.
o Core participants in implementation.
o Community justice panels.
o Sanctioning panels.
o Ad hoc.
o Targeted.
 
4. Content of Response to Community Problems
o Facilitating community self-help.
o Crime prevention efforts.
o Prosecution of cases of interest to the community.
o Receiving noncriminal as well as criminal complaints.
 
5. Organizational Adaptations/Emphasis in Prosecutor's Office o Field offices
staffed by attorney(s).
o Field offices staffed by nonattorney(s).
o Attorneys assigned to neighborhoods.
o Special unit or units.
o Officewide organization around the community prosecution model.  

6. Case Processing Adaptations
o Vertical prosecution.
o Horizontal prosecution.
o Geographic prosecution.
o Community prosecutors do not prosecute cases.
 
7. Interagency and Collaborative Partnerships in Community Prosecution o
Police.
o City attorney.
o Housing authority.
o Community court/other court.
o Other justice agencies (probation, pretrial services).
o Other social service agencies.
o Other regulatory agencies.

----------------
 
Table 3: Highlights of 36 Community Prosecution Initiatives in the United
States, 1985-2000 is not included in this ASCII plain-text file. To view this
document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat graphic file available
from this Web site.

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

Measuring Impact: Challenges of Community Prosecution Strategies 

The problem of measuring the impact of community prosecution--particularly
given its diverse adaptations--begins with understanding what the innovation is
(and is not) and what it proposes to accomplish. The community prosecution
"model" represents a philosophy as well as an innovation. The shared
philosophy seeks to connect the prosecution function more directly with the
community, to develop a new and more collaborative working relationship, and
to be more responsive to the community's crime-related concerns. The form
this idea takes varies considerably from location to location and from
prosecutor to prosecutor along the dimensions outlined in the working typology
of community prosecution strategies.

Many of the elements of community prosecution--attorneys dispersed to
different geographic locations, vertical prosecution, cases assigned to reflect the
geography of the community, considerably more time spent interacting with the
community--represent notable departures from traditional modes of functioning,
depending on the level of commitment a prosecutor's office has to the
philosophy, and raise difficult questions about impact and resource allocation.
Prosecutors who lead these efforts and their funding sources have begun to
demand evaluation of whether and how community prosecution works. The
challenges for research in measuring the strengths and weaknesses of
community prosecution are commensurate with the challenges posed by
community-oriented strategies to traditional prosecution functions.  

This monograph proposes a multidimensional framework for conceptualizing
community prosecution evaluation measures that recognizes the distinct and
joint roles played by the prosecution and the community and, in addition,
defines areas of impact based on key dimensions in the typology shared by
community prosecution initiatives across the nation. The framework
differentiates between measures appropriate for assessing the implementation of
community prosecution and measures reflecting outcomes or impact of
community prosecution programs, after they have been effectively implemented
(see table 4.)

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

Table 4: Conceptualizing Measures of Community Prosecution Impact is not
included in this ASCII plain-text file. To view this document in its entirety,
download the Adobe Acrobat graphic file available from this Web site. 

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

Introduction

With increasing frequency over the past decade, prosecutors across the United
States have been developing community-focused strategies to address crime
problems, using methods that depart dramatically from their traditional roles.
Taken at their most challenging, community prosecution strategies may signal a
major milestone in changing the culture and role of the prosecutor by
developing partnerships and collaborative problem-solving approaches with the
community to improve the quality of life and safety of citizens in their
neighborhoods. The most innovative community prosecution initiatives pose
fundamental questions about the prosecutor's function, the ways in which the
prosecutor seeks justice, and how the prosecutor's office is organized and
operated. These strategies suggest an important shift in traditional prosecutorial
philosophy, as prosecutors emphasize community-focused crime strategies and
adapt some of the values and methods of other community justice innovations
that relate to community policing, court, corrections, and restorative justice
initiatives.

This monograph describes the emergence of community prosecution strategies.
It identifies some of their common elements in a working typology based on
features of innovations that are operating in diverse settings across the United
States. Discussion of community prosecution strategies is illustrated with
examples from sites across the nation.[2] The monograph concludes by
describing some of the challenges posed by community prosecution strategies
for assessing impact and measuring performance.

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

[2] Officials in the following 36 locations were interviewed about community
prosecution programs: Manhattan, New York; Portland, Oregon; Kings
County, Brooklyn, New York; Montgomery County, Maryland; Middlesex
County, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Marion County, Indiana;
Suffolk County, Massachusetts; Los Angeles, California; Seattle, Washington;
Howard County, Maryland; Plymouth County, Massachusetts; Washington,
D.C.; Denver, Colorado; Erie County, New York; Phoenix, Arizona; Santa
Clara, California; Pima County, Arizona; Honolulu, Hawaii; Kansas City,
Missouri; San Diego, California; Cook County, Chicago, Illinois; Kalamazoo,
Michigan; Nassau County, New York; Knox County, Tennessee; Bronx, New
York; West Palm Beach, Florida; Hennepin County, Minnesota; 
Brevard/Seminole County, Florida; Cuyahoga County, Ohio; Sacramento
County, California; Providence, Rhode Island; St. Joseph's County, Indiana;
Placer County, California; Westchester County, New York; Oakland,
California; Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania. Additional sites are included in
this report based on written materials and/or information provided at
conferences or workshops.

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

Chapter 1

The Prosecutor and the Community

Traditionally, a local prosecutor's office would have little direct contact with the
public. Its work focused on preparing criminal cases generated by arrests for
formal adjudication in court. Neighborhood-level crime problems were not an
immediate focus of the prosecutor's staff. The family, neighborhood, and
institutions such as churches and schools normally exerted effective social
control over nuisance crime problems. Law enforcement was called on
primarily to deal with the more serious matters (Pound, 1930). A substantial
body of literature on American cities documents that, for various reasons,
neighborhoods changed because of larger social changes in family structures
and institutions, gradually exercising less informal constraint on the behavior of
their residents. As early as 1930, Roscoe Pound described a theme that has
pervaded criminal justice thinking until recently, the unreasonable expectation
that formal criminal justice agencies should somehow be responsible for social
order and replace the informal mechanisms (e.g., family, church, school) that
had become less effective.

According to Pound, "This complete change in the background of social control
involves much that may easily be attributed to the ineffectiveness of criminal
justice, and yet means only that it is called on to do the whole work, where
once it shared its task with other agencies and was invoked, not for every
occasion, but exceptionally" (Pound, 1930: 14-15).

For more than 2 centuries, the prosecutor's role has been transformed from a
rather unimportant one--as a judicial adjunct presenting cases to the grand jury,
filing information, dismissing cases filed by the police, plea bargaining, and
prosecuting cases at trial--to a powerful executive branch function with
considerable discretion in the contemporary justice system (McDonald, 1979;
Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 1987; Jacoby, 1980). Although police have
traditionally taken criminal complaints from victims, investigated crimes, and
interacted with the community, the prosecutor's role grew to include the power
to investigate. This power evolved particularly during the early 20th century
(Pound, 1930: 182; National Commission on Law Observance and
Enforcement, 1931: 12) with a rationale dating back to a 1704 statute in
Connecticut, the first state to codify the office of the prosecutor. That statute
provided that the county attorney should prosecute criminal offenders and do
"all other things necessary or convenient . . . to suppress vice and immorality."
Whether through historical interpretation of the prosecutor's evolving powers or
the prosecutor's broad discretion in pursuing justice, the rationale for a
community prosecution function can be traced to an interpretation of the
prosecutor's role to include responsibilities to suppress or prevent crime. 

Community and Criminal Justice

The topic of "community" has long been at the core of crime theory and criminal
justice policy, variously defined in a substantial body of literature in terms of
location, physical environment, residential or commercial land use, class, race,
and ethnicity (Massey, 1985; Anderson, 1990; Squires, 1994; Taylor and
Covington, 1988). From the earliest days of criminology the connection
between community and crime has been an important theme, from Ferri's
(1896) discussion of "telluric" and environmental causes of crime, through the
work of the Chicago School in considering the urban environment's relation to
crime (Park et al., 1925; Burgess, 1926; Shaw and McKay, 1969 [1942]), to
current discussions of the relationships between crime, social organization, and
physical attributes of communities (Newman, 1980; Sampson and Grove,
1989; Bursik, 1986; Taylor, 1995, 2000).

The emphasis on community in discussions of criminal justice administration and
policy also has a long history. In the early part of the century, Pound argued
that one of the most important problems of criminal justice in the United States
was to "apply and enforce law in a heterogeneous community, divided into
classes with divergent interests, which understand each other none too well,
containing elements hostile to government and order, containing elements
ignorant of our institutions . . . where conditions of crowded urban life and
economic pressure threaten the security of social institutions" (Pound, 1913:
311). Pound argued that the administration of justice should be based on
"thorough knowledge of the social conditions . . . for which law must be
devised and to which it must be applied" (1913: 327).

Since the 1960s, the concept of community, variously defined, has continued to
surface as an important criminal justice focus. For example, community
corrections, a concept with origins dating back more than a century, was an
active area of correctional innovation during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s
(Harris, 1995). During the 1960s War on Poverty, empowering the poor in the
United States was a principal focus of community organization strategies that
dealt with fundamental societal and community justice issues (Brager and
Purcell, 1967; Kramer and Specht, 1969). As the civil disorder and urban riots
of the late 1960s manifested the alienation and disenfranchisement of poor and
minority communities, the relationship between the community and the police
became a primary focus of justice reform strategies (President's Commission on
Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, 1967; U.S. National
Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 1970). Problem-
oriented and community policing initiatives of the 1980s and 1990s were
developed to better ensure that community concerns were fully addressed by
police agencies (Davis, 1975; Goldstein, 1990; Rosenbaum, 1994). More
recently, the traditional posture of the courts, to be less connected to the
problems of the community, was fundamentally challenged with the
establishment of the Midtown Community Court in 1993, which sought a much
closer working relationship with the community and was a catalyst for
increasingly diverse community-oriented justice initiatives. 

All of these and other community-oriented crime and justice foci form the
background against which current community prosecution strategies have
emerged and can be understood. Attempts to characterize, analyze, or measure
the impact of this emerging innovation will have to consider the specific meaning
of "community" for community prosecution, including how the community is
involved and how the prosecution focus on the community differs both from
other approaches in criminal justice and from traditional prosecution. 

Relevance of the Community Justice Movement

Community justice innovation has taken many forms across the country and is
spreading across different governmental agencies. It has resulted in the
development of innovative programs that include community policing,
probation, courts, and prosecution, all sharing the goal of making the justice
system more relevant and accessible to the community, and making better use
of the community as a resource to address the crime problem. Starting with
community policing, the criminal justice system has reoriented itself to seek
contact with, and input from, neighborhood residents on issues of importance to
them and to address issues of civil disorder. Foot patrol, which had been
discredited by criminal justice officials since the 1940s (Wilson and Kelling,
1989), reemerged as a sound policing method when special units were created
to solve community problems. Community policing has gained such popularity
that a majority of America's police departments have reportedly adopted some
version of the approach (Peak and Glensor, 1996: 68, in Karp, 1998: 5).
Many of these programs have garnered the favor of community members,
reduced fear of crime, and purportedly contributed to reductions in crime
(Wilson and Kelling, 1989).

Community justice issues began to be addressed by courts as an indirect result
of the establishment of drug courts in the early 1990s, but they were the
fundamental emphasis of the Midtown Community Court experiment when it
began operation in Manhattan in 1993 (Sviridoff et al., 2000). The creative
reforms and leadership demonstrated in the Midtown Community Court have
been adapted by jurisdictions across the country as localities tailor community
court approaches to quality-of-life offenses and related issues that community
members identify as disruptive to their community. The collaboration between
judicial leaders and the community that is at the core of the community court
model has demonstrated techniques and strategies that are valuable for a variety
of community justice initiatives, including community prosecution. 

Community Prosecution as a Community Justice Strategy

Community prosecution has been described as a "grassroots approach to law
enforcement involving both traditional and nontraditional prosecutorial
initiatives" (Weinstein, 1998: 19). In some jurisdictions, community prosecution
initiatives were sparked by the implementation of community policing and were
logical, complementary extensions of the focus on community issues to the
prosecutor's function (Hankins and Weinstein, 1996). In locations without
community policing programs, community prosecution strategies were
developed to respond to community crime and public safety issues that were
not being addressed sufficiently by the police. In several locations, community
prosecution strategies are linked to community court initiatives. 

In many instances, community prosecution involves deploying prosecutors or
nonlegal staff in the community to better identify residents' concerns and to
invite their participation in developing strategies for addressing problems of
crime and social disorder that are their highest priority. Prosecutors involved in
these outreach efforts often find that community residents do not share the
prosecutor's traditional concern with the prosecution of serious crimes.
Although the community may assume that these matters will always be a
priority, their immediate concerns more often focus on the nuisance or quality-
of-life crimes that make life in the neighborhood unsafe or unpleasant. 

As other community justice initiatives have revealed, this community focus on
crime issues differs strikingly from the general orientation of the justice system.
Scarce resources and an increasing volume of serious, particularly drug-related,
criminal cases have caused law enforcement agencies to try to handle the most
serious matters, by default deemphasizing the more numerous minor offenses in
the community. With this focus on punishing serious crime, few deterrent
measures have been available to address nuisance-level offenses, for which jail
sanctions are usually inappropriate and generally not imposed. As with policing
and community court leaders, prosecutors have discovered that problems
identified by the community as most important to them in their daily lives are
generally not of the serious-crime type that the criminal justice system appears
most ready to handle.

As an example, even when community leaders are concerned with drug dealing
in the neighborhood, prosecution of the dealers has little immediate impact on
the neighborhood. As the slow process of adjudication of their cases is carried
out, drug dealers are often back on the street, or new dealers quickly take their
place. Even if prosecution is successful, community residents may be frustrated
because of their perception that law enforcement is not responsive to their calls
for help (Boland, 1998a: 253-54). Community prosecution strategies have
grown as the result of a need, partly political, to be more responsive to
community issues and to expand the prosecutor's role beyond its traditional one
of prosecuting cases.

As prosecutors' offices have attempted to devise strategies that are more
responsive to community concerns, problem solving has become a major focus
of community prosecution programs. From developing plans to clean up and
better maintain public parks to using civil sanctions to attack nuisance issues,
many prosecutor's offices have implemented procedures that depart from their
traditional focus on prosecuting criminal cases to seeking ways to prevent and
reduce crime. These community-oriented strategies have in common a new
collaboration with community members in identifying problems and devising
solutions. The value of this collaboration has been demonstrated in successful
community prosecution sites and other community justice initiatives,
empowering the community to define its problems, participate in solutions, and
bring informal social control mechanisms of the community into play in ways
that complement the efforts of law enforcement and the justice system. Both
prosecutors and police derive benefits from a collaborative partnership with the
community. The community's respect for, and trust in, official agencies is
enhanced; potential witnesses for trial may cooperate better; and residents may
be more helpful in providing the intelligence needed to address serious crime
problems.

The collaboration that characterizes community prosecution initiatives is not
limited to new working relationships with community partners. It extends to new
working relationships with other government and social service agencies outside
the criminal justice system with responsibilities in areas that affect community
crime and quality-of-life problems. The resolution of problems identified in
various jurisdictions has involved agencies with responsibilities in areas such as
street lighting and repair, licensing and regulating bars, housing and building
code enforcement, parks and recreational services, drug treatment, health care,
mental health care, childcare, and family and indigent services. In jurisdictions
focusing on youth-related issues, schools, juvenile justice agencies, and other
organizations that serve the needs of young people have also become involved. 

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

Chapter 2

Emergence of Community Prosecution Strategies

The emergence and diffusion of community prosecution as an innovation is
difficult to reconstruct with accuracy because many prosecutors across the
nation have been dealing with community issues in various ways for some time.
A good historical case can be made that community prosecution preceded
rather than followed community policing reforms, drawing its substance instead
from community organization innovations of the 1960s. The establishment of
Cook County State's Attorney Bernard Carey's community prosecution
program in Chicago, in 1973, predates the first community policing program
and was clearly influenced by the active community organization initiatives in
Chicago in the 1960s.

More recently, although in many jurisdictions the prosecutor's office took the
lead in initiating community-oriented strategies, in others the success of local
community police programs nearly demanded prosecutorial changes. In
Indiana, Marion County District Attorney Scott Newman has indicated that the
favorable relationship he saw growing between community police and the
residents of Indianapolis challenged him to change the organization of his office.
He feared that if he did not make direct and favorable contact with the
community, residents would focus on the prosecutors as the "bad guys"
responsible for any system failures (Coles and Kelling, 1999: 74). In
discussions of his groundbreaking innovations in Portland, Oregon, beginning in
1990, Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk stressed the
importance of community policing reforms in catalyzing his community
prosecution initiatives.

Although community prosecution strategies have adapted some of the same
principals and techniques seen in community policing, the prosecution focus on
community strategies adds a distinctive dimension to community justice
initiatives. Ronald Goldstock (1992: 3, 49) argues that the prosecutor's office is
best suited to take the lead in creating criminal justice policy based on problem-
solving methods for a number of reasons. One is that the prosecutor's legal
expertise is needed to make use of civil methods such as forfeitures, injunctions,
and civil damage actions, which can be effective alternatives to criminal
prosecution in addressing a wide range of neighborhood problems. Another,
Goldstock suggests (1992: 8-9), is that because the jurisdiction of most
prosecutors' offices is geographically broader than that of individual police or
other law enforcement agencies (sometimes encompassing many police
precincts or districts), policy set by prosecutors is likely to have a more
widespread impact. In addition, prosecutors have greater access to and
political influence on judges and legislators than do police and their support is
essential to creating and implementing policy changes. Finally, as elected
officials, prosecutors have greater power to "sell" alternative, nontraditional
responses to crime to the public (Gramckow, 1997).

Estimates vary as to how many prosecutors' offices in the United States have
adopted some version of a community prosecution strategy.[3] Certainly, the
problems thrust on the criminal justice system by drug crimes and drug
enforcement during the 1980s and 1990s forced prosecutors and other officials
to think of new strategies to cope with the overwhelming criminal caseload. This
included ways to free neighborhoods of problems related to drug crime,
dealing, and use. In 1985 for example, in response to the advent of crack
cocaine in New York, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau
instituted a community-focused approach through a Community Affairs Unit
that sent an experienced nonattorney employee into the community to improve
community relations and gather intelligence to better prosecute drug crimes. 

The origins of the contemporary community prosecution movement are most
often traced back to the pioneering efforts of Multnomah County District
Attorney Michael Schrunk. In 1990, Schrunk established the Neighborhood
District Attorneys Unit in Portland, Oregon, in response to the concerns of
business leaders that quality-of-life crimes would impede development of a
central business district (Boland, 1998a). Other community-oriented
prosecution innovations followed, in 1991 in Kings County (Brooklyn), New
York, under District Attorney Charles J. Hynes and, in 1992 in Montgomery
County, Maryland, under then-State's Attorney Andrew Sonner. Both
initiatives involved major reorganization of the prosecutors' offices along
geographic lines and established new working links with the communities in
each area. Also in 1991, the Community-Based Justice Program began
operation in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and, in 1993, the Street Level
Advocacy Program was instituted in Marion County (Indianapolis), Indiana.
After the early 1990s, additional jurisdictions adapted the innovation and it
spread more rapidly (see table 1).

Recognition that the prosecutor's responsibilities should or could include a
crime reduction or community crime prevention function is not new. Discussion
of the importance of the prosecutor's responsibility to work to prevent crime
and to address problems associated with minor crimes has been in evidence for
much of the last century, considerably earlier than the quality-of-life emphases
of recent community justice initiatives. In the National Commission on Law
Observance and Enforcement: Report on Prosecution of 1931, Alfred Bettman
indicated that the more serious cases were not "necessarily, from the point of
view of crime reduction or crime prevention, the most significant" (Bettman, in
Wickersham, 1931: 82-83). Bettman cited the 1922 report of the Cleveland
Crime Commission which noted that "[T]he general peace and security are
more dependent on society's treatment of the regular flow of ordinary crimes
than on the results of the few great murder cases which attract public attention
and create public excitement" (Fosdick et al., 1922).

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

Table 1: Chronology of Community Prosecution Sites

Manhattan, New York 1985

Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon 1990

Kings County (Brooklyn), New York 1991

Montgomery County, Maryland 1991

Middlesex County, Massachusetts 1991

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1991

Marion County (Indianapolis), Indiana 1993

Suffolk County (Boston), Massachusetts 1993

Los Angeles, California 1993

Seattle, Washington (City Attorney) 1995

Howard County, Maryland 1996

Plymouth County (Brockton), Massachusetts 1996

Washington, D.C. 1996

Denver, Colorado 1996

Erie County (Buffalo), New York 1996

Phoenix, Arizona (City Prosecutor) 1996

Santa Clara County, California 1996-97

Pima County (Tucson), Arizona 1997

Honolulu, Hawaii 1997

Jackson County (Kansas City), Missouri 1997

San Diego, California (City Attorney) 1997

Kalamazoo County, Michigan 1998

Cook County (Chicago), Illinois 1998

Nassau County, New York 1998

Knox County, Tennessee 1998

Travis County (Austin), Texas 1999

West Palm Beach, Florida 1999

Hennepin County (Minneapolis), Minnesota 1999

Seminole County, Florida 1999

Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio 1999

Sacramento County, California 2000
 
St. Joseph's County (South Bend), Indiana 2000

Placer County, California 2000

Westchester County, New York 2000

Oakland, California 2000

Lackawanna County (Scranton), Pennsylvania 2000

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

In the 1971 draft "Standards for Criminal Justice, Standards Relating to the
Prosecution Function and the Defense Function," the American Bar Association
discussed the prosecutor's crime prevention function, as well as the
prosecutor's accountability to the public in noting that "[T]he prosecutor is the
leader of law enforcement in the community. He is expected to participate
actively in marshalling society's resources against the threat of crime" (American
Bar Association, 1971: 18-21).

In the same year, Evelle Younger, then-Attorney General of California, wrote
of the prosecutor's responsibility as a community leader in directing and enlisting
the community toward the goal of crime prevention and order maintenance.
According to Younger, "A prosecutor worthy of the position must use the
mantle which has been placed on his shoulders to assume a role of leadership in
the entire community and help bring what has been characterized as a 'sick
community' back to a condition where decent people can live peacefully in the
enjoyment of their rights and property without the fear of molestation or attack
from the criminal element . . . . The prosecutor must encourage citizen
participation by convincing the people in his community that the war on crime
cannot be won until all responsible persons become involved . . . . There is a
great untapped resource of public activity which, if properly guided by a
prosecutor who is a true leader, can accomplish much more in suppressing
crime than a series of arrests and successful prosecutions . . . . The district
attorney . . . is challenged by that responsibility to take affirmative steps to
marshal the community resources and actively work at crime prevention"
(Healy and Manak, 1971: 4-6).

Younger also believed that the prosecutor must be willing to innovate and
experiment and "must constantly be on the lookout outside the traditional scope
of the prosecutor's office for new ways to improve the system and to suppress
crime" (Healy and Manak, 1971: 4-5).

The use of civil remedies as a crime prevention weapon seen in some
contemporary community prosecution strategies also has earlier origins. The
report of the American Bar Foundation (Miller, 1969: 241-252) devotes a
chapter to the use of civil sanctions as a more effective tool for addressing
certain types of crime. It discusses the civil procedure of padlocking premises,
combined with securing injunctions to prevent property owners from performing
similar illegal actions in the future, as a method for nuisance abatement. "Law
enforcement officers have pointed out that prostitution, gambling and liquor
violations are not controllable if the only control device used is arrest of the
violators followed by prosecution, even if convictions are relatively easy to
obtain. The sentences are so light that the violators are not deterred from
returning to the same type of illegal conduct . . . . To prevent the necessity for
those arrests and prosecutions in the future, the alternative of padlocking the
premises is utilized" (Miller, 1969: 242). Other civil sanctions long in use by
prosecutors as alternatives to prosecution are forfeiture of vehicles used in
crime and revocation of liquor licenses to prevent future illegal conduct in
establishments where alcohol is sold.

Like many police agencies in the aftermath of the 1960s, some prosecutors
specifically incorporated community relations sections into their offices during
the 1970s. In 1977, Harris County, Texas, District Attorney Carol Vance, who
also served as president of the National District Attorneys Association, wrote
an article discussing the importance of the relationship between the prosecutor's
office and the community (Vance, 1977: 131-43). Vance stressed the
importance of positive community relations and emphasized the need to educate
the community about what the prosecutor's office does.

Vance's office implemented community-oriented educational programs in Harris
County targeting middle and high school age children and adults. These efforts
included speakers' bureaus through which prosecutors were sent to give talks at
schools on criminal justice issues. Vance used the press to encourage public
participation in anticrime programs. In addition, a citizen advisory committee
was formed in his community, made up of former grand jurors, minority
community leaders, the board of the Chamber of Commerce, criminal justice
professionals, church leaders, and other concerned citizens who were
representative of the community. The committee was kept informed of office
activities through a semiannual report that described major accomplishments
and the operations of each division in the office and was used as a sounding
board for office priorities. For example, Vance writes, "the reaction of the
committee to pornography indicated the vast majority wanted our office to
aggressively prosecute in this area" (Vance, 1977: 140). Vance stressed the
value of interagency collaboration as part of a community focus. He noted the
importance of coordinating the operations of law enforcement agencies to
achieve mutual goals, conduct effective interagency operations, and enhance
public confidence in the entire law enforcement community. His assistant
prosecutors provided training for the police on issues of law and procedure.
Vance also discussed the importance of positive relations with the Governor's
office and the legislators in the interest of promoting anticrime legislation. 

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

[3] The American Prosecutors Research Institute reports that about one-third
of prosecutors responding to a national survey indicated that they were doing
community prosecution. APRI estimates that 80 sites in the United States are
operating some type of community prosecution program, 33 sites received
targeted federal funding in 1999-2000, and 176 jurisdictions have pending
applications for funding (see www.ndaa.org/apri/Community_Prosecution).
These estimates do not include city attorneys' offices that are running such
efforts in some jurisdictions. Some operating programs have gotten under way
without federal funding specifically targeted toward community prosecution,
using Local Law Enforcement Block Grants, open solicitation grants, or other
sources that make them more difficult to identify.

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

Chapter 3

Chicago's Community Prosecutions Unit: An Early Community Prosecution
Prototype

Possibly the earliest direct precursor to current community prosecution
initiatives was the Community Prosecutions program created in 1974 by Cook
County State Attorney Bernard Carey in Chicago, Illinois, to respond to
particular citizen complaints.[4] Many of the elements found in community
prosecution programs today were evident in Carey's pioneering initiative. The
Cook County State Attorney's program focused on ways to work more closely
with the community and to improve relationships between the criminal justice
system and the citizens it served. It provided residents with more direct access
to the prosecutor's office and the criminal justice system, and improved the
effectiveness of the prosecutor's office in responding to the crime problems in
the community.

The Cook County program appears to have been the first community-oriented
prosecution program to geographically assign to community offices attorneys
committed to spending a large proportion of their working day in community
outreach, attending community meetings and problem-solving sessions with
community groups. This unit provided educational presentations for the
community, used vertical prosecution, and demonstrated a commitment to
having unit attorneys handle cases of importance to the community in addition to
acting as liaisons for the community in cases handled by the traditional case
processing units.

Carey believed that consumer fraud was a particular problem for the
community and, in 1973, established pilot offices staffed by consumer fraud
attorneys assigned to take citizen complaints in the three Chicago
neighborhoods of Northside, Westside, and Southside. The residents in each of
these areas, however, asked instead for attorneys who could deal with other
types of neighborhood crime problems. In 1974, Carey placed a second
attorney in the Northside office, along with the consumer fraud attorney, to
provide full felony and misdemeanor prosecution for cases that were significant
to the community, initiating what was probably the first community prosecution
program. On March 1, 1976, due to the success of the pilot program, the
Illinois Law Enforcement Commission began funding the offices and, by May,
supported four criminal attorneys, two at Northside and one at each of the
other two offices, as well as three administrative assistants and four clerks. In
1977, one of the Northside attorneys was designated program supervisor but
continued to work in the Northside office and a part-time fifth attorney was
added to the Northside staff. By 1978, a staff of four full-time attorneys, a
program supervisor, and four clerks were needed to build on the success of the
pilot effort.

As a harbinger of later community prosecution initiatives, Carey's approach
featured vertical prosecution of cases of particular concern to the communities
served and a commitment to focus more closely on issues relating to the
experience of crime victims and witnesses in the criminal justice system. In
addition, the Chicago prototype featured close collaboration with community
groups and other criminal justice agencies to maximize successful prosecution
efforts. The Carey program also anticipated the community prosecution
programs of the 1990s in its consideration of lesser criminal matters. Although
70 percent of the cases prosecuted by the community units involved felony
charges, misdemeanor cases were also considered important because "the
volume of misdemeanors in these high-crime communities demoralize and decay
communities when left unattended" (Chicago, Cook County Criminal Justice
Commission, 1978: V-11). Because each community office was able to handle
only a small portion of the cases that came from its area, cases were pursued
selectively, based on consideration by the program supervisor of their impact
on the community. The selection was influenced by input from community
groups on which types of cases would be most important to their
neighborhoods and included cases related to gangs, drugs, arson, hate crimes,
and crimes against elderly victims.

A brief evaluation of the Chicago community prosecution prototype drew on
interviews with officials, community members, and police who served those
districts (Chicago, Cook County Criminal Justice Commission, 1978: V-10).
The response from community members was supportive, affirming that the
community prosecution unit targeted cases that were important to each
neighborhood, was responsive to referrals from residents, and aggressively
prosecuted cases worthy of prosecution. The evaluation also reported that
police characterized the efforts of the unit as productive. An analysis of case
processing statistics in the evaluation indicated that felony cases handled by the
unit resulted in a higher conviction rate (82 percent) than cases handled by the
office in the traditional manner (57 percent) and that cases were dropped at a
lower rate by the community prosecution unit (Chicago, Cook County Criminal
Justice Commission, 1978: V-11). The report cited a "revival of neighborhood
faith in the criminal justice system as a process that responds to community
needs" resulting from Carey's community-focused efforts (Chicago, Cook
County Criminal Justice Commission, 1978:V-11). Interviews with community
groups indicated that they felt that the community prosecutor was "their"
attorney, representing their rights and interests in court. 

According to the evaluation, the Chicago program used less experienced
attorneys who rotated through the units for limited periods. This rotation
inadvertently became a problem when neighborhood residents became attached
to individual prosecutors whom they viewed as "their" lawyers. However, in
recent interviews, two attorneys who were assigned to the unit in the 1970s
indicated that, although they had had little previous experience when they were
assigned, each stayed with the unit for at least 3 years, gaining critical
experience.[5] These former community prosecution attorneys described their
close relationship with the community, which resulted in access to information
about neighborhood crime problems and criminals which the office had never
had before. The attorneys also found that having large groups of residents
present in court for trials and sentencing hearings made a strong impression on
judges. Such a showing alerted the judge to the strong feelings of the
community about a particular criminal or crime.

Nonlawyer office administrators, who became adept at referring citizens to the
appropriate agencies to obtain the assistance they required in noncriminal
matters, performed an important problem-solving role for community members,
much like the roles ascribed to community policing and community court staff in
later community-oriented justice initiatives. The Community Prosecutions Unit
also established a mediation unit to deal with community issues such as disputes
between neighbors and between landlords and tenants to prevent them from
escalating into criminal matters. When funding ran out, many of the functions of
the unit were incorporated into the larger Cook County State Attorney's office,
including an expanded victim/witness program, a unit focused on crimes against
the elderly, and strong advocacy against hate crimes and support of hate crimes
legislation.

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

[4] Information on the Cook County program was obtained from Chicago,
Cook County Criminal Justice Commission, 1978, Section V and from
interviews with the Honorable Nancy S. Salyers, presiding Judge, Cook
County Municipal Division, District 2, and Skokie and Ray Grossman, Esquire,
both of whom were assistant state attorneys in Cook County assigned to the
Community Prosecutions Unit between 1974 and 1983.

[5] The Honorable Nancy S. Salyers, presiding Judge, Cook County Municipal
Division, District 2, Skokie and Ray Grossman, Esquire.

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

Chapter 4

Common Elements of Community Prosecution Strategies: A Working Typology 

Since the early 1990s, principally fueled by the innovative efforts of Multnomah
County, Oregon, District Attorney Michael Schrunk, the adoption of
community prosecution strategies has gained considerable momentum and now
represents a movement for change in prosecution in the United States. In the
same way that community policing reforms, drug courts, and community courts
have grown in number and have become central features of the criminal justice
landscape in jurisdictions of all descriptions and sizes, community prosecution
has grown from a handful of programs to scores across the country. 

Considering the forms that community prosecution has taken, it is evident that
there is no one-size-fits-all model of community prosecution. Like other
community justice innovations, community prosecution strategies have taken
different forms in response to the needs and circumstances of specific localities,
tailored to the problems of neighborhoods, commercial districts, or other
geographic locations in urban and rural areas. Despite their diverse approaches,
however, community prosecution strategies share some underlying dimensions. 

Table 2 proposes seven critical dimensions focusing on common features that
appear to define community prosecution strategies and provide a framework or
working typology of community prosecution strategies. They include: 

o The target problem bringing about the need for the community prosecution
strategy.

o The geographic target area addressed by the initiative.

o The community's role in the community prosecution strategy.  

o The content of the community prosecution approach to the community
problems addressed.
 
o The organizational adaptations made by the prosecutor's office for community
prosecution.
 
o Case processing adaptations.
 
o Interagency collaboration or partnerships that relate to community
prosecution initiatives.

----------------
 
Table 2: Critical Dimensions of Community Prosecution Strategies 

1. Target Problems
o Quality-of-life offenses. 
o Drug crime.
o Gang violence.
o Violent crime.
o Juvenile crime.
o Truancy.
o Prostitution.
o Housing and environmental issues.
o Landlord/tenant issues.
o Failure of the justice system to address community needs. o Community
alienation from the prosecutor and other justice agencies. o Improving
community relations for better cooperation of victims/witnesses. o Improving
intelligence gathering for traditional prosecution of serious cases.  

2. Target Area
o Urban/inner city.
o Rural/suburban.
o Business districts.
o Residential neighborhoods.
 
3. Role of the Community
o Recipient of prosecutor services.
o Advisory role.
o Core participants in problem solving.
o Core participants in implementation.
o Community justice panels.
o Sanctioning panels.
o Ad hoc.
o Targeted.
 
4. Content of Response to Community Problems
o Facilitating community self-help.
o Crime prevention efforts.
o Prosecution of cases of interest to the community.
o Receiving noncriminal as well as criminal complaints.
 
5. Organizational Adaptations/Emphasis in Prosecutor's Office o Field offices
staffed by attorney(s).
o Field offices staffed by nonattorney(s).
o Attorneys assigned to neighborhoods.
o Special unit or units.
o Officewide organization around the community prosecution model.  

6. Case Processing Adaptations
o Vertical prosecution.
o Horizontal prosecution.
o Geographic prosecution.
o Community prosecutors do not prosecute cases.
 
7. Interagency and Collaborative Partnerships in Community Prosecution o
Police.
o City attorney.
o Housing authority.
o Community court/other court.
o Other justice agencies (probation, pretrial services).
o Other social service agencies.
o Other regulatory agencies.

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

By focusing on the core ingredients of community prosecution strategies, this
framework illustrates the shared structural elements of these initiatives and
highlights significant variations as common elements are adapted to meet the
needs of localities.

Target Problems

Most community prosecution initiatives have been developed in response to
crime problems that affect particular neighborhoods or otherwise defined
geographic areas within a larger jurisdiction. Ideally, the problems targeted are
those community members perceive to be the most detrimental to their sense of
safety and well-being. Almost as a matter of principle, recent strategies have
been designed from the start to address problems not normally the focus of
prosecution. In most instances they involve quality-of-life or low-level offenses,
constituting what Taylor (2000: 5) has recently termed social and physical
incivilities that contribute to a sense of disorder and lack of safety in particular
neighborhoods. The former may include acts such as loitering, street
prostitution, public drinking, and public urination; the latter may include graffiti,
trash, and abandoned and decaying properties.

Community prosecution programs differ in how they have identified their target
problems. In some, the community has approached the prosecutor's office with
issues for which they are seeking help. Such was the case in Multnomah
County's pioneering community prosecution effort in 1990, when business
leaders were concerned about the impact of low-level crime on the
development of a downtown Portland business district. In other instances, the
prosecutor's office has set its own agenda, often reflecting more traditional
concerns with drug offenses or gang violence, but recognizing the value of
community support and involvement in addressing them. The latter approach
has sometimes encountered resistance when community members perceive their
most pressing crime problems to involve less serious issues that nevertheless
make life intolerable in a neighborhood.

This is what happened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1991, the Philadelphia
District Attorney's Office implemented the Local Intensive Narcotics
Enforcement (LINE) program in an area of Southwest Philadelphia that was
troubled by drug trafficking and drug-related violence.[6] The office sought the
aid of the community to prosecute serious drug offenders. When assistant
prosecutors began attending neighborhood meetings and talking to residents,
they discovered that for residents the problems that contributed to the
disorderly, unsafe, and blighted condition of their neighborhood were equally
pressing. They wanted help in closing down nuisance bars and the convenience
stores that sold malt liquor and were a focus of public drinking, public urination,
street fights, and similar offenses. They wanted help with neglected properties
that attracted drug activity and made the neighborhood unsafe and unattractive.
The Philadelphia prosecutors found that by mobilizing city resources--such as
the City Department of Licenses and Inspections and the Liquor Control
Board--to address these issues they could simultaneously improve the
neighborhood and gain the cooperation of its residents in their original objective
of fighting drug crime.

Washington, D.C.'s community prosecution program similarly began with the
goal of more effectively prosecuting major drug offenders to stem the rising tide
of violent crime in the District. These community prosecutors also found that, to
more effectively meet this traditional prosecutorial goal, they had to gain the
community's confidence and support. They did this by paying closer attention to
the cases that were important to residents and soon were dealing with "tagging,"
nuisance properties, and other issues that affected the residents' quality of
life.[7]

Community prosecution programs have been implemented to address a wide
variety of target problems in an equally wide variety of settings. In Placer
County, California, with an estimated population of more than 200,000
inhabitants, the district attorney's office created a community prosecution unit
early in 2000. It focused primarily on elder abuse--crimes committed against
individuals ages 65 or older and crimes against dependent adults ages 18 to 64
involving the infliction of pain or mental suffering, endangerment of health, theft,
or embezzlement of property.[8] Elder abuse was chosen as the target problem
because of the county's large and growing elderly population and because elder
abuse crime had increased over the past 5 years from about 12 cases per
month in 1997 to about 40 new cases per month. As the county experiences
growth in the number of nursing and assisted-living facilities as well as
retirement communities, the prosecutor's office has identified elder abuse as a
problem that had to be dealt with through a more effective, community-
oriented approach.

Often, juvenile issues have emerged as important elements of the problems
targeted by community prosecution. The crime prevention aspect of community
prosecution is seen as particularly appropriate in dealing with youthful offenders
and at-risk youth, and a large number of community prosecution programs
focus on youth to prevent and respond to juvenile crime. Jurisdictions that
devote substantial resources to juvenile issues include Middlesex, Suffolk, and
Plymouth counties in Massachusetts; Howard County, Maryland; Denver,
Colorado; Honolulu, Hawaii; Kalamazoo County, Michigan; Nassau County,
New York; Brevard/Seminole County, Florida; Knox County, Tennessee;
Cuyahoga County, Ohio; and Hennepin County, Minnesota.

Some of these initiatives have targeted the more serious problems associated
with gang violence. In Middlesex County, Massachusetts, the district attorney's
office administers the Community Based Justice (CBJ) program, implemented
in 1991 to respond to violent juvenile gangs.[9] The CBJ task force is a
collaborative effort that includes prosecutors, police, school and juvenile
probation officials, and neighborhood leaders, who meet weekly at participating
schools or police stations. The group identifies a priority prosecution list of
violent juveniles to receive special attention, including graduated sanctions for
those who continue to offend, and discusses children believed to be at risk of
entering the juvenile system. The purpose and strength of the task force is that
members share information from various perspectives about school-age
offenders and children at risk, which allows informed decisions on interventions
that take into account the behavior of the youth in various settings, including
school and the neighborhood. The decisions of the task force on appropriate
interventions or sanctions depend on the level of a child's involvement, and the
ability of the school, parents, and other support systems to supervise and
manage the youth's behavior. The prosecutor's office has about 50 attorneys
who have been trained to work in the CBJ program. The program also has
been adopted by Suffolk and Plymouth Counties.

In Los Angeles County, California, gang crime is a major problem and the
focus of the community prosecution effort. The Los Angeles District Attorney's
Office operates two programs with community-based orientations. The
Community Law Enforcement and Recovery (CLEAR) program is a
collaborative, community-based program in which the district attorney's office is
mainly involved with targeted case processing. Prosecutors play a broader role
in the Strategies Against Gang Environments (SAGE) program, which officials
characterize as targeting gang violence, drug dealers, and other public nuisance
problems that destroy neighborhood quality of life. Administered through the
Hardcore Gang Unit of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, SAGE
started in the city of Norwalk with a gang injunction in 1993. In 1994, the
program was given its name and has continued to evolve over time. Today,
SAGE has five sites, with one assistant district attorney located at each,
generally in a city-owned building such as a city hall or a police station. The
sites are located in unincorporated cities outside the city of Los Angeles, but
within the county. Here, the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office has
jurisdiction over misdemeanor offenses in addition to the felony caseload it
normally handles within the city of Los Angeles, where the city attorney has
jurisdiction over misdemeanors. These cities pay most of the expenses for the
programs in their locations. SAGE attorneys are primarily problem solvers and
try cases only occasionally. One SAGE attorney works with the city attorney,
focusing exclusively on gang injunctions wherever they are needed in the
county.

SAGE uses civil injunctions to prohibit gangs from engaging in activities that
create a public nuisance. For example, members of drug-dealing gangs are
prohibited from carrying pagers or cell phones and congregating in public
places. SAGE attorneys support trial prosecutors by providing them with
intelligence about gangs and their members, helping law enforcement agencies
with prefiling issues, reviewing arrest reports, and evaluating problem cases.
They also coordinate training for police on special issues, organize curfew
sweeps, provide case law and training for judges on gang-related issues,
coordinate information sharing among agencies, assist with information and
training on the relocation of endangered witnesses, and help draft gang-related
legislation. Projects include drug abatement; antiprostitution efforts; school
truancy programs; legal education for elementary school children; and public
nuisance projects (including researching and drafting ordinances) that target
issues such as public drinking and urination, gambling, and loitering, in addition
to coordinating an antigraffiti project. The attorneys' community outreach efforts
include preparing training materials about gang prevention, intervention, and
suppression for community-based organizations, meeting with Community
Police Advisory Boards to help develop community-based antigang strategies,
and assisting with planning and training sessions regarding antigang measures
that community members can use. Because the attorneys are stationed in the
neighborhood, they can establish a rapport with the community and other
criminal justice and social service agencies.[10]

Kalamazoo County's Neighborhood Prosecuting Attorney Program targets
domestic violence, substance abuse, housing issues, and youth problems,
working with schools, community organizations, and other government agencies
to enhance community safety. All program goals are set by the neighborhood.
One of the first projects identified the owners of deteriorating rental units in the
neighborhood and enlisted the housing authority to handle the problem. Criminal
prosecutions were also initiated and landlords were court ordered to sell the
properties that they could not afford, or had no desire, to repair. 

Youth issues revolved around truancy and curfew violations, with youth hanging
out in the neighborhood drinking, using drugs, and making noise. A
curfew/truancy program was created in 1999, known as the Center for
Leadership Options for Community Kids (CLOCK) and operated through the
Boys & Girls Club. Police cite young violators of state curfew laws and repeat
truants, take them to the club, and contact their parents and/or teachers. The
center operates a voluntary diversion program. Youth who refuse the program
are referred to juvenile court. Program participants are assessed for personal,
school, family, and employment issues, and are referred to appropriate agencies
for help with these issues. Participants are taught leadership skills and provided
with positive activities. Youth who stay out of trouble for a period of time are
able to avoid formal involvement with the juvenile justice system. 

Drugs and youth issues are the focus of the community prosecution strategy
being implemented by the district attorney's office in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
One of the problems the program seeks to address is a deeply entrenched drug
trade that has involved some of the area's families for several generations.
Another is a high level of heroin use. An important objective of the Santa Fe
program will be to find recreational outlets for young people, whose quest for
"something to do" frequently leads them into trouble.

One of the focal points of community prosecution in Honolulu, Hawaii, is a
prostitution abatement program. In Waikiki, the tourism industry was suffering
because of the prostitution problem. The prostitution abatement task force filed
a nuisance abatement action to impose geographic restrictions against known
prostitutes in the Waikiki district. Upon conviction, prostitutes are banned from
the area as a condition of probation. The prosecutors also introduced legislation
to prohibit prostitutes from the district, which was passed in 1998.[11] In
addition, women who want to leave the profession can enter a 12-week
prostitution intervention program. Free workshops are held on topics related to
health, building self-esteem, and access to community resources.[12] 

Target Area

Another common feature of community prosecution strategies is that their target
problems have a geographic component. Target areas, like target problems,
may be identified through careful planning, needs analyses, and feasibility
studies. They also may be self-selecting, such as when community residents or
other stakeholders approach the prosecutor's office for help. How the target is
configured geographically has important implications for the logistics of the
initiative, such as how the community will be engaged, how the office will be
organized, and how the objectives will be measured.

The nature of the target area--urban, suburban, rural, large city, or small city--
may have important implications for both resource needs and the resources
available to the community prosecution strategy. The challenges and logistical
choices faced by community prosecution efforts targeting inner-city
neighborhoods in large, densely populated urban areas may be quite different
from those of smaller, rural, or suburban jurisdictions. With high levels of the
serious crimes that are still the business of prosecutors' offices, the resources
that can be dedicated to community prosecution may be limited and require
careful definition of the target area.

Suburban and rural jurisdictions are facing many of the same problems that
many community prosecution strategies have been designed to respond to in the
inner city. These problems occur in commercial and residential neighborhoods
and include both serious, often drug-related, crime and the less serious quality-
of-life criminal matters.

The Santa Fe District Attorney's Office has targeted an area of more than
7,000 square miles with a permanent population of only about 125,000
residents (and the sizeable tourist population of Santa Fe). The area
encompasses the primarily rural counties of Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and Rio
Arriba, and includes several small towns. The town of Chimay, straddling the
Santa Fe-Rio Arriba county line, leads the nation in deaths from heroin
overdose. According to Santa Fe District Attorney Henry Valdez, Chimay is a
rural community with city problems (Santa Fe and Rio Arriba together are
designated a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area). Madrid, a small town south
of Santa Fe, was an abandoned mining town that was repopulated and rebuilt in
the 1960s to become a thriving community. Residents now find their quality of
life declining because of growing drug use and violence. Although Santa Fe's
community prosecution initiative faces target problems related to drugs and
youth that are not so different from many urban programs, it faces the additional
challenges of a rural setting. The large geographic area and the dispersed
population make community outreach one of the greatest challenges faced by
the program. Canvassing residents and getting them involved is literally a door-
to-door effort. The involvement of three counties presents additional logistical
issues, such as the inability of the various sheriffs' department vehicles to
communicate with each other due to incompatible communications
equipment.[13] 

Sites also vary in their selection of business districts or residential
neighborhoods, or a mix of both, as targeted areas for community prosecution
strategies. In Kalamazoo County, Michigan, the first community prosecution
site was in Edison, one of its oldest cities. The neighborhood has both
residential and commercial zoning, with factories and businesses located near
homes.[14] In Portland, Oregon, three of seven Neighborhood DA units serve
areas that are primarily residential. The pilot Lloyd District is a mix of
commercial and residential properties, and the West District is commercial.
One unit serves Tri-Met, the Portland public transit system.[15] 

The community prosecution program in Santa Clara, California, has three sites
within its jurisdiction. One is located in the San Jose/Burbank area, which has a
mixture of commercial and residential properties. Its population is primarily
Hispanic, most of Mexican origin or descent, and long-time Caucasian
residents. Its residents range from the very poor families who live in high-
density, substandard housing with numerous code violations, such as open
sewers and nonfunctional plumbing, to the very wealthy residents of Rosemont. 

The target area presents some unusual challenges to the community prosecution
effort. Approximately half of it, although located within the boundaries of San
Jose/Burbank, is unincorporated, that is, not legally a part of the city of San
Jose and therefore not governed by city ordinances and zoning regulations, nor
subject to law enforcement by the city's police force. In addition, the
unincorporated pockets of the San Jose/Burbank area have less access to
services such as trash collection, and provision and maintenance of street and
traffic lights. These areas have no parks, playgrounds, or other recreational
areas. Teens hang out on the streets, many of which have no sidewalks and
pose a safety hazard. The children who live in the unincorporated area attend a
high school located several miles away, despite a "Blue Ribbon"-designated
high school located in the center of their neighborhood but open only to city
residents. The area also has a serious gang problem, which has resulted in
numerous fights, assaults, and a homicide.

The unincorporated areas were farmland when the city was founded, and the
residents did not want to be included in it. To this day, residents resist
incorporation. They prefer to be left alone because they do not trust the city
government and, specifically, the San Jose police. The local sheriff's office
polices these areas with officers from the neighborhood whom the residents
have known for years. The office is far too small and ill-equipped to handle the
gang activity, drug dealing, and prostitution that plague the area. With no zoning
ordinances, commercial establishments such as liquor stores are located on
residential streets, attracting teens, alcoholics, and drug dealers to the
neighborhood. There are no ordinances to limit "red-light" types of
establishments, such as strip clubs, many of which are on the main road that
runs adjacent to residential housing and attract prostitutes and drug dealers.[16] 

In Kalamazoo County, Michigan, residents were concerned about where the
pilot community prosecution site would be located. The prosecutor held an
open forum to invite community input into the targeting decision and presented
comparative crime statistics to aid in making the decision. Subsequently,
residents formed a neighborhood coalition to represent the residents' concerns.
The coalition requested that the site be located in Edison, where 60 percent of
residents rent their homes. It has a red-light district and one of the highest crime
rates in the county. However, the community also had business and
neighborhood associations, and it enjoyed a positive relationship with two
community police officers assigned to the neighborhood. It gave the County
Prosecuting Attorney's Office a solid foundation on which to build a relationship
with the community.

In Multnomah County, Oregon, the business leaders of the Lloyd District in
downtown Portland approached District Attorney Michael Shrunk about
providing law enforcement support for this newly created commercial district.
The district was struggling to attract customers in an environment plagued by
quality-of-life crimes that were largely attributable to a nearby vacant area
populated by transients. The area, known as Sullivan's Gulch, is public property
adjacent to a highway that had become a haven for homeless people.
"Residents" of the Gulch often wandered into the Lloyd District where they
panhandled in an aggressive manner and urinated in public, frightening off
prospective customers and threatening the efforts to create a new downtown
area (Boland, 1996; 1998a: 259). The Lloyd District served as a pilot effort
and a point of departure for similar service to other areas of Portland. Although
the private funding (by the business community) of a county prosecutor to serve
one neighborhood's special needs was viewed by critics as a "hired gun"
approach to justice, other neighborhoods saw the positive impact and wanted
their own neighborhood prosecutor (Boland, 1998a: 257).

The question of where to start can be complicated when competing locations
are in great need, or when the best candidate area from a crime perspective
offers little community support, interest, or infrastructure. Although an area is
identified as critical from a citywide perspective, its involvement may not be
viewed enthusiastically by the residents themselves, presenting the prosecutor's
office with the added task of overcoming community resistance. This resistance
may stem from a mistrust of public institutions in general and perhaps law
enforcement and the justice system in particular. It may also reflect that some
communities perceive being targeted as a problem area as stigmatizing or
respond negatively to the term "community prosecution." Therefore, some
jurisdictions have chosen to use the term "community justice" rather than
"community prosecution."

Target areas may be delimited in various ways. In Washington, D.C.,
community prosecution zones were matched to police Patrol Service Areas,
greatly enhancing the ability of community prosecutors to serve not only a
particular neighborhood, but also to work effectively with the Metropolitan
Police Department's community policing teams within those service areas.[17]
In other jurisdictions, such as Denver, community prosecution target areas are
defined by neighborhoods, whose residents tend to share some ethnic and
socioeconomic characteristics and are also likely to have a sense of community
and common interest.[18] Multnomah County, Oregon, has Neighborhood
District Attorney units linked to seven Portland districts variously defined.
Some, like the East Portland District, comprise several neighborhoods. East
Portland was originally served by the southeast Neighborhood District
Attorney, but the area was too large to be served effectively. The Gresham
District, a separate city within Multnomah County, is served by one unit, and
the Tri-Met transit system district covers a three-county area with various law
enforcement agencies.[19]

Role of the Community

It is perhaps too obvious to state that community prosecution strategies are
defined by their emphasis on, and the nature of their involvement with, the
community. Kurki (2000: 257) takes the view that, although "community
empowerment and participation" are a basic premise of other community justice
initiatives, community prosecution initiatives have continued to take a fairly
narrow, traditional view of the role of community members, limited to "giving
information and providing extra eyes and ears." Certainly, in many jurisdictions,
enlisting the eyes and ears of the community to more effectively carry out the
traditional business of the prosecutor's office is seen as a benefit, if not an
explicit goal, of community prosecution. Initiatives differ in the extent to which
they "act upon" the community based on some assessment of problems and
needs or "act with" the community in identifying problems and devising solutions
to be carried out jointly. Prosecutors' offices that are merely reorganizing how
they assign cases on the basis of geographic area may have little contact with
the community except to solicit information or testimony from community
members in particular cases. Other community prosecution efforts, however,
directly involve and collaborate with community members in a wide range of
functions from problem identification to problem solving, as well as crime
prevention and improvement efforts in the neighborhoods. Nevertheless, sites
differ not only in how they define the role of the community but also in terms of
who will become involved as representatives of the community. 

In some jurisdictions, community activists play an important role in identifying
problems and calling for effective responses, but the prosecutor's office largely
orchestrates the response, often in conjunction with community police or other
agencies. Prosecutors in the three New York City jurisdictions of Manhattan,
Kings County, and the Bronx have created community affairs bureaus headed
by nonattorney community organizers. These individuals do most of the
community outreach. They attend community meetings and interact with
residents, neighborhood leaders, and community stakeholders to determine the
issues and priorities for law enforcement within their areas. They act as the link
between the prosecutor's office and the community and facilitate a direct
connection with prosecutors and other governmental agencies to address
specific issues.

In other jurisdictions, the community plays a direct and critical role in assessing
its problems and needs and in planning strategies for addressing those
problems, with the assistance and resources that the prosecutor's office can
bring to bear. Denver's strategy offers a dramatic example of central
engagement of the community in its efforts.[20] The Denver District Attorney's
Office does not have enforcement jurisdiction over the majority of quality-of-life
crimes targeted by its Community Justice Unit; rather, the City Attorney's
Office (renamed to shift the focus from prosecution and punishment to more
comprehensive solutions) handles most of these cases. Nor does the Denver
community prosecution program provide vertical prosecution for cases, in
which community prosecutors follow cases through all stages of processing.
Denver's effort instead focuses on citizen and community involvement to
develop problem-solving strategies that are community driven. To achieve this,
Denver's community prosecution attorneys primarily facilitate a process that
involves neighborhood-based Community Justice Councils of individuals who
have a stake in the community. There are currently two such councils, in the
Globeville and Capitol Hill neighborhoods, each consisting of 20 to 35
members chosen by community prosecutors through indepth interviews. 

The work of a Community Justice Council begins with identifying target
problems. Council members list their concerns, which may be anything from
stray dogs and inadequate street lighting to street corner drug dealing, and
select the three issues that they consider to be of highest priority for the
community. The councils meet on a monthly basis with community prosecutors
and representatives of other relevant agencies to educate themselves and begin
to craft and implement strategies to resolve these issues. Many are
neighborhood quality-of-life issues that may, if addressed early, be prevented
from escalating to criminal prosecutorial issues. The community prosecutors'
role is to facilitate, provide legal expertise, and bring to bear the city and county
resources that are at their disposal in a process that is largely carried out by and
within the community.[21]

In still other jurisdictions, the prosecutor's office establishes neighborhood
offices or assigns staff to the community and attends community meetings to
become familiar with the neighborhood concerns. In Multnomah County,
Oregon, the first Neighborhood District Attorney was stationed in the Lloyd
District, where he was able to hear about what troubled neighborhood residents
and experience the problems firsthand (Boland 1998a: 259). By contrast,
community prosecutors in Kings County (Brooklyn), New York, are assigned
geographically by police district but are stationed in the central office. 

Community prosecution initiatives differ in their approaches to problem solving
and the ways in which the community is represented in that process. In sites
such as Multnomah County, prosecutors identify problems as they arise through
their contacts with the community and attempt to craft solutions with the help of
the community. Some problems may require long-term strategies, others can be
fairly short-term efforts, and still others may be amenable to quick fixes but
ultimately also require longer-term approaches.[22] The list of target problems
is long and the solutions are varied, creative, and always collaborative. For
example, in response to residents of neighborhoods plagued by open-air drug
dealers, Neighborhood District Attorney Wayne Pearson worked with the city
attorney to create Portland's drug-free zones. The Drug-Free Zone ordinance
provides that anyone arrested for a drug offense within a drug-free zone may be
prohibited from entering that zone for 90 days preconviction or up to 1 year
postconviction, under threat of a criminal trespass charge. In an area of
Southeast Portland, merchants complained of the problems caused by
skateboarders--graffiti, litter, loitering, public urination, and unsafe riding.
Rather than try to keep out the skateboarders, the Neighborhood District
Attorney helped the merchants and skateboarders form a partnership with
mutual rights and responsibilities that resulted in a public skateboarding park.
Skateboarders enforce the rules on their peers and take responsibility for
keeping the park clean. Merchants paid for signs and provided a place to store
cleaning equipment. The city provided a toilet facility. Merchants and
skateboarders now peacefully co-exist and business patrons appear to enjoy
the performances.

In Denver, the approach of the community justice councils is to set as their
agenda the three or four issues of highest priority to the community. Denver's
organizers have determined that this is the best way to set manageable goals
and be assured of some successes, which will sustain the process. The problem
areas defined in this process may be broad and multifaceted, such as drug
sales, crime related to alcohol abuse, and domestic violence (the actual target
problems of Denver's Capitol Hill Council), and addressing them may require
long-term strategies.

Content of Response to Community Problems

Community prosecution initiatives differ in the response they deliver to the
community, however they define the target problem and however they conceive
the community role. In some locations, a principal response is to successfully
prosecute cases that have been problematic for particular communities. These
can include cases that involve certain drug dealers, bars where prostitution is
centered and nuisance behavior often occurs, absentee landlords whose
premises are used for crackhouses or by vagrants, or illegal vendors who
disrupt access to legitimate enterprises. In Santa Clara, California, one of the
Community Prosecution Unit's most visible achievements was a civil nuisance
abatement suit brought by the district attorney against an adult movie theater on
the main street in San Jose just around the corner from a residential area.
Residents complained about prostitutes conducting business in the parking lot
and alleys near their homes and finding used condoms and drug paraphernalia
left by theater patrons. The suit accused businessowners of creating a public
nuisance by permitting unlawful sex acts on the premises that carried over into
the streets. Ultimately, the owners voluntarily closed the business after they
were unable to correct serious building code violations within the deadlines set
by code inspectors, who were partners in this effort. The media publicized the
closing of the theater (San Jose Mercury News, March 23, 2000: 1B, 6B), and
residents' response to the effort was extremely favorable. Similar suits have
been filed against slumlords who rent substandard one-bedroom properties to
poor residents at rates as high as $1,500 per month. Because these residents
cannot afford such rents, two or more families generally share one unit, which
further exacerbates the problem. These properties are closed until the owner
can prove that the necessary repairs have been made.[23] 

In other instances, the community prosecution response involves establishing an
empowerment process that centrally involves community residents in specific
efforts to prevent crime or improve services. In Indianapolis, the Street Level
Advocacy Program engages the community in problem-solving strategies. A
problem identified by residents of one neighborhood was open prostitution. The
Patronizing Diversion program was created to address this problem by targeting
prostitutes' customers in an Eastern District business area. First-time offenders
could avoid conviction by admitting that they had patronized a prostitute, doing
community service, and participating in an impact panel. The panel consists of
volunteers from the neighborhood, who are given the opportunity to confront
the offenders and to air their feelings about the damage that prostitution does in
their neighborhood. A community member helped design the program, which
demonstrates to offenders that prostitution is not a victimless crime it is the
neighborhood that is victimized.

In Hennepin County, Minnesota, the community is drawn into both the
identification of community problems and the sanctioning process in diversion
programs in at least two of the sites. In the third precinct, a community council
has been created, which includes local stakeholders and neighborhood
representatives who provide insight into community concerns, encourage
neighborhood participation in cases of community importance, and help decide
where community work squad projects should be done. The fourth precinct
uses restorative justice through sentencing circles for minor juvenile crime,
allowing the community to have a say in sanctions meted out for juvenile
offenders, and facilitating face-to-face meetings between victims and offenders. 

Organizational Adaptations in the Prosecutor's Office

Depending on the size and resources of the prosecutor's office, a community
prosecution program may be run by one or two prosecutors, by lay employees,
or by a unit containing many community-oriented prosecutors, investigators,
community relations specialists, and clerical staff. Since 1997, in Pima County,
Arizona,[24] one prosecutor has been assigned to address the problems in the
community. A former civil attorney, she has created several programs using civil
remedies, such as forfeiture and eviction procedures, to deal with nuisance
properties, and has teamed up with local criminal justice agencies and citizens
to identify problems and create legal strategies to deal with them. The
prosecutor attends neighborhood association meetings and participates in
Operation Spotlight, which teams the probation department, the community,
local police, and the county attorney's office. The group meets once a week to
discuss community issues and develop solutions, participate in team training
sessions on problem-solving techniques, and share information. The
prosecutor's involvement in officer training at the police academy helps solidify
her relationship with the officers in the target area. Accompanying police on
"ride-alongs" further facilitates her relationship with both the community and the
police. Through these collaborative relationships and community outreach, one
attorney has been working to have an impact on the quality-of-life issues in the
community.

Many programs began with a single site operated by a single attorney or staff
person and, after some initial success, they were able to expand. District
Attorney Michael Schrunk started the Neighborhood DA program in
Multnomah County, Portland, Oregon, in 1990 with a single prosecutor
assigned to the Lloyd District. The pilot effort was so successful that a second
neighborhood office was established the following year and others soon
followed. By 1996, Portland had seven community prosecutors, with almost
total coverage of the county (Boland, 1998a: 258).

In some locations, the community prosecution concept has served as a
framework for organizing the prosecutor's office. District Attorney Charles J.
Hynes started his community prosecution program in 1991 in Kings County
(Brooklyn), New York. He divided the borough into five geographical zones
based on police precincts, each zone encompassing four or five precincts, and
assigned teams of attorneys to handle the cases that originated in each zone. 

In both Howard and Montgomery Counties in Maryland, community
prosecution has been implemented throughout the prosecutor's office. In these
sites, community prosecution is a philosophy that governs the conduct of all
business coming through the prosecutor's office rather than merely a single
program or geographic reorganizational framework because of the impact the
focus on specific community areas has had on overall operations. The
reorganization of some prosecutors' offices according to geographic areas has
often reflected a new perspective on the overall aims of prosecution and
changes in the perspectives of individual attorneys rather than just an
organization of criminal caseload responsibilities. Howard County State's
Attorney Marna McClendon institutionalized the community prosecution
philosophy in her office by rewarding the successes of her community
prosecution attorneys within the office. She makes it clear that the community
prosecutor position is a valuable one. These attorneys are offered rewards and
promotions when they complete a satisfactory period as community
prosecutors. In addition, it is not assumed that office attorneys possess the skills
to create effective relationships with the community. Individuals assigned to
community prosecution are trained to reach out to the community and to deal
with community issues. According to McClendon, they are not the least
experienced prosecutors in the office. Community prosecutors must have
enough experience to understand what the office has to offer the neighborhood
and to be skilled in litigation.

Case Processing Adaptations to Community Prosecution

Community prosecution programs may differ in the way they prosecute cases
from targeted neighborhoods. Cases may be referred from neighborhood units
to the central office for prosecution, or the neighborhood prosecutors
themselves may prosecute them "vertically" (one prosecutor manages the case
from beginning to end). In Kings County, New York, all attorneys are located
in the central office to facilitate their ability to handle their trial caseload
efficiently, even though the office caseload is divided into geographic zones that
correspond to the organization of the court system. Geographic assignment is
desirable in a community prosecution strategy because it allows trial assistants
to become familiar with their assigned area, whereas random case assignment
tends to isolate attorneys from the communities they serve. It is not practical in
every jurisdiction, however, particularly in locations where the organization of
the court system is incompatible. When court clerks control the assignment of
cases to multiple criminal courtrooms on a random basis, it may not be possible
to use geographic case assignment. If a prosecutor has no control over which
cases are called in which courtrooms, a trial assistant may be assigned to cases
in different courtrooms at the same time. Organizational strategies such as
assigning trial teams to handle the cases in a certain courtroom without regard
to their geographic origin may be the only efficient way to handle the caseload.
Both Howard County, Maryland, and Denver, Colorado, cited this as the
reason that their community prosecutors are geographically assigned to work
with certain communities, but do not necessarily prosecute the cases that arise
from them. 

Community prosecution strategies also differ with regard to whether the
prosecutor assigned to the community actually tries cases. In jurisdictions such
as Multnomah County, Oregon, and Pima County, Arizona, the community
prosecutors do not try cases themselves. Instead, cases are assigned to the trial
division for litigation, with the community prosecutors acting as liaisons between
the trial attorneys and the community residents. This leaves the attorneys free to
immerse themselves in the community, participate in neighborhood meetings and
affairs, and create responsive problem-solving strategies as their primary
responsibility. At the opposite extreme, in other jurisdictions, the attorney
assigned to the community carries the same caseload as any other attorney in
the office and must handle outreach and problem solving in addition to these
responsibilities. Offices in Howard County, Maryland, Hennepin County,
Minnesota, and Denver, Colorado, are structured in this manner. The majority
of the jurisdictions noted in this report fall somewhere between these extremes,
assigning to community prosecutors a reduced caseload of cases that are
important to the community. The cases that these attorneys cannot handle are
assigned to the trials division. 

Community prosecutors who retain a significant caseload may find that they are
overwhelmed by the demands of the position. The trial caseload requires a
great deal of case preparation time during the day, and much of the community
contact must be accomplished in the evening hours when neighborhood
residents are not at work. Community meetings are almost always scheduled
during the evening, so community prosecutors may find themselves working
long hours and feeling as if there is not enough time to deal with the issues that
are brought to their attention. Offices with smaller caseload demands or more
financial resources may have the ability to relieve these attorneys of their case
processing responsibilities so that they can devote all of their time to community
outreach and problem solving. Offices with large caseloads or less financial
backing may not have enough personnel to afford this luxury. 

Vertical prosecution is a case processing strategy that has been adopted by
many jurisdictions in their community prosecution efforts.[25] It appeals to the
public because a single assistant prosecutor manages criminal cases from
beginning to conclusion. The process is reassuring because of the belief that an
attorney's familiarity with a case will translate into a greater commitment to
achieving a successful conclusion. Theoretically, an attorney's interaction with
community members and the knowledge that residents are closely following the
progress of a case will increase the prosecutor's feeling of accountability. Some
anecdotal evidence supports this perception. For example, Palm Beach County
Prosecutor James Martz, who heads the Palm Beach Community-Based Anti-
Crime Task Force, recounted that an assistant community prosecutor in West
Palm Beach resigned after losing a case, because he felt that he had let down
the residents of the community.[26]

In some offices, vertical prosecution is not practical because of limited
resources and it is not viewed as an efficient use of attorneys' experience and
talents. Later stages of prosecution require more experience and expertise than
the initial filing of a case. Having a seasoned attorney handle all stages of
prosecution, despite its intuitive appeal to observers, may not increase the
probability of a successful result. In urban jurisdictions with large caseloads,
vertical prosecution simply may not be feasible.

Interagency and Collaborative Partnerships in Community Prosecution 

In most community prosecution jurisdictions, community problem-solving
strategies involve initiatives that do not fall strictly within the prosecutor's
domain or involve solutions that are only marginally related to criminal justice.
Community prosecution programs differ in the degree to which they collaborate
in multidisciplinary planning, enforcement, and service delivery strategies, and
the extent to which they cooperate or are integrated with the related efforts of
other agencies and community-focused initiatives such as community courts or
community policing.

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has been the driving force in
creating numerous community-based initiatives in Austin, Texas, including the
community court and drug court programs, and programs focusing on
preventing juvenile crime and truancy. He recently added a specific community
prosecution program which takes an individual prosecutor directly out into the
community. In Austin, representatives of various agencies that support the
community justice initiatives interact cooperatively to accomplish the similar
goals of various programs that draw the public into the business of crime
prevention.

In many locations, community prosecution and community policing go hand in
hand. They are encouraged by federal policy and funding to coexist and work
collaboratively.[27] For community prosecutors, police support in their efforts
provides the enforcement support and, at times, a measure of safety in
situations that even a seasoned prosecutor is ill-equipped to handle. For
community police, the prosecutor can provide the legal expertise and authority
to bring creative policing solutions to fruition. In Multnomah County, police
noted that before the advent of community prosecution they often failed to act
on promising ideas because of uncertainty about their legality (Boland, 1998a:
275; Wolf, 2000: 1).

Depending on the target problems they have sought to address, community
prosecutors have found it helpful and necessary to get other agencies involved
in community initiatives, combining forces that community members would only
access piecemeal. Community prosecutors have become creative in their
reliance on the special roles of other agencies. For example, they may involve
the civil justice system and housing and licensing agencies in nuisance abatement
proceedings. Philadelphia's Local Intensive Narcotics Enforcement (LINE)
program was implemented in 1991 as a pilot program in one Southwest
Philadelphia police district that prosecuted serious drug offenders. When
assistant district attorneys with the LINE program learned of the issues that
really troubled community residents--nuisance bars, neglected properties,
crackhouses, houses of prostitution, and "weed stores"--they called on other
city agencies such as the police, the Bureau of Licenses and Inspections, the
Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control
Board, the Department of Public Health, the City Law Department, and the
Philadelphia Legislative Delegation to help address these issues and gain the
cooperation of the residents. They found what other community prosecution
efforts have also discovered, that nuisance abatement using civil remedies such
as housing and licensing code enforcement can be effective in crime
reduction.[28]

Some of the community prosecution initiatives are purely collaborative,
functioning as part of a task force with other agencies. The CLEAR program in
Los Angeles, California, which was created in 1996 by an interagency gang
task force, is a collaboration of law enforcement agencies, public officials, and
community residents that addresses the community's gang problems by targeting
geographic areas or specific gangs, using suppression, intervention, and
prevention tactics. The program was created by statute under Penal Code
Section 14000, and includes five funded partners on the originating task force--
the police, the sheriff's department, the district attorney's office, the city
attorney's office, and the probation department. The CLEAR program is
headed by an executive committee made up of representatives from these
agencies, who meet monthly to set policy and make budget decisions. Each
agency has a different role to play. Police and sheriffs take the lead in
enforcement and intelligence gathering and make tactical decisions for certain
enforcement programs. The district attorney is responsible for vertical
prosecution of serious gang-related felonies, advising police on investigations
when needed, handling probation violations, and providing input on community
impact teams.

The CLEAR strategy is proactive, targeting the most active gang members and
aggressively filing probation and parole violations and gang enhancements. The
city attorney vertically prosecutes gang-related misdemeanors and uses
nuisance abatement to address quality-of-life issues. Probation officers track
members of targeted gangs who are on active probation to ensure compliance
and ride along with police to arrest gang clients observed in violations. There is
also a community impact team consisting of businessowners, residents, and
stakeholders, who meet regularly with the team to share concerns and notify
them about hotspots in their neighborhoods.

CLEAR operates in six sites throughout Los Angeles County. Prosecutors are
located within the community, sometimes in space donated by local businesses.
A city attorney is assigned to each office to handle quality-of-life
misdemeanors. The goal is to locate all of the partners in one office space. The
attorneys handle as many cases from their areas as they can, giving priority to
serious felonies and cases that are of special significance to the community.
Office trial teams covering that particular geographic area take cases that
cannot be handled by these attorneys.

Denver's neighborhood Community Justice Councils, organized by the district
attorney's office as part of that city's community prosecution initiative, often
identify target problems that involve misdemeanor offenses that do not fall
within the jurisdiction of the district attorney's office. Denver's program
therefore not only brings the district attorney's community prosecutors to the
table but also calls on the city attorney to help neighborhoods craft
solutions.[29]

Community prosecutors also collaborate with agencies that have civil or
regulatory responsibilities to eliminate crime problems in particular
neighborhoods. Operation Crackdown, a project of the U.S. Attorney's
Community Prosecution Unit in the District of Columbia, involves the
community in targeting absentee landlords whose property has become a public
nuisance.[30] Private attorneys who donate their time pro bono are authorized
to file lawsuits on behalf of established community or civic groups against
landlords who own houses where illegal drug activity is occurring. District of
Columbia Act 12-395 allows the U.S. Attorney, the District of Columbia's
Corporation Council, or a community-based organization to file an action in
D.C. Superior Court to enjoin, abate, or prevent a drug-related nuisance. The
attorneys send out notices of potential lawsuits to the landlords. Landlords are
forced to spend money on legal fees to respond to the notices, which
undermines their motivation--their profit margin being cut--to look the other
way when illegal activity takes place on their property.

The District's nuisance law is a potent weapon for community prosecutors
against landlords and drug dealers because, unlike forfeiture actions, there is no
legal defense. If there is a nuisance, the landlord is required to fix it. Because
these types of cases are costly to defend, they almost never go to trial and are
generally settled without a hearing.

As a remedy, the court can order the source of the nuisance to leave the
property and never return. The attorney is not seeking money damages, but is
instead seeking to force a more immediate response, such as eviction, or the
issuance of a court order requiring that the landlord fix the problem. One of the
District's cases addressed in this manner by the pro bono attorney was filed
against a landlord whose property was abandoned. Instead of spending the
significant amount of money needed to make the repairs, the landlord deeded
the property over to the community group, which made the repairs and used the
property as a community center.

The cause of action lies with the community or civic group. It can build up a
record to support the nuisance action by keeping a log of the traffic in and out
of the location, especially noting out-of-state license plates on cars owned by
the individuals frequenting the location as indicative of drug sales. The action
can be brought on behalf of "friends of the neighborhood" or in the name of the
law firm to protect the identity of the residents involved. This deflects the anger
of the subjects of the lawsuit over to the law firm, taking the pressure off the
community. The individual affidavits that are the basis of the action are filed
under seal until the hearing to protect the residents. Police also play an
important role in building the record by supplying a history of the calls for
service at the location and the number of arrests that were made there. To have
standing to bring the action, the community group, which need not be
incorporated, must live in the affected area or within 8 to 10 blocks of it. After
the statutory requirements of notice to the landlord have been met, he or she is
presumed to have knowledge of the nuisance, and no additional proof is
required of whether he or she knew or should have known of the drug-related
nuisance. The burden of proof that the nuisance exists is a preponderance of the
evidence. Although the U.S. Attorney is also authorized by statute to file suit
against the landlord, the pro bono lawyer is focused on that particular property
and can generally get the work done faster.[31] 

In most jurisdictions, the prosecutor does not have primary responsibility for
civil prosecutions. In Oakland, California, the city attorney has this
responsibility and prosecutes drug nuisance actions, lawsuits against landlords
who own substandard properties, and lawsuits against liquor stores and hotels
that permit prostitution activities on their premises. The Oakland City Attorney's
Office recently received a community prosecution implementation grant from
BJA and that effort is in its early stages. The city attorney has long managed
Oakland's Weed and Seed efforts and in that capacity has played a vital role in
crime prevention strategies and developed a collaborative relationship with the
Oakland police in several nuisance abatement programs. The city attorney
drafted seizure and urban blight ordinances, which the Oakland Police
Department enforces through its Beat Feet and Beat Health programs. Beat
Feet implements a new ordinance that declares vehicles used to purchase
narcotics or to solicit prostitutes to be a public nuisance and conducts reverse
sting operations targeting drug buyers. Police undercover officers station
themselves in high drug crime areas, "selling" marijuana and cocaine. The
buyers are arrested and their automobiles are seized. The city attorney then files
civil suits that result in either forfeiture of the vehicle by the owner or steep fines
that the owner must pay to recover the vehicle. The Beat Feet operation is well
publicized and drug buyers know that if they purchase drugs in Oakland they
risk losing their vehicles.

The city attorney also acts as the civil prosecutor in actions that involve
nuisance properties and has a unit within the police department that deals
exclusively with these matters. A recent collaborative effort with the police
department's Beat Health program resulted in the closing of a poorly maintained
hotel within the community prosecution target neighborhood that was the site of
both drug and prostitution activities.

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

[6] George G. Mosee, Deputy Chief of the Philadelphia District Attorney's
Office Narcotics Division.

[7] Community Prosecution Program in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the
District of Columbia: Building Better Neighborhoods and Safer Communities
(January 2000), U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office, District of
Columbia (Draft).

[8] Information is based on an interview with Assistant District Attorney Susan
Gazzaniga, and Placer County's grant application proposal, "Planning a
Partnership" (1999).

[9] Jacoby, 1995.

[10] Information is based on an interview with Assistant Head Deputy Nancy
Lidamore, and on descriptions of the CLEAR and SAGE programs provided
by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office.

[11] Hawaii Revised Statutes, Section 712-1207.

[12] Information is based on an interview with Assistant Prosecuting Attorney
Claire Merry and a report, "Special Report: Community Prosecution Program,"
Department of the Prosecuting Attorney, City and County of Honolulu (January
2000).

[13] Information was provided by District Attorney Henry Valdez, Program
Coordinator Synthia Romero, and community leader Bruce Richardson at a
BJA-sponsored workshop conducted by APRI for BJA community
prosecution grant recipients in Washington, D.C., in February 2000, through
presentations, discussions, and unpublished written materials. 

[14] Interview with Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Karen Hayter. 

[15] Neighborhood DA Unit Projects Update, March 1998,
www.multnomah.lib.or.us/da/nbda.html.

[16] Information is from an interview with Deputy District Attorney Christopher
Arriola.

[17] Community Prosecution Program in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the
District of Columbia: Building Better Neighborhoods and Safer Communities
(January 2000), U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office, District of
Columbia (draft).

[18] Based on site visits to two of Denver's community prosecution sites,
Capitol Hill and Globeville.

[19] Neighborhood DA Unit Projects Update, March 1998,
www.multnomah.lib.or.us/da/nbda.html.

[20] Observation based on site visits to Globeville and Capitol Hill. 

[21] Description of the process is based on observation of a Capitol Hill
Community Justice Council meeting and conversation with members and site
officials.

[22] Based on information in Neighborhood DA Unit Projects Update, March
1998, from www.multnomah.lib.or.us/da/nbda.html. See also Wolf, 2000. 

[23] Information was provided by Santa Clara County Deputy District
Attorney Christopher Arriola.

[24] Information on community prosecution in Pima County comes from an
interview with Deputy County Attorney Christine Curtis and from the "Civil
Remedies Outline 1999-2000," Pima County Attorney's Office. 

[25] Vertical prosecution is part of community prosecution strategies employed
in Manhattan and Kings County, New York; Middlesex and Suffolk Counties,
Massachusetts; Los Angeles and Placer Counties, California; Howard and
Montgomery Counties, Maryland; Washington, D.C.; Honolulu, Hawaii;
Kalamazoo County, Michigan; West Palm Beach, Florida; St. Joseph's
County, Indiana; Cuyahoga County, Ohio; and Sacramento and San Diego,
California.

[26] This incident was related at an APRI/BJA community prosecution
workshop in Washington, D.C., in February 2000.

[27] The Clinton Administration's Law Enforcement Strategy: Combating
Crime With Community Policing and Community Prosecution, March 1999
(www.usdoj.gov/dag/pubdoc/crimestrategy.htm).

[28] Information was provided by George G. Mosee, Jr., Deputy District
Attorney and Chief of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office Narcotics
Unit, in an interview.

[29] Based on observations and information presented at a Capitol Hill
Community Justice Council meeting on April 11, 2000.

[30] Community Prosecution Program in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the
District of Columbia: Building Better Neighborhoods and Safer Communities,
U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office (January 2000): p. 6.
(Draft).

[31] Information based on a presentation by William Lawlor, Esquire, National
Community Prosecution Conference, sponsored by APRI, September 25-27,
2000.

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

Chapter 5

Community Prosecution in the United States: Descriptive Overview of Sites 

By mid-2001, the Crime and Justice Research Institute had identified and made
contact with 36 prosecutors' offices that appeared to have community
prosecution or community-oriented strategies in operation. (For a list of these
sites, see table 1.) This section briefly highlights these programs in chronological
order according to the date they were reported to have started operation.[32] 

The description of these initiatives is meant to be inclusive and does not depend
on a narrow definition of community prosecution. Some community prosecution
advocates may argue that certain sites do not represent community prosecution
initiatives according to some stricter understanding of the key ingredients of
such strategies. We defer discussion of whether community prosecution is an
umbrella concept for a broad variety of prosecutorial activities directed at
crimes in the community or whether it has a narrower meaning denoting a new,
collaborative, and problem-solving relationship with the community. 

Limitations of This Preliminary Overview

In presenting this descriptive information, we acknowledge and emphasize
several limitations. First, this summary is illustrative and descriptive rather than
"complete." We were not able to conduct a formal nationwide survey of all
community prosecution sites. Because no one authority has a complete list of all
community prosecution sites--with new programs being initiated at a rapid
pace--we began with a more exploratory, preliminary investigation. We cannot
be certain that we have identified all sites. It is likely that we missed some. We
are confident that other sites have begun operation while this report was being
produced. 

We identified prosecutors' offices involved in what appeared to be community
prosecution strategies from lists of grants awarded, available literature,
participants and presentations at various conferences, and word of mouth
among prosecutors involved in community-oriented innovation. After we
identified candidate programs, we interviewed representatives to determine
what sorts of community prosecution initiatives, if any, were under way. It was
not feasible to visit or make firsthand observations of all 36 locations. Although
firsthand observation is desirable and should be done in the near future, the
descriptions presented in this report rely primarily on self-reported interview
information from representatives of each site. Finally, the information we
obtained through interviews is uneven. Some sites gave us a great deal of
information, but we had more difficulty arranging full interviews in other sites. In
some sites, the community prosecution 40 initiatives had been in operation for
years; in others, the initiatives were quite new and staff were still discovering
implementation issues and solutions.

Purpose of the Preliminary Overview of Sites

With these limitations in mind, we present a descriptive overview of community
prosecution sites for two principal reasons. First, these summaries illustrate
common ingredients of a diverse collection of community prosecution strategies
and provide the fundamentals of a community prosecution model (hence the
working typology described in chapter 4). Second, we offer this draft
accounting of current community prosecution programs as a work in progress
to solicit feedback and additional information from sites that have been included
and others that have not.[33] With this input, we expect to develop a more
complete description of community prosecution programs in the United States,
whether they are in planning or operational stages.

Manhattan, New York

In 1985, New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau created a
Community Affairs Unit in his office to respond to the dramatic effects of the
crack cocaine epidemic in Manhattan.[34] The unit was originally established to
improve relations with the community and to facilitate collaboration on
problem-solving strategies with other government agencies. The office is now
staffed by 10 nonattorney community affairs associates who work with citizens
and community groups in designated geographic areas that overlap with
Manhattan's 22 police precincts, and who focus on drug crime, nuisance
properties, and low-level quality-of-life offenses. Associates attend community
board and police precinct meetings to become aware of neighborhood
complaints and issues, and network with community police officers to help
fashion alternative legal responses to the traditional arrest/conviction track. A
community-oriented information system is used to manage information received
from the community and other sources, track contacts made, and detect crime
patterns. 

The Community Affairs Unit provides a steady flow of information between the
community and the trials division, where attorneys with various levels of
experience are assigned to six general trial bureaus, each with attorneys who
specialize in specific major crimes. Cases are assigned to trial bureaus on a
random basis or by crime type to specific prosecutors. Morgenthau's approach
is premised on the belief that nonattorney personnel who are trained to perform
outreach and respond in a timely fashion to community requests are able to
address community needs more efficiently. Unit attorneys become involved
when legal expertise, investigation, or litigation skills are needed to handle
community problems. The attorneys also give talks to community groups and
teach classes in the schools on criminal justice issues. Unit officials estimate that
half of the community problems they deal with can best be handled through
means other than litigation, often by drawing on other government agencies or
social services. By design, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office assigns
attorneys with specific expertise as problems require. This approach gives the
office more flexibility in devising appropriate responses to community crime
issues than if one attorney with generalized skills were assigned as community
prosecutor to a specific geographic area to handle all types of problems. Once
the attorneys are involved, the unit employs vertical prosecution, allowing
attorneys to become sufficiently familiar with the neighborhood from which the
case originates, its issues, and the witnesses and victims involved. Another
rationale for the approach is that attorneys are insulated from the ethical issues
that arise if they are too closely tied to the community. This strategy prevents
residents from viewing the attorneys as "their lawyers" with expectations of free
legal advice. In addition, residents are less apt to inadvertently volunteer
incriminating or inappropriate information and place an attorney in a position of
conflict if a community resident must be charged with a crime. 

Two programs have been created in association with the Community Affairs
Unit to respond to specific types of community crime issuesthe Trespass
Affidavit Program and Project Focus. With collaboration from the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Trespass
Affidavit Program targets landlords of apartment buildings that have been taken
over by drug dealers. The buildings are posted with "No Trespassing" signs and
landlords supply police with building keys and current tenant lists, so that
patrolling officers can ascertain who belongs in the buildings and arrest loiterers
(drug buyers) for trespass. Project Focus trial assistants proactively focus in an
area of the 34th police precinct because of its large volume of violent crime and
drug activity. Prosecutors are assigned to areas corresponding to community
police officers' beats.

Project Focus prosecutors use information gathered from the community, local
police, and the Community Affairs Unit to identify the area's crime patterns and
active criminals and to design a plan to address them, often employing civil
remedies as well as traditional prosecution. This program has been replicated as
Project Octopus on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in an area with a large
concentration of public housing. Project Octopus attorneys work with the
housing authority police. The targeted crime problems extend beyond more
than one police beat so the attorneys are not limited by beat boundaries and are
deployed on the basis of the crime problems.

Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon

Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk initiated the
Neighborhood DA program in 1990, in Portland's Lloyd District, in response
to requests from business leaders who were trying to develop the area as a
center of commerce and were concerned about the impact of low-level
crimes.[35] In an unusual arrangement, the business leaders offered to pay the
salary of the first neighborhood prosecutor and to provide office space.
Schrunk agreed to the initiative as a pilot effort, further agreeing to fund its
expansion to other neighborhoods if it was successful. A newspaper article that
criticized the office for allowing the "rich" to "buy" the services of a prosecutor
led to calls from other Portland neighborhoods that wanted their own
Neighborhood DAs, rather than to public outrage. Since then, the program has
expanded to cover the entire county, with seven Neighborhood DAs (NDAs)
funded mostly by public money. The additional sites include various settings and
present different types of problems. They include the primarily residential areas
of North-Northeast and Southeast Portland; the East District, which was split
from the Southeast District because it was too large for one NDA to handle;
Gresham, a city in Multnomah County but separate from Portland; the West
District downtown business area; and the Tri-Met District which encompasses
the local transit system. Partners include the community police, who predate the
community prosecution program, the community courts, the city attorney's
office, state and local social service and other noncriminal justice agencies, the
FBI, and the U.S. Attorney's Office. 

NDAs maintain offices in their assigned neighborhoods. Through collaboration
with local police and neighborhood groups, NDAs become aware of problems
and seek innovative solutions to them. An important part of the process is
empowering residents to help in the problem-solving effort. They can provide
information needed to get a search warrant for a property where drug dealing is
suspected, or help keep watch on an area that has been the subject of an
intervention to ensure that the problem does not recur. Often, the NDA's role is
to provide the legal expertise needed to activate a plan proposed by residents
or the community police.

NDAs generally do not screen cases and rarely prosecute them. Their primary
obligation is to be available to the community, the police, and governmental
agencies as a resource, and time spent in court would take them away from the
community. However, attorneys in the West and Lloyd Districts do some
screening and carry small caseloads. No official policy has been set by the
office; each site has been allowed to evolve as the assigned attorney saw fit.
NDAs do, however, handle cases that are heard in Portland's three community
courts, which are plea courts with jurisdiction over misdemeanors. Felony cases
originating from community prosecution sites are assigned by crime type to the
felony trial unit, where they are vertically prosecuted. Misdemeanor cases that
are not heard in community court are randomly assigned to the misdemeanor
unit, where only domestic violence and cases of special significance are
prosecuted vertically. NDAs help investigating police officers prepare their
cases, and assist felony trial attorneys with grand jury presentations and trial
preparation by facilitating interaction with witnesses and obtaining case-related
intelligence from the community.

The first important NDA project involved cleaning up Sullivan's Gulch, the area
adjacent to the Lloyd District where homeless people and transients routinely
camped. The area was littered with trash, and its vagrants wandered into the
downtown area, broke into cars, urinated in public places, panhandled
aggressively, and generally engaged in behavior that drove away business. No
concerted effort to eliminate the problem had ever been made, and annual
cleanup costs exceeded $40,000. The solution came when the NDA got the
residents and affected businessowners to patrol the gulch, post signs against
trespassers, pick up trash, and remove and store property left behind at a
location far from the gulch. Within a year, the gulch became a clean stretch of
parkland.

Another innovative response to a neighborhood problem resulted in the first
drug-free zone in 1992. Certain Portland neighborhoods had problems with
drug dealers selling on their streets. Because jails were overcrowded, arrested
dealers were quickly released and returned to the area. The district attorney,
working with the city attorney, crafted an ordinance to create drug-free zones in
areas of high-volume drug dealing. To have an area designated as a drug-free
zone, a statistical showing must be made that the area generates substantially
more drug arrests than other comparable areas. Consequently, the zones are
primarily located in the two community prosecution sites where drug activity has
been inordinately high.

If a person is arrested for the sale or possession of drugs in a drug-free zone,
the police can issue a 90-day notice of exclusion from the zone. If the person
enters the zone within that period, for reasons other than to travel between
specific destinations such as home and work or school, he or she can be
arrested for criminal trespass. These cases are heard in community court, and
the offender is mandated to perform community service in the neighborhood
where he was arrested, providing the community with visible proof that
something is being done about the community's problems. Once arrested and
released on bail, dealers are no longer free to resume business as usual, which
drastically decreases drug sales in the areas.

NDAs consider the community courts, the first of which opened in 1998, one
of their most important tools. An NDA from each community appears in court
to handle neighborhood cases at least once a week. The court handles the
majority of the misdemeanor quality-of-life offenses that arise from the
community in an expedited fashion. Offenders agree to enter a plea to the
charges and receive nonjail sanctions that include community service to be
performed in the neighborhood where they committed the offense. Each
defendant is assessed to determine what, if any, social services are needed, and
may be mandated to receive those services or complete a program as a part of
the sentence. Most first-time offenders are eligible to have their charges
dismissed upon satisfactory completion of their sentence. (Offenders brought in
for domestic violence, assaults, and misdemeanors that involve firearms or
injury to victims are not eligible for dismissal of their charges.) Failure to
complete the sentence results in a 3-day jail sentence. Repeat offenders receive
increased community service hours and are not eligible for dismissal of the
charges. In addition to disposing misdemeanor cases, the community court also
handles violations of drug-free zone restrictions, which are charged as
misdemeanor criminal trespass.

The community courts are used by NDAs in another significant way. In
Multnomah County, the prosecutor has jurisdiction over code violations,which
can be charged as misdemeanors. In addition to citing landlords with code
violations for failing to maintain their properties, actions that are likely to be
ignored, these landlords may be charged with misdemeanor offenses and
required to appear in community court. This arrangement has several benefits.
Violators cannot overlook the criminal matter as easily as a civil citation, the
hearing is expedited and requires a quick response, and the community can see
that the landlord is being made to answer for the violation by performing
community service and making repairs to the property. Neighborhood
prosecutors continue to seek novel ways to use this power over code violations
in community court.

Kings County (Brooklyn), New York

Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes started the community
prosecution program in 1991 to address neighborhood quality-of-life and
public safety issues in Brooklyn.[36] He assigned teams of attorneys to the
borough's five judicial zones, each consisting of four to five police precincts, to
handle the cases that originated there. The aim of this arrangement was to
ensure that attorneys would become familiar with the community to which they
were assigned and the types of crime that occurred there. At the same time, the
community attorneys could develop a working relationship with the community
and the precinct police to address public safety goals of principal concern to the
community and to encourage neighborhood support in the prosecution of
criminal cases. The attorneys met regularly with residents and listened to their
concerns about crime and quality-of-life issues. An underlying rationale of the
program was that prosecutorial assignments corresponding to the same
geographic zones as the courts and grand juries would make judges more
aware of community concerns, by dealing with community prosecutors in the
courtroom on a daily basis.

Attorneys assigned to each zone are located in the central office rather than in
neighborhood offices. Because the office serves 2.5 million people spread out
over 70 square miles and prosecutes approximately 85,000 felony and
misdemeanor cases each year with a staff of more than 500 attorneys, field
offices are not seen as the most cost-effective deployment of legal staff. It is felt
that the zone attorneys spend sufficient time in their assigned neighborhoods to
obviate a full-time presence. Felony cases are prosecuted vertically from grand
jury indictment through disposition. Misdemeanors are prosecuted vertically
from arraignment through disposition.

In addition to assigning attorneys to zones, Hynes created a Community
Relations Bureau with seven nonattorney personnel and a supervisor who are
responsible for community outreach on behalf of the attorneys. These
individuals are each assigned to an area that includes four police precincts and
three community relations boards (community groups that represent more than
one police precinct and include representative community members and
stakeholders). They too are located in the central office. For logistical reasons,
their assigned areas do not necessarily correspond to the zones the attorneys
cover. Meeting times and days may make it impossible to cover all meetings
located within a zone, some community boards represent precincts that are not
within the same zone, and specific skills such as proficiency in Spanish may
make some staff more suitable representatives in certain communities. Although
zone supervisors attend community meetings and police precinct councils, each
staff person is responsible for knowing area leaders and stakeholders, attending
community meetings, keeping track of the problems and issues that arise at the
meetings, and communicating problems and information to the appropriate zone
attorneys or agency. An information log on community contacts is maintained
on a computer, but planning is under way for a more sophisticated information
system that will flag information for the appropriate users so that it can be
transmitted to the attorneys more quickly and efficiently. 

The office operates several legal education programs. Programs include Legal
Lives, which assigns attorneys to specific schools to teach fifth graders about
the law; The People's Law School, which provides information for adult
residents about the criminal justice system and how to handle specific problems
in their neighborhood; and an afterschool youth law school that provides older
children with legal information relevant to them. The Formal Trespass Affidavit
Program is similar to the New York County program; it targets apartment
buildings where criminal activities take place and engages landlords in
monitoring these activities.

Community partners include community police and the Red Hook Community
Court, which has jurisdiction over a small portion of Brooklyn (three police
precincts) that falls within three different attorney zones. A single attorney
handles all community court cases.

Middlesex County, Massachusetts

The Community-Based Justice Program (CBJ) was created by Middlesex
County District Attorney Martha Coakley in 1991 to respond to violent juvenile
gangs.[37] The Middlesex County District Attorney's Office has a core staff of
about 50 attorneys who are directly involved in the CBJ program, which has
been implemented in all 54 cities and towns in the county. In addition to their
work with the program, CBJ attorneys carry a regular criminal caseload, which
includes both adult and juvenile cases. (The county has no separate juvenile
court facility; rather, each court sets aside days to handle juvenile cases.) The 
entire office, including CBJ, is organized geographically, with three trial teams
assigned to different regions. (Exceptions to this organization are specialized
divisions that handle child abuse, white-collar crime, and domestic violence
cases wherever they occur.) CBJ cases are prosecuted vertically. 

The target of the CBJ program is high school students who have been charged
with delinquent or criminal offenses. Although juvenile jurisdiction ends at age
17 in Massachusetts, many youth are still in high school at that age so offenders
targeted by CBJ are not necessarily juveniles. CBJ task forces include
prosecutors, police officers, school officials, juvenile probation officials, and, in
some cases, neighborhood leaders. They meet weekly to share information
about these youthful offenders. Prosecutors are better prepared to handle and
dispose of their cases in an appropriate manner because they have access to
information about the background and behavior of youth in the community and
in school. CBJ maintains a priority prosecution list, with graduated sanctions
imposed on those who continue to offend. It includes violent juveniles who are
then singled out for special attention. The list identifies approximately 1,700
juveniles who are monitored on a regular basis and is updated to include current
information and to identify new youth who need intervention. Efforts are made
to avoid removing the offenders from the community. In appropriate cases,
both the youth and the family are given support through social services and
creative probationary terms. A major emphasis of the program is the sharing of
information among committee members about youth in trouble or at risk of
becoming involved in serious crime. Without shared information, none of the
agencies involved would know how serious the youth's issues were in time to
intervene and perhaps constructively deal with the problems. 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office Public Nuisance Task Force 38 was
created by District Attorney Lynne Abraham in 1992 and assumed the role of
an earlier community-oriented prosecution effort, the Local Intensive Narcotics
Enforcement program, which was implemented in 1991 by former District
Attorney Edward Rendell in Philadelphia's 18th Police District. The LINE
program was an effort by the District Attorney's Office Narcotics Division to
enlist the help of neighborhoods in prosecuting serious drug offenders, identified
by the office as a high-priority issue for that area. Discussions with area
residents convinced the prosecutors that problems with nuisance properties
were a higher priority.

When funding ended for the LINE program, the Narcotics Division continued
nuisance abatement efforts under the Public Nuisance Task Force, a program
created to engage the community in efforts to close crackhouses, nuisance bars,
houses of prostitution, and "weed stores." The Public Nuisance Task Force
program primarily targets nuisance properties related to drug and alcohol
violations. Six attorneys are assigned to geographic areas coinciding with
detective divisions. The attorneys are based in the main office, but spend much
of their time in the community and are required to attend community meetings to
gather information from residents about problem properties. The Public
Nuisance Task Force attorneys try some criminal cases and litigate civil cases,
including property forfeitures. The Narcotics Division prosecutes the more
serious and complex cases, using vertical prosecution. The unit also assists the
community in becoming more organized, by helping residents form groups such
as Communities That Care and training interested citizens to lead them. 

The Public Nuisance Task Force operates in collaboration with other city
agencies, such as the Philadelphia Police Department, the Bureau of Liquor
Control Enforcement, the Liquor Control Board, the Philadelphia Health
Department, the Department of Licenses and Inspections, the City Law
Department, and the Philadelphia Legislative Delegation. They work closely
with community police and the Narcotics Enforcement Team, a decentralized
division of the police department that handles cases geographically. 

The nuisance abatement process begins with a complaint initiated by citizens.
The assistant district attorney assigned to the region generating the complaint
sends a warning letter informing the property owner that a violation of the drug
act has occurred on the property and that it could be seized and sealed. An
investigation of the property is conducted, which may include any or all of the
partner agencies mentioned above. The assistant prosecutor then seeks to
abate the nuisance through civil injunction, asset forfeiture, condemnation of 
the property, or negotiation with the owner. Community residents are kept
apprised of the progress of the case and may give information or testimony
about the property.

The Public Nuisance Task Force relies primarily on three pieces of legislation to
address nuisance properties:

o The Nuisance Drug Law, 42 PaCSA, Sections 8381-8392 (1992),
authorizes the district attorney's office, the city solicitor, a resident living within
1,000 feet of the nuisance property, or a community-based organization to go
to Common Pleas Court to stop drug-related nuisances taking place on any
property where drugs are regularly used or sold. The court may seal the
property at the owner's expense, order repairs, revoke licenses, force the
owner to pay damages and civil penalties of up to $10,000 and court costs
incurred by the community, or order the premises secured.

o The Pennsylvania Liquor Code, Section 6-611, states that any licensed liquor
establishment that serves minors, drunks, known alcoholics, known criminals,
persons of known intemperate habits, or otherwise violates the code is a public
nuisance. Unreasonable conduct that is disruptive to community life, such as
littering, violence, or noise pollution, also creates a public nuisance. The district
attorney's office is authorized to join neighborhood groups in making a request
to have the court close down such an establishment.

o Philadelphia Code, Sections 19-2600-2602, empowers the district attorney
to join neighbors in requesting the court to close down establishments that
unreasonably interfere with the public rights of three or more people through
any illegal activity.

The Task Force has a hotline number, so citizens can reach them easily. Much
of the funding for the unit comes from revenue generated through forfeiture
proceedings.

Marion County (Indianapolis), Indiana

The Marion County Prosecuting Attorney's Office began planning for the Street
Level Advocacy Program in 1993, and the effort was expanded when Scott
Newman took office as Marion County Prosecutor, in 1995.[39] Currently,
one part-time and five full-time deputy prosecutors, assisted by four full-time
paralegals, are assigned to the program. They work directly with all five Marion
County police departments and the surrounding suburbs. The effort has resulted
in significant improvements in the working relationship between police and
prosecutors, who previously had blamed each other for cases that "fell through
the cracks." Street Level Advocates (SLAs) screen and file all felony cases
presented by police officers from their districts except drug, homicide, and sex
crime cases, which are handled by special divisions. SLAs select four or five
cases to prosecute personally that are of particular importance to the local
community, and provide assistance to police on legal issues 24 hours a day.
They also update officers on new developments in criminal law. The program
includes a full-time nuisance abatement coordinator and an assistant
investigator. Marion County's approach emphasizes information sharing and
improved communication among criminal justice agencies and the community. It
employs a combination of vertical prosecution and strategies to prevent crime in
the neighborhoods.

SLAs attend community meetings and help organize community events. The
prosecutor's staff believe that direct contact with the community has facilitated a
more positive relationship between residents and the prosecutor's office,
resulting in greater community involvement in, and support of, prosecutor-led
initiatives. Community residents help set the agenda for SLA initiatives by
identifying issues of highest priority. One program created in response to
community input is the Patronizing Diversion Program, which targets customers
of prostitutes in an Eastern District business area. First-time offenders can avoid
conviction if they admit to the charge, perform community service, and
participate in an impact panel during which neighborhood residents can air their
feelings to the offenders about the damage that prostitution does in their
neighborhood.

Other Street Level Advocacy efforts include:

o The Nuisance Abatement/Narcotics Eviction Program: Police or residents
identify and target properties used in drug or other illegal activities. Landlords
are assisted in abatement efforts and, failing this, are assisted in evicting tenants
who have been involved in documented criminal activity. Collaborative efforts
involving various agencies, including city council and municipal services, as well
as code inspectors from the fire, zoning, and health departments, can result in
heavy fines to offending property owners, as well as eviction of problem
tenants. Multiagency sweeps, targeting properties that have been the source of
community complaints, are conducted every 2 months.

o Case Watch: SLAs notify trial attorneys of cases that must be watched and
track cases of importance to the community. Community residents are alerted
to watch for the return of defendants with stay-away orders so that police can
enforce these orders.

o Curfew Sweeps: The idea behind curfew sweeps is to reduce crime by
reducing the presence of unsupervised youth in public areas after certain hours.
In response to community input, SLAs coordinate these sweeps in cooperation
with juvenile probation officers and the police.

As a result of the improved relationship between the prosecutor's office and the
community, citizens have become more confident about reporting criminal
activity and take a more active role in developing solutions to crime-related
problems. The prosecutor's office has also led the development of a community
justice center and a community court, which will handle misdemeanors, quality-
of-life crimes, and health and housing code and ordinance violations. The
community court will impose sanctions and provide services that focus on the
offender's problems and community restoration. 

Suffolk County (Boston), Massachusetts

The community prosecution strategy of the Suffolk County District Attorney's
Office involves three major components: the Safe Neighborhood Initiative
(SNI), Prosecutors in Police Stations (PIP), and Community Based Justice
(CBJ).[40] Each of these programs represents a proactive prosecutorial effort
to address crime problems on a community level.

Safe Neighborhood Initiative

Suffolk County District Attorney Ralph Martin created the first SNI in
Dorchester in February 1993. Since then, the program has been expanded to
include three additional inner-city neighborhoods--East Boston, Chelsea, and
Grove Hall--to enhance public safety in these high crime areas. SNIs began as
a partnership among community residents, the Attorney General of
Massachusetts, the Suffolk County District Attorney, the police, and the
Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services, based on the belief that a
collaborative effort among these agencies was necessary to have an impact on
escalating violence. District courts in Boston were already decentralized, giving
judges the opportunity to become familiar with the neighborhoods in the areas
they served. The organization of the district courts provided a practical basis for
assigning community prosecutors geographically. At least one prosecutor and
one assistant attorney general (who is empowered to try cases on behalf of the
district attorney) are assigned to each SNI to handle cases arising from that
area and bring neighborhood concerns before the bench. SNI staff have access
to office space in these locations. The attorneys attend all SNI meetings, screen
and prosecute cases, and work closely with police. They also network with
residents and attend community meetings to stay familiar with community crime
problems. In addition, one nonattorney staff person is assigned to each SNI to
coordinate activities and handle projects that do not involve law enforcement.
Selected area residents and stakeholders sit on an advisory board that meets
with SNI officials to identify local issues and, in some cases, participate in
creating strategies to address those issues. In East Boston, for example,
residents identified underage drinking and the local liquor stores supplying
alcohol to minors as important quality-of-life problems. SNI staff sent letters
notifying the merchants of the new zero tolerance policy for supplying minors
with alcohol. This notice was followed a month later by a reverse sting
operation and a subsequent meeting with the merchants to ensure that they
were aware of what was required of them.

Prosecutors in Police Stations

The Suffolk County community prosecution strategy also places prosecutors in
police stations (PIPs). PIPs are assigned to the three busiest police stations to
work directly with officers, screening incoming cases, reviewing applications for
search warrants, and providing legal assistance for the police when needed.
PIPs also target and prosecute high-profile community interest cases, including
felonies. PIPs often work nights, riding along with police in targeted areas.
Because these attorneys are often out in the community, they develop
relationships with residents, become familiar with community issues and
problems, and develop a better working relationship with the police. PIP
attorneys are directly involved in the investigation of cases before arrests are
made. They sometimes use a "John Doe Grand Jury" to encourage cooperation
from otherwise uncooperative witnesses and victims. A John Doe Grand Jury
may be convened to investigate a serious case before an alleged offender has
been identified, and the witness or victim is subpoenaed to appear and testify.
Witnesses or victims who fail to cooperate may be cited for contempt. This tool
often enables the prosecutor to obtain information about a crime to which the
police might not have access. PIP staff also ensure that the witness or victim is
provided with services, such as compensation for injuries. This care facilitates a
relationship of trust with the witness or victim early on in the case. Cases not
handled by SNI or PIP attorneys are assigned to the trials division.  

Community Based Justice Task Force

The third major component of the Suffolk County community prosecution
strategy is the Community Based Justice Task Force, which was adapted from
the first such program in Middlesex County. CBJs have been implemented in
many Suffolk County schools, where they provide a forum for community-level
information sharing among officials dealing with court-involved and at-risk
youth. 

A nonattorney employee heads the district attorney's Community Affairs Unit,
which develops and implements programs to respond to community issues. This
individual interacts with the community and creates linkages with government
agencies and social service providers to bring together potential problem
solvers to develop innovative solutions to problems. The unit was developed to
prosecute cases of domestic violence, elder abuse, and child abuse and uses a
holistic approach to support and prepare victims in these sensitive criminal
cases.

Los Angeles County, California

Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti created Strategies Against
Gang Environments (SAGE) in December 1993 in the city of Norwalk.[41]
The program responds to the problems of gang violence, drug dealing, and
public nuisance crime. Assistant district attorneys are located in five SAGE
sites, with offices generally in a city-owned office building such as a city hall or
a police station. SAGE sites are in unincorporated cities in Los Angeles
County, outside the city of Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles District
Attorney's Office has jurisdiction over misdemeanor offenses and felonies. (In
the city of Los Angeles, the city attorney handles misdemeanors.) These cities
pay most of the expenses associated with the SAGE program. 

SAGE attorneys are intended to be community problem solvers. They do not
try many cases. One SAGE attorney works with the city attorney to focus only
on gang injunctions. This attorney is not located at a particular site, but rather
seeks injunctions wherever they are needed within SAGE areas to stop gangs
from engaging in activities that create public nuisances (e.g., members of drug-
dealing gangs are prohibited from carrying pagers and cell phones and
congregating in public places). SAGE staff support trial prosecutors by
providing intelligence about gangs and help law enforcement with prefiling
issues, as well as reviewing arrest reports and evaluating problem cases. SAGE
staff also coordinate training for police on special issues, coordinate curfew
sweeps, provide case law and training for judges on gang-related issues,
facilitate information sharing among agencies, and help with information and
training on the relocation of endangered witnesses. In addition, they help draft
gang-related legislation. 

SAGE projects include drug abatement, antiprostitution efforts, school truancy
programs, legal enrichment classes for elementary school children, an antigraffiti
program, and public nuisance abatement efforts. In the area of nuisance
abatement, SAGE staff carry out research and draft ordinances, targeting such
problems as public drinking and urination, gambling, and loitering. SAGE
attorneys are also engaged in community outreach, the preparation of training
materials for community-based organizations on gang prevention, intervention
and suppression issues, meeting with community police advisory boards to help
develop community-based antigang strategies, and assisting in planning and
training sessions related to antigang measures for community members. 

The Community Law Enforcement and Recovery program (CLEAR) was
created in 1996 by an interagency gang task force. CLEAR is a collaboration
among law enforcement agencies, public officials, and community residents
working to address the community's gang problems by targeting geographic
areas or specific gangs, and then using suppression, intervention, and prevention
tactics. The program was created by statute (California Penal Code, Section
14000), and includes five funded partners: the Los Angeles Police Department,
the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, the Los Angeles District Attorney's
Office, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office, and the Los Angeles County
Probation Department. CLEAR's executive committee of representatives from
these agencies meets monthly to set policy and make budget decisions. 

Each agency plays a distinct role. Police and sheriffs take the lead in
suppression and intelligence gathering, and make tactical decisions for certain
programs. The district attorney is responsible for vertical prosecution of serious
gang-related felonies, advising police on investigations when needed, handling
probation violations, and providing input on community impact teams. The
approach is proactive, targeting the most active gang members and aggressively
filing probation and parole violations and gang enhancements when they are
appropriate. The city attorney vertically prosecutes gang-related misdemeanors
and uses nuisance abatement strategy to address quality-of-life issues.
Probation staff track members of targeted gangs who are on active probation to
ensure compliance with probation conditions and ride along with police to
arrest violators. CLEAR deploys a community impact team of businessowners,
residents, and other stakeholders that meets regularly with CLEAR staff to
share concerns and notify them about hotspots in their neighborhoods. 

There are six CLEAR sites throughout the county of Los Angeles. The first site
was established in the northeast section of the city in response to the gang
homicide of a small child hit by gunfire directed at her family's car as the family
drove through gang territory. Depending on the caseload, up to three attorneys
are assigned to each location. The attorneys' offices are located in the
community, with a city attorney also assigned to each location to handle quality-
of-life misdemeanors. CLEAR's goal is to locate all of the partner agencies in
one office space.

CLEAR attorneys handle as many cases from their assigned areas as they can,
giving priority to serious felonies and cases and defendants that are of special
significance to the community. The primary focus is to remove the most violent
offenders from the community. The central office trial teams that cover that
particular geographic area take cases that cannot be handled by these
attorneys. The program also includes intervention and prevention components
designed to prevent at-risk youth from replacing gang members removed by
CLEAR. For example, there is a mural program to eliminate gang graffiti, a
Safe Passages program to prevent gang intimidation of children on their way
home from school, as well as truancy and legal education programs for
elementary school children.

Seattle, Washington

The Seattle City Attorney has criminal jurisdiction over misdemeanors and
responsibility for handling ordinance violations, nuisance abatement, and
forfeiture matters, in addition to the civil responsibility of acting as legal council
for the city and its agencies. The office employs approximately 80 attorneys, 35
in the criminal division and 45 in the civil division. The city of Seattle is an urban
area measuring about 60 square miles. It has apopulation of approximately
580,000, including about 70 percent white, 10 percent African-American, 10
percent Asian, and 7 percent Hispanic residents. 

Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran created the Precinct Liaison Program in
1995.[42] He assigned one attorney to an office in each of four police precincts
to improve communication among the citizens, city attorneys, police, and other
city departments; reduce crime and enhance the quality of life; and develop a
more effective response to public safety problems. Each prosecutor carried a
full caseload in addition to performing community outreach and helping the
precinct police. The difficulty of performing both roles effectively led the office
to seek additional funding. BJA funding was used to free the attorney in the
West Precinct of her caseload to allow her to devote all of her time to the
community and to hire a part-time clerical assistant. The success of the newly
defined position led the office to create a second full-time outreach position
with an attorney dividing time between the East and South Precincts. There are
plans to convert the position in the North Precinct as well. Misdemeanor cases
filed in the South, East, and West Precincts are generally assigned to the
Vertical Prosecution Unit or to a trial division attorney, with the liaison attorney
facilitating cooperation between the trial attorney and the community. The Civil
Unit handles nuisance cases.

Liaison attorneys were assigned to police precincts to take advantage of police
advisory boards in each precinct, as well as to facilitate a more positive
relationship with the police. Each advisory board has about 225 members
consisting of representatives from neighborhood organizations, local businesses,
and the chamber of commerce, as well as individual citizens. Each board works
with the local police to identify community problems and safety issues, and is
kept informed about policy decisions. Target problems have also been
identified by community organizations, using crime mapping and examining
crime data for crime type issues. Hospital admissions data are reviewed to
identify hotspots and develop intervention strategies. Target problems include
drug paraphernalia sales, prostitution and low-rent hotels, and nuisance clubs
located close to residential neighborhoods, which are a source of criminal
activity and late-night noise.

The updated community prosecution effort initially focused on the West
Precinct, which encompasses the downtown business district as well as some
residential neighborhoods and presents a mix of problems representative of the
city's major issues. The crime rate is relatively even among the precincts, but
each has particular issues--high major crime rates in the East and South, car
theft in the North, and inner-city problems such as drug activity in the West. 

As members of advisory boards and local community organizations, citizens
have input into the prosecution priorities set by the city attorney's office.
Community members are kept apprised of new policies and initiatives, and of
the progress of cases of interest to them. Citizens are often asked for their
feedback on the impact of criminal behavior in their community. One example
of neighborhood engagement is the joint effort of the community and the liaison
attorney in the West Precinct to deal with a nuisance club. The attorney set up a
meeting at which the community confronted the club owner. It resulted in a
"Good Neighbor Agreement," a document created by the civil department,
between the community and the owner, who consented to change troublesome
business practices. Although not legally enforceable, these agreements
document the owner's awareness of the problems and can be used in court as
evidence of knowledge of illegal practices as required by most ordinances.
They also evidence efforts made to work with a businessowner who has agreed
to make changes but failed to do so, providing the city attorney with leverage in
court. Citizens are enlisted to monitor compliance with the agreements, and are
able to present evidence on specific violations in court, if required to abate a
continuing nuisance.

Collaboration among local agencies is an additional asset. The Neighborhood
Action Team Seattle includes the city attorney, the police, and city agencies on
Sector Service Teams in each of the four police precincts to handle chronic
neighborhood public health and safety problems. The city has funded a full-time
management position to oversee program implementation and evaluation. 

Howard County, Maryland

The Community Justice Program was created by Howard County State's
Attorney Marna McLendon in 1996 as a school-based pilot program, Caring
for the Community, in two sites.[43] The State's Attorney's Office created a
steering committee that included police, parole, probation, and juvenile justice
officials, citizen services representatives, and representatives of the Department
of Social Services in the selection of target areas and issues to be addressed.
The state's attorney held focus groups in the schools to obtain input from
children about their problems. The program was expanded in January 1999 and
now operates countywide, involving the entire staff of 23 full-time and 3 part-
time attorneys, in addition to a full-time community justice coordinator. 

Nineteen attorneys have been assigned to 19 zones as liaisons in the
community. They meet with community organizations, attend council meetings,
ride with police officers, talk with school officials, and attend community events
to identify the criminal justice issues that residents find most disruptive. Because
these attorneys also carry a full caseload, the time that they have available in the
community is constrained. Nonetheless, they are expected to attend at least one
community meeting per month. Felony cases are prosecuted vertically, but
because of the organization of the two criminal courts, which are located in two
separate buildings and control the scheduling of cases, it is not practical for
cases to be assigned to the prosecutors on a geographic basis. As a result, the
attorney liaisons do not necessarily try cases from their zones. The community
prosecution initiative is supplemented with an additional attorney responsible for
the Hot Spot program, a state-level initiative promoted by the governor's office.
The Hot Spot attorney, whose salary is paid through state funds, is able to
devote full time to community prosecution in two high crime areas selected by
the governor's office. She carries a reduced caseload of cases important to the
community and shares an office with the Hot Spot team.

The community justice program has both a reactive and a proactive component.
The reactive component targets defendants who are arrested for crimes that are
a significant concern to the community, giving them high priority even if the
actual crimes committed would ordinarily be considered relatively minor. These
cases are tracked through the trial process, and citizens are encouraged to
attend sentencing hearings or to submit statements to be used at sentencing to
inform the judge about the impact of those crimes on the community. The goal
of the proactive component is to develop solutions, in collaboration with the
police and the community, that are outside the traditional arrest and convict 
strategy by understanding the neighborhood's specific crime issues. 

Plymouth County (Brockton), Massachusetts

Community prosecution in Plymouth County has been operating since 1996
when Plymouth County District Attorney Michael Sullivan implemented the
Safe Neighborhood Initiative (SNI).[44] SNI provides residents and other
local stakeholders with direct access to the district attorney's office and other
government officials, with whom they meet regularly. Two assistant attorneys
general and two assistant district attorneys have been assigned to do community
prosecution in Brockton, a city of many different immigrant groups. Each
attorney carries a caseload that is handled using targeted, priority prosecution,
which expedites case processing. District court cases, which include
misdemeanors and low-level felonies, are tried within 60 days. Superior court
cases, which include the most serious felony trials, are also expedited although
not quite as fast. (Because there are more cases than the three attorneys can
handle, the rest are randomly assigned to the trial attorneys.) SNI attorneys
partner with the state police, who also have targeted Brockton with intensive
patrols and proactive undercover operations, using a zero tolerance approach
to gang and drug crime. A strong relationship with community residents
familiarizes prosecutors with the details of the neighborhood where the crimes
are committed and builds a better understanding of criminals' histories and how
they relate to quality-of-life issues in the neighborhood.[45] 

Programs run by the district attorney's office include the Abandoned Houses
Project, created by the 1993 Receivership Statute.46 The statute empowers
the district attorney or other public agency to bring an action requesting that a
receiver be appointed to oversee the rehabilitation of a residential property that
has been the subject of persistent code violations. After repairs have been
made, the cost of the renovations is assessed against the owner of the property
as a priority lien. Should the owner fail to pay, the receiver may foreclose on
the property to pay the debts and transfer ownership to a responsible landlord. 

The district attorney notifies landlords of drug activity on their property and
informs them that, under state law, landlords who allow tenants who have been
violating drug laws to remain in their buildings without attempting to evict them
face possible civil action and criminal prosecution. The district attorney's office
also collaborates with Boys & Girls Clubs of Brockton to offer programs
targeting at-risk youth, including a Peer Mediation Program and the Gang
Prevention through Targeted Outreach Program. 

Washington, D.C., United States Attorney's Office 

In June 1996, U.S. Attorney Eric H. Holder, Jr., created a pilot community
prosecution program in the Fifth Police District, geographically assigning 19
assistant U.S. attorneys to patrol service areas (PSAs) in that district, to handle
matters relating to that community.[47] Trial attorneys in the community
prosecution unit prosecuted cases assigned to them vertically. Two attorneys
did community outreach only and did not try cases. 

In August 1999, the program was expanded to cover the entire city.
Adaptation of the community prosecution philosophy to cover this area
required several office adjustments. The Community Prosecution Major Crimes
Division (CPMC) was created. Six teams of prosecutors, headed by a district
chief, were assigned to handle major crimes and crimes of importance in the
seven police districts. The Grand Jury/Intake Division, which evaluates cases
brought in by police, was divided into teams of prosecutors assigned to police
districts and each headed by a senior prosecutor. These attorneys are
responsible for spending time at their district police station and in the
community, working with residents and police directly. This division now makes
initial screening decisions for community prosecution cases and ensures that
these cases and the information elicited during interrogations and briefings are
forwarded to the CPMC division. Designated attorneys in the misdemeanor
and narcotics divisions work within the police districts, in effect, as members of
the CPMC division. In addition, seven community outreach specialists and a
supervisor have been assigned to and physically located at each police district
as the liaison to the police and the community. They perform a problem-solving
role, taking complaints and making referrals to appropriate agencies. The civil
division of the U.S. Attorney's Office also plays a role in problem solving,
working with the forfeiture unit in the narcotics section and with law
enforcement generally to identify nuisance properties that could be subject to
abatement or forfeiture. Finally, a drug-related nuisance task force has been
created consisting of assistant U.S. attorneys from the civil and criminal
divisions and community outreach specialists to help address drug-related
nuisances in the city.

Denver, Colorado

Denver District Attorney William Ritter established the Community Prosecution
Program in 1996 to be more responsive to the concerns of Denver's residents
over low-level crime that was affecting the quality of their daily lives (Wolf,
2000: 1).[48] The program is staffed by a director, a community justice
coordinator, three community justice advocates, and eight deputy district
attorneys, two assigned to each targeted neighborhood. In addition to
community work, these attorneys also carry a full caseload from their own
prosecution units.[49] They collaborate with the juvenile diversion program, the
victim services unit, and the Weed and Seed program. (Geographical
prosecution is not practical in Denver because of the manner in which the court
system controls case scheduling.)

A community justice advocate is assigned to each target area to perform
community outreach and to act as facilitator for the Community Justice Councils
that represent community interests in Globeville and Capitol Hill. The attorneys
attend community meetings and work on specific neighborhood projects with
local organizations and community police. The goals of the division include
developing community capacity, involving the community in problem-solving
partnerships with justice agencies, developing crime prevention and intervention
strategies, coordinating law enforcement response to community crime
problems, and focusing prosecution resources where they are most needed
(Ritter and Motika, 1999).

The Community Prosecution Division has established Community Justice
Councils of neighborhood stakeholders. The councils meet once a month to
identify neighborhood crime and quality-of-life issues, and to develop and
coordinate strategies for dealing with them. They voice community concerns for
community prosecutors to address. Residents are surveyed and interviewed to
identify their principal concerns, which are prioritized by the councils. There are
currently 2 councils, consisting of 20 to 35 members chosen by community
prosecutors through indepth interviews.[50] The first council was formed in
1997 in Denver's Globeville neighborhood, an area that has a number of risk
factors, including high unemployment, a large minority population, and a high
percentage of children living in poverty. Through group exercises on community
problem identification, lack of parental supervision was identified as a high-
priority problem in Globeville. Several strategies were created to address the
problem, including the establishment of a special summer school for at-risk
youth. The Globeville council also identified speeding as a pressing problem.
Council members agreed to keep a log of information on speeding hotspots,
identifying times that were most problematic as well as the age range of the
drivers and the vehicle types involved. The information was to be analyzed and
used to support the deployment of enforcement strategies such as selective use
of radar. The information was also to be assessed to determine if the violators
were primarily residents, which would require a change in community norms in
addition to any proposed law enforcement response.

The Community Prosecution Division also has established Community
Accountability Boards (CABs), which are focused on restorative justice, or
repairing the harm caused by crime. The boards connect juvenile offenders who
have committed property crimes with their victims and members of the affected
community to develop appropriate strategies for holding youth accountable for
their actions and for repairing the harm they have done.[51] Juvenile diversion
and probation programs at the municipal and state levels may refer a juvenile to
a community group conference. The juvenile, his or her parents, and CAB
members attend the conference. The juvenile must admit to the charges, and the
board imposes age-appropriate and community-based penalties. An assets
worksheet is administered to the juvenile prior to the conference to elicit his
interests and talents so that they can be incorporated into the community-based
solution, if possible. CAB is staffed by a community justice coordinator
(program director) and a full-time neighborhood justice coordinator, who is a
resident of the community served. The CAB program increases community
involvement in the justice system by recruiting neighborhood residents to
conduct the conferences with juvenile offenders. 

Community safety forums are held in response to community requests for
information about certain issues. One such request was for community
education on nuisance abatement. The forums were held on Saturday mornings
in the four targeted neighborhoods, each drawing between 50 and 100
neighborhood residents. Forums on graffiti and municipal code violations and
enforcement have also been held.

Erie County (Buffalo), New York

Former County District Attorney Kevin Dillon started community prosecution in
Erie County in 1996, with funding from New York State, to join with a
community justice effort started by the Buffalo police.52 The Erie County
District Attorney's Office, which employs 92 attorneys, has jurisdiction over
misdemeanors and felonies (the state attorney general handles civil matters,
including forfeiture and nuisance cases). Erie County is primarily urban. The city
of Buffalo, chosen as the first community prosecution site, has a diverse
population that is more than 30 percent minority, as well as a large percentage
of low-income residents and the highest crime rate in the county.  

The objectives of Erie County's community prosecution program are to engage
the community in identifying neighborhood problems and creating and
implementing strategies to solve those problems, and to improve community
relations. Two experienced prosecutors are assigned to these tasks, each with
more than 14 years in the office. Their offices are in the city court building in
Buffalo and are accessible to neighborhood residents. Although most contacts
are by phone, citizens can drop in to speak with the attorneys at any time. The
community prosecutors attend an average of two community meetings per
week. Block club representatives attend hearings to monitor the progress and 
outcomes of cases of interest to the community, as well as to alert the judge to
community concerns.

The attorneys focus on misdemeanor quality-of-life offenses, the most pressing
of which include car break-ins, prostitution, and nuisance properties. Although
community outreach is their priority, they carry a reduced (but significant)
caseload of about 350 cases per year involving misdemeanors of community
importance, most referred to them by the community or the police, or involving
repeat offenders or crime types that have been troublesome to the area.
Prosecution is generally not vertical. Misdemeanor litigators handle most
preliminary hearings and community prosecutors receive cases at a later stage.
Felonies and overflow misdemeanor cases go to the trials division, where
community prosecutors act as liaisons between the neighborhood and the trial
attorneys.

The police, the corporation counsel, who represents the city on civil matters,
and the Office of Community Development are the main agencies that
collaborate with the community prosecutors on a regular basis. The community
prosecutors are legal advisors to the police and facilitate the relationship by
teaching courses at the police academy and occasionally sitting in on police
operations.

The community prosecutors work alongside police on a prostitution task force.
They administer the Johns School, a 1-day class for individuals charged with
soliciting a prostitute. The faculty includes the prosecutor, who educates
participants about the legal issues involved, former prostitutes, a public health
nurse, and community members who talk about the impact of the crime on their
community. First-time offenders who participate may ultimately have their
charges dismissed upon satisfactory completion of the program. The
Magdalene Program, for prostitutes who are first-time offenders, provides drug
treatment and screening for social and human service needs. The court
mandates participation in recommended programs and satisfactory completion
may result in dismissal of the charges.

Phoenix, Arizona

The Phoenix City Prosecutor's Office employs 65 attorneys, and has
jurisdiction over violations of city civil ordinances, state misdemeanors, and
nuisance and forfeiture cases. Phoenix, the city with the sixth largest population
in the United States, is an urban area of about 450 square miles. 

The community prosecution program was created in 1996 under the leadership
of City Prosecutor Kerry Wangberg.[53] Community input helped determine
the selection of the fourtarget sites. Prosecutors attended community meetings
to inform residents of their intentions and to find out about community
perceptions of crime and the type of help that was needed. The first site was
located in Westwood, in a donated office space shared with community police
officers. Westwood, the most densely populated area in Phoenix, was selected
because it had an active neighborhood association, a viable association of rental
property owners, and a strong link with the Department of Neighborhood
Services. It also had the first or second highest crime rate in Phoenix. The
prosecutor's office organized meetings, listened to problems, and made plans to
combine the resources of the community. One problem was that many of the
area's 171 apartment buildings were in disrepair. Community prosecutors
teamed with the police department and the Neighborhood Services Department
to turn them around, advising property owners to make necessary repairs or
face prosecution.

A second site, Palomino, had a Safe Neighborhoods grant from the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development. Neighborhood leaders sought
community prosecution to complement their community justice effort. The site
operates from a storefront office rented by the city, which also houses other
community service agencies. The third site was opened in Granada, housed in
what was once a residential treatment facility. The fourth was placed in
Garfield, in combination with an existing Weed and Seed program. It shares 
space with several neighborhood associations and the local community police. 

The role of the community consists of identifying problems and helping to create
solutions and carry them out. Residents testify at hearings for cases of
community interest and help plan search warrant execution in their
neighborhoods. They are instrumental in an antiprostitution project, where they
testify on the terms of release for patrons arrested in their communities.
Sentences often include exclusion from the neighborhood, and fliers with
photographs of the offenders and details of their arrest are posted so residents
can notify the police if they spot an offender.

The five community prosecutors try few cases, but they do handle cases of
importance to their neighborhoods. Most litigation is handled by the trials
division, which also handles forfeiture and code enforcement cases. Criminal
cases are prosecuted vertically. Phoenix community prosecutors collaborate
mainly with neighborhood services, local police, developmental services, the
city health department, the housing and planning department, and the fire
department.

Santa Clara County, California

The Community Prosecution Unit was created by Santa Clara County District
Attorney George Kennedy between 1996 and 1997.[54] It is staffed by seven
experienced prosecutors who are placed in each of the five districts in the
community to work with local citizens, businesses, and county and city
agencies. Specific issues addressed by community prosecutors include youth
crime prevention, graffiti, gang and drug problems, and school safety. The
attorneys divide their time between the central office and field offices located 
in community justice centers in their assigned neighborhoods, which also house
other criminal justice agents such as public defenders and probation officers.
They generally do not try cases; their main responsibility is community outreach
and problem solving. On cases of special interest to their communities, the
attorneys act as liaisons between the trial attorney and the community, providing
intelligence to the trial attorney and keeping the community informed about the
status of the case. Community prosecutors also review cases filed by local
police and try to detect crime patterns using crime mapping and other
strategies.

Prosecutor-initiated community programs include Operation Spotlight and the
Restorative Justice Program. Operation Spotlight was created in collaboration
with the probation office's Restorative Justice Project and joins community
prosecutors with a technical team of representatives from other city and county
agencies. They focus on a selected small area within the community prosecution
site, generally about four blocks, to identify neighborhood problems and
develop strategies to solve them. Meetings and events are scheduled by the
prosecutor in the spotlighted area and bring together the prosecutor, the
technical team, the probation office's community coordinator, and the
community. Neighborhood-selected block captains act as liaisons between the
community and law enforcement. The technical team wraps the community with
services as part of a plan to clean up the area, improve services, and rally the
neighborhood to take action to help themselves.

Restorative justice in Santa Clara County is a three-pronged effort consisting of
community protection, offender accountability to victims and the community,
and competency development. The program is run cooperatively by the
community prosecutors and the Juvenile Probation Department as a diversion
program that targets first-time offenders charged with low-level offenses.
Neighborhood Accountability Boards have been created, consisting of
residents who have been trained to handle the cases and assign appropriate
sanctions. The offenders must face their victim and members of the community
to deal with their offenses. The probation office also evaluates the offenders to
determine their needs and provide services, including educational and
vocational assistance and counseling to deal with family or drug and alcohol
issues.

Pima County (Tucson), Arizona

The Community Outreach Unit was created in 1997 by Pima County Attorney
Barbara LeWall.[55] It is staffed by one full-time attorney who maintains
offices both in the field and in the main county attorney's office. This attorney is
responsible for the outreach and problem solving that takes place in the
community. The staff also includes a part-time attorney who administers the
Communities Addressing Responsible Gun Ownership (CARGO) program,
which promotes gun safety and responsible ownership through presentations at
schools and community meetings. The community prosecutors do not try cases.
Felony cases originating from target areas are randomly assigned to the trials
division, which is organized by major crimes according to type. Misdemeanors
are handled by the city attorney's office, which has its own community
prosecution unit, with whom the county community prosecutor maintains a
working relationship.

The community prosecution initiative originally targeted Pueblo Gardens, an
urban residential community with serious crime problems but with some
community organization and a relationship with community police. It has since
expanded to cover adjacent suburban, residential, and commercial areas that
include the city of South Tucson, which is surrounded by and separate from the
city of Tucson. The community prosecutor's involvement in officer training at the
police academy and "ride-alongs" with patrol officers helps to solidify her
relationship with the police officers in her area. Her immersion in the community
through attendance at community meetings and involvement with neighborhood
organizations and associations enables her to operate effectively despite the size
of the area and the demands on her time. She considers the community to be
the most important element of her efforts, acting as her eyes and ears in the
neighborhood and offering input on shaping program priorities and problem-
solving strategies. In response to community issues, the community prosecutor
implemented Operation Spotlight in South Tucson. It is a collaborative effort
with the probation department, the community, and local police to monitor and
share information about offenders released on probation in the area. The
program supports reentering offenders through community-based probation and 
services intended both to help them succeed and to protect the community from
those who do not. The group meets weekly to discuss community issues and
develop solutions. They also have team training sessions on problem-solving
techniques.

In addition, the community prosecutor addresses nuisance property issues by
using civil law to force property owners to take responsibility for what takes
place on the premises they lease. Four specific civil remedies are available to
help the community solve problems and play a more active role in the criminal
justice process. These remedies are not limited to the community prosecution
areas, but rather are used throughout Pima County. 

Crime-Free Multihousing/Storage/Condominium Program

The community prosecutor has trained the police in conducting a program that
provides landlords with assistance in maintaining crime-free properties.
Landlords receive step-by-step written instructions on how to evict tenants who
break the law. They also are given a crime-free lease addendum, a written
agreement by tenants not to engage in, or allow on the leased premises, any
criminal activities, such as prostitution, drug sales, and gang-related activities.
Violation of the agreement is a lease violation and grounds for eviction. A
record is made of the eviction and is accessible to any future landlord who
screens prospective tenants. 

Crime Property Abatement Law

This law defines residential property used for criminal activity as a nuisance. A
nuisance action can be filed in civil court by the attorney general, the county
attorney, the city attorney, or a resident affected by the nuisance. The owner,
manager, or any other party responsible for the property can be sued. Once
notice is given to this party that a nuisance exists, failure to take reasonable
steps to stop the activity gives rise to the cause of action. Remedies include civil
penalties of up to $10,000, closure of the property, damages, court costs, and
attorney's fees. The community prosecutor provides the community with written
instructions on the steps that must be taken to set up a successful nuisance
action.

Forfeitures

Arizona law provides for the forfeiture of property used to commit or facilitate
the commission of various offenses. Owners are subject to forfeiture of their
property if they know that criminal conduct is occurring or is likely to occur,
and fail to take action to stop it. If the landlord is involved, even if he or she is
acquitted of the underlying charge, the court may still uphold the forfeiture of
property.

Victims' Rights

Community prosecution is further aided by Arizona law, which allows
neighborhood associations that are registered with the city to invoke the same
rights afforded to an individual victim with regard to tracking a criminal case and
having a voice about it in court. These include the right to be notified of certain
court proceedings relative to the alleged crime, the right to be present at court
proceedings, the right to make a statement at juvenile disposition or adult
sentencing hearings, and the right to privacy. The latter shields witnesses who
testify at the hearing from answering questions about their home address and
telephone number.

Jackson County (Kansas City), Missouri

Jackson County Prosecutor Claire McCaskill created the community
prosecution program, the Neighborhood Justice Team, in Kansas City in 1997
to address quality-of-life crimes.[56] The program is funded by the
Community-Backed Anti-Drug Tax (COMBAT), a county sales tax enacted
by voters in 1990 to provide funding for antidrug programs and drug law
enforcement initiatives. Six prosecutors are assigned to cover the city, which is
divided into six geographic areasfour in urban Kansas City and two in suburban
and rural areas. The attorneys spend most of their time in field offices located in
the police bureaus in their assigned areas, but they also have offices in the main
district attorney's office. They work with the community, which provides them
with input about community issues and problems, participates in the criminal
justice system by testifying at trials and sentencing hearings, and is involved in
the creation and implementation of problem-solving initiatives. The attorneys
carry a reduced caseload that focuses on the community they serve. The
remaining cases are assigned by crime type to appropriate units of the trials
division, which is organized according to major crimes. Only sex and domestic
violence crimes are prosecuted vertically.

The neighborhood prosecutors focus a considerable amount of their time on
problem solving, engaging all levels of government agencies, business coalitions,
religious groups, and virtually any individual or group with resources and a
stake in the community, to respond to community issues. All programs and
resources generated by COMBAT are available, including programs such as
the Drug Abatement Response Team (DART) and the drug court, a diversion
and treatment program that was created in 1993 for drug-involved offenders
without a history of violence or possession of drugs in large amounts for
distribution. Civil remedies, through state nuisance and eviction laws, provide
opportunities in addition to criminal convictions to rid the community of drug
dealers and other problem situations.

In 1997, the prosecutor's office led a COMBAT-funded antidrug initiative
representing property owners; community and neighborhood organizations;
local, state, and federal officials; city, state, and federal prosecutors; HUD; and
the FBI. The initiative cleaned up a 15-block area called the "Passeo Corridor,"
one of the worst crime areas in the city using lease/agreement regulations,
demolishing abandoned buildings, and using landlord/tenant laws to expedite
evictions for drug-related crimes in both private and public housing. Officials
reported a 50-percent reduction in crime within the first year, and statements
from residents that they felt safer.

Honolulu, Hawaii

The community prosecution program in Honolulu was implemented in 1997
under Prosecuting Attorney Peter Carlisle to reduce crime and fear by creating
partnerships with the community, law enforcement, and governmental agencies
to address quality-of-life problems.[57] The program is operated by the
Department of the Prosecuting Attorney using three full-time attorneys who
work out of the main office in downtown Honolulu. Each attorney is assigned to
one of three community prosecution sites, located in urban and suburban areas,
and is responsible for community outreach. In addition, each has a legal
specialty (domestic violence, juvenile prosecutions, and drug-related or general
cases) and is responsible for prosecuting cases that involve that specialty
emerging from any of the three sites. Community prosecution attorneys carry
caseloads of 50 to 200 cases. However, they are unable to cover all of the
cases that are generated by the community prosecution sites and generally take
the more serious or complicated felony cases, and/or the cases of greatest
significance to the community. The intake division screens incoming cases.
Cases originating from community prosecution sites are flagged and passed
along to the community prosecution supervisor, who then makes the case
assignments. Overflow cases are assigned to the office's trial teams, which are
organized according to major crimes rather than geographically. Cases in each
specialty are randomly assigned to the appropriate team. Vertical prosecution is
used for all criminal cases, with the exception of petty misdemeanor, nonjury
trial cases. Community prosecutors collaborate with community policing teams,
federal prosecutors, and citizen groups.

Division projects include narcotics and prostitution abatement programs, in
which prosecutors mobilize community residents and train them in abatement
techniques. In Waikiki, the tourism industry was suffering because of the
prostitution problem. The Prostitution Abatement Task Force filed a nuisance
abatement action to impose geographical restrictions against known prostitutes
in the Waikiki district. Upon conviction, they are banned from the area as a
condition of probation. The prosecutors also introduced legislation to prohibit
prostitutes from the district, which passed in 1998. In addition, a 12-week
prostitution intervention program is available for women getting out of the
profession. Free workshops are held on topics related to health, building self-
esteem and access to community resources.

The prosecutors are involved in the Weed and Seed program in Oahu. A
special Weed and Seed court fast-tracks cases and the Honolulu Drug Court
also handles appropriate cases. Preliminary results of Weed and Seed indicate
that the majority of misdemeanor cases were disposed of early with no contest
pleas.

Honolulu has received a BJA community prosecution grant for a new project,
which is a partnership between the prosecutor's office and the school district to
prevent and reduce youth violence. A community relations specialist will be
hired by the prosecutor's office to assess violence on school campuses and
develop strategies to address this problem. This individual will be a liaison
among educators, families, community organizations, and the prosecutor's office
on youth violence issues. One need that has been identified is for schools to
know about adjudicated youth who are being returned to classes. Information
must be shared among the agencies that deal with these young people. The
community relations specialist will also provide training for school faculty and
staff in areas such as identifying children at risk, handling the delinquent child in
the classroom, and making referrals to the juvenile justice system. Teachers will
be educated about the resources available to address these children's issues. 

San Diego, California

The San Diego City Attorney has jurisdiction over all misdemeanors committed
within the city, provides legal advice to city agencies, represents them in civil
matters, and handles civil litigation such as nuisance abatement and forfeitures.
The city attorney's office employs 65 attorneys and prosecutes approximately
40,000 misdemeanor cases each year.

San Diego City Attorney Casey Gwinn created the Neighborhood Prosecution
Unit in 1997.[58] Two attorneys worked citywide on projects identified by the
community police and vertically prosecuted cases generated through the
Problem Oriented Policing Program consisting of quality-of-life crimes such as
loitering for prostitution and racing cars on city streets. In July 2000, the
program was restructured. There are currently four attorneys involved in the
community prosecution effort including the head deputy city attorney, who
supervises the program, and a second attorney who is engaged full time as the
coordinator for the community court initiative. Two neighborhood prosecutors
have been placed in field offices in police substations where they walk the beat
with community police, attend community meetings, and vertically prosecute a
reduced caseload of cases selected for their importance to the community. The
city is divided into eight police districts, including the pilot sites of Mid City and
Central. Mid City, an area undergoing revitalization, was selected because of its
high crime rate. The Central site, which includes both downtown and residential
areas, has a diverse population. Its residents speak more than a dozen
languages. Target problems include prostitution, graffiti, vandalism, and drug-
related crime. Problem-solving initiatives include the Prostitution Task Force,
Community Safety Initiative, and community service centers. 

Prostitution Task Force

This initiative combines the efforts of the city attorney, the police, and the
community to respond to prostitution in two ways. First, a community impact
panel of residents, businessowners, and representatives from community-based
organizations meets with individuals who have offended in their communities to
inform them of the impact that prostitution has on their neighborhoods. On the
panel are former prostitutes and patrons who share their experiences with the
offenders. Second, various social service agencies and programs are brought
together to work on getting prostitutes off the streets and providing them with
needed services, such as drug and alcohol treatment, vocational training,
counseling, and help in finding affordable housing. The task force meets on a
monthly basis and is chaired by the neighborhood prosecutor.  

Community Safety Initiative

This is also a collaborative program, teaming the police, city attorneys, schools,
and community groups to increase the understanding of middle school-aged
youth about the criminal justice system. The 8-week program includes
instruction from criminal justice officials, tours of the criminal courthouse and
local police station, and a mock trial in which the students participate as
attorneys, witnesses, victims, and jury members. The neighborhood prosecutor
acts as the judge. The program began in Mid City and has been expanded into
schools in the Central district. 

Community Service Centers

Fourteen community service centers have been set up in locations around the
city to decentralize city agency service providers, with neighborhood
prosecutors acting as liaisons between agency representatives and the
community. Monday through Thursday, residents can meet with representatives
from these agencies in their neighborhoods rather than having to travel into the
city. Each center has space available to residents for community meetings. To
further facilitate problem solving, neighborhood prosecutors have developed a
resource guide that details where residents can go with problems that are
outside the prosecutors' range of expertise.

Kalamazoo County, Michigan

The Kalamazoo County Prosecuting Attorney's Office created the
Neighborhood Prosecuting Attorney Program in 1998 under Prosecuting
Attorney James Gregart.[59] The program focuses on quality-of-life issues and
crime prevention, specifically targeting domestic violence, substance abuse, and
juvenile violence. The neighborhood prosecuting attorney acts as a community
liaison. Two community prosecutors in this office are presently assigned to field
offices in two neighborhoods. The attorneys vertically prosecute a small number
of select cases that are of particular importance to their communities. The
remainder of their time is spent networking with the community to solve
problems.

The first site was located in Edison, one of the oldest cities in Kalamazoo
County, where 60 percent of the residents rent their homes and the crime rate is
one of the highest in the county. The community already had some business and
neighborhood associations. In addition, community police officers assigned to
the neighborhood already had a positive relationship with residents. Program
goals, which were set by residents, identified housing and youth problems as
high priorities. Some of the rental units in the neighborhood were deteriorating
because of landlords' neglect. The community prosecution attorney identified
the owners of these buildings and brought in the housing authority to handle the
problem. Residents were trained to testify at hearings and informed of the type
of information that was needed. Criminal prosecutions were initiated. As a
result, the court ordered landlords to sell the properties that they could not
afford or did not want to repair.

Youth issues involved truancy and curfew violations. Youth were hanging out in
the neighborhood after-hours drinking, using drugs, and making noise. In 1999,
the problem was addressed by creating a curfew/truancy program operated
through the Boys & Girls Club, known as the Center for Leadership Options
for Community Kids (CLOCK). Police now cite young violators of state
curfew laws and repeat truants, take them to the club, and contact their parents
and/or teachers. The center operates a voluntary diversion program. Youth
who refuse the program are referred to juvenile court. Program participants are
assessed for personal, school, family, and employment issues and referred to
appropriate agencies for help. They are taught leadership skills and connected
with other positive activities. If the youth stay out of trouble for a period of time,
the charges against them are dropped and their cases are not referred to
juvenile court. If a juvenile gets into more trouble, the charges are referred and
the youth ends up in the justice system. This fairly sizeable and ongoing program
seems to be having the desired impact (Reifert, 2000, and Karen Hayter,
personal communication).

A recent evaluation of the program indicates that the Edison site has
experienced a 17-percent reduction in Part I crimes since the community
prosecution program was initiated, in contrast to the 4-percent reduction
experienced in the rest of Kalamazoo County (Reifert, 2000). 

The success of community prosecution efforts in Edison led to the opening of a
second site in the North Side community in October 1999. Residents were
complaining about an open-air drug market, and the office brought in an
undercover drug team that uses special tactics, such as reverse stings. Users
caught in the investigation receive a special sentencing option providing
substance abuse treatment and dismissal of charges if they successfully
complete the program.

Cook County (Chicago), Illinois

Although the Cook County State's Attorney's Office had a community
prosecution program as early as 1973, officials consider the current program,
created in 1998 by Cook County Attorney Richard A. Devina, to be an
unrelated effort.[60] The catalyst for the current initiative was the Chicago
Alternative Policing Strategies (CAPS) program, established by the Chicago
Police Department in 1992. CAPS placed officers in communities to encourage
residential involvement in crime prevention strategies and participation in the
prosecution of cases in court (Skogan and Hartnett, 1997). CAPS encouraged
the formation of citizens groups and successfully created networks of
cooperation in many neighborhoods. As the police sought to address
community problems, the need for the legal expertise of the prosecutor's office
to devise and implement solutions became clear. In addition, residents
suggested that minor quality-of-life problems that most affected neighborhoods
were being overlooked or not handled effectively by the prosecutor's office. As
residents' needs became clear through CAPS, the state's attorney's office began
to respond to them more effectively. It was in the neighborhoods where CAPS
had created networks with residents and community organizations that the
county state's attorney's office began its community prosecution efforts. 

Today, 11 prosecutors are dedicated to the community prosecution effort,
including 2 supervisors and a prevention coordinator. Two attorneys are
assigned to each of four community prosecution sites in Cook County. The pilot
site began on the ethnically diverse North Side of the city in the 20th Police
District. The community prosecution office was staffed by two prosecutors, an
experienced attorney to handle felonies, and another attorney with 2 to 3 years
of experience to handle misdemeanors. 

Community prosecutors use a vertical prosecution strategy in cases of
importance to the community and focus on crimes committed by repeat
offenders. They track the cases prosecuted by other attorneys, providing
assistance and background intelligence for the trial attorneys to facilitate
communication with the community, victims, and witnesses. These overflow
cases are randomly assigned to the general trials teams and the major crimes
divisions by crime type. The community prosecutors spend mornings in court 
handling their sizeable caseloads and afternoons in their offices doing
paperwork and responding to community concerns. The office is accessible to
neighborhood residents, who are free to walk in and speak with the attorneys.
Prosecutors meet with community groups and attend meetings approximately
two evenings per week to discuss issues and problem-solving strategies. 

A steering committee was created in each of the four community prosecution
sites to facilitate problem-solving efforts. Members of the steering committees
include local aldermen, representatives of city services, the parks authority, the
school board, social service agencies, the police, the City Attorney's Office,
and large community-based organizations. The participation of this full array of
organizations strengthens efforts to respond to neighborhood problems that are
beyond the direct control of the prosecutor. 

Liquor Store Owners Rights and Responsibilities Program

There were numerous liquor stores in the poor neighborhoods targeted; their
owners sold single serving portions to patrons and encouraged them to loiter
outside their stores to drink. This practice was banned. Owners were informed
of the rules of operation in the community, their rights, and the help they could
expect from police and prosecutors in implementing these policies. 

Summer Opportunity Program for Kids

This program was started in response to complaints from the community that
youth were hanging out on the streets during the summer. The youth told
community prosecutors that they wanted summer jobs, so businessowners were
persuaded to offer jobs and internships. Opportunities were provided for the
youth to talk to criminal justice officials, especially police, to discuss issues and
problems that were resulting in confrontations between groups. 

Hate Crimes Strategy

The community prosecution program handles hate crimes, prosecuting these
cases vertically and educating police on their proper handling. Prosecutors give
talks to school children about such crimes and what is being done about them.
This emphasis on hate crimes was triggered by an incident that occurred during
the Fourth of July weekend in 1999, when an individual went on a shooting
spree, targeting minority victims. Four people were killed, and others were
wounded before the assailant killed himself.

Nassau County, New York

Although Nassau County, on suburban Long Island, has one of the lowest
crime rates in the nation, crime problems have developed in lower income
urban and suburban areas of the county where the population includes a high
percentage of adolescents. In 1998, Nassau County District Attorney Denis
Dillon implemented a proactive strategy to reduce crime and improve life in the
county and established the first community prosecution site in the village of
Hempstead.[61] He hired a community prosecutor who began to create
relationships with residents, citizens' associations, and local stakeholders by
attending community meetings and publishing a community newsletter. Dillon
hosted meetings with leaders from the minority community and civic and
religious organizations to find out about areas of concern. He formed a
community advisory group of residents and other stakeholders to facilitate
communication and provide feedback on existing programs and propose new
strategies to respond to community issues.

One problem was a lack of afterschool programs that left many youth
unsupervised and resulted in elevated levels of juvenile crime. To address this
concern, Dillon created a partnership between his office and the Boys & Girls
Club, Big Brothers and Sisters, local police, and the public schools to develop
afterschool and mentoring programs aimed at intervention and prevention. The
Rising Star Program is the product of this partnership. The office coordinated
the program using forfeiture monies, which were supplemented in 1999 with a
grant from BJA. Beginning in 1998, a summer program for at-risk youth from
Hempstead was offered in one of the public schools. A soccer program was
started for children in grades one through eight. A free summer camp provided
soccer training for 8 weeks, and more than 150 youth participated. A sports
mentoring program was established which offered guidance and training in
boxing and lacrosse, and a golden gloves boxing team was established in
Hempstead Village.

Nuisance properties were another community priority, specifically rental
properties used for drug dealing. Trespass/eviction procedures were put in
place to evict tenants who used their homes to distribute drugs. Procedures
were set up with landlords and police to compile resident lists for apartment
buildings, so that individuals who were neither guests nor residents of the
building (drug buyers) could be arrested and charged with trespassing. 

Due to the success of the pilot project, four additional sites have been created
in Roosevelt, Westbury, New Cassle, and Freeport. Four attorneys have been
hired to cover them. The community prosecutors do not try cases. Their main
responsibilities are community outreach and community-based programs, as
well as prosecution of misdemeanor cases from their assigned locations that
qualify to be heard in the Hempstead Community Court. They track cases that
originate from their community and help trial attorneys assigned to those cases
with preparation and community-generated intelligence about neighborhood
issues.

The Nassau County District Attorney was primarily responsible for creating the
community court, which opened in Hempstead on June 16, 1999. Court
operations have expanded from 1 to 3 days per week, adjudicating
misdemeanor-level quality-of-life crimes that originate from the five community
prosecution sites. It is a disposition court modeled after a drug court, meaning
that the offender must agree to plead guilty to participate. The plea must be to
the top count charged in the indictment, and the defendant is placed on
probation for up to 1 year. Successful completion of the probationary terms
and conditions may result in the withdrawal of the plea, with a conviction
entered to a lower-level charge, or an outright dismissal of charges. Sanctions
generally include community service. The court also offers many types of social
services, including treatment programs for offenders with drug, alcohol, or
mental health problems.

Knox County, Tennessee

Tennessee Sixth District Attorney General Randy Nichols implemented a
community prosecution program in Knox County in 1998.[62] His office
employs 40 attorneys and has jurisdiction over misdemeanor and felony crimes
occurring in Knox County. The county encompasses a mix of urban/inner-city,
suburban, and rural areas and is characterized by a high degree of diversity.
The population of approximately 360,000 is about 79-percent white, 20-
percent black, and 2-percent Hispanic. Income levels are also diverse, ranging
from high levels in the suburbs to an estimated 80 percent of inner-city families
who are under the poverty level.

The office received a BJA enhancement grant in 2000 to hire an attorney and
make improvements to a program that focuses on truancy. Truancy was
selected as the target problem because research indicates that it is a precursor
to crime, and also because it was repeatedly raised as an issue at meetings of
various community organizations. The truancy program has been instituted
countywide in more than 100 schools. The target population consists mainly of
elementary and middle school children, with whom, it is believed, there is a
better chance of effecting behavioral change than with high school children. 

The school district defines truancy as 5 or more days of unexcused absence.
When a student has been truant for 15 days or more, the district attorney
becomes involved. The child and parents are notified that they must attend a
Parental Responsibility Truancy meeting at the school, which is also attended by
an assistant district attorney, the school superintendent, and representatives
from social service agencies and the juvenile probation office. The child and
parents are instructed on the implications of adult life without a high school
diploma, as well as the possibility of criminal charges being brought against the
parents (or the child, if he or she is over age 16) should the truancy continue.
The grant was also used to add a second component to the program, a truancy
review board consisting of representatives from the school, school
psychologists, security staff, police, and social service providers. Should the
truancy continue after the parental responsibility hearing, the family will be
referred to a review board and assessed to determine whether services are
needed to address problems that may underlie the truancy issue. There is
followup to ensure that the parents follow through on any referrals that are
made. If the child persists in being truant, a warrant will be filed requiring the
parent and/or child to appear in court on a misdemeanor charge (punishable by
up to 1 year in jail in the State of Tennessee). The parent may receive a
sentence of up to 250 hours of community service and be placed on supervised
probation for 1 year. Should a parent violate probation by allowing continued
truancy, the parent may be detained in jail for 10 days.

Efforts to engage the community include a community advisory board that is
currently being developed, which will include community residents who will
provide guidance and advice on the truancy issue. The prosecutor's office will
conduct a media campaign to promote parental awareness of the truancy issue
and implement a truancy hotline, which citizens can call to report truants. An
assistant district attorney has been hired to manage the program, with the
assistance of a paralegal. The attorney will handle all court cases generated by
the truancy initiative, facilitate the truancy review board, attend parental
responsibility meetings, and generate program statistics. This attorney maintains
an office in the juvenile courthouse and devotes all of her time to the truancy
program.

The prosecutor also uses a truancy center, staffed by the police and social
service agencies. Any children of school age found on the streets during school
days are taken to the center. The parents are contacted, an assessment is made
as to whether the child or his family is in need of services, and appropriate
referrals are made. 

Travis County (Austin), Texas

In 1999, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle created the
Neighborhood DA Program, one of several community justice initiatives that
include the Austin Community Court, community justice councils, neighborhood
conference committees, and sentencing circles.[63] One attorney has been
assigned to a pilot location in an urban area in Northeast Austin, which was
experiencing problems with gangs, violent crime, and general disorder. The site
is also a designated Weed and Seed location, so some community organizations
were already in place.

The community prosecutor is assigned to a field office located in the police
substation that is responsible for the Northeast site, which has helped to build a
strong working relationship between the agencies. Community outreach consists
mainly of attending community meetings several times per week to learn about
local issues and seek citizen input on possible solutions to the problems. The
attorney spends the majority of time in the community and is accessible to the
residents. This attorney screens the cases that are generated in the Northeast
community and carries a small load of felony-level quality-of-life cases (the
district attorney does not have jurisdiction over misdemeanors). The trials 
division, through random case assignment, handles the majority of cases. 
Important cases that the community prosecutor cannot handle are flagged to
alert the trial attorney to special issues or to provide neighborhood-generated
intelligence. The community prosecutor is also available to sit as second chair
on these cases or to help with trial preparation. The clerk of courts schedules
cases on a random basis, which makes vertical or geographical prosecution
impractical.

Earle's office drafted the state law that created community justice councils. The
councils' mission is to empower neighborhoods and citizens to create and
maintain a safe community, and to increase public safety and reduce crime
through working groups and committees of criminal justice officials, private
citizens, and social service providers.

West Palm Beach, Florida

Palm Beach County's Community-Based Anti-Crime Task Force (COMBAT)
was implemented under State Attorney Barry Krischer.[64] It grew out of
existing community-based initiatives in the Palm Beach County State Attorney's
Office, most notably Weed and Seed, to which two prosecutors had been
assigned. In July 1999, the program consolidated Weed and Seed and the Vice
Department's narcotics nuisance abatement unit into a community prosecution
program. Five attorneys are currently assigned to the program, along with one
paralegal and a secretary. The attorneys are geographically assigned to specific
areas within West Palm Beach, where they maintain field offices in addition to
their offices in the main building. Attorneys are responsible for community
outreach in their assigned districts and carry a reduced load of cases that are
important to the community, ranging from major felonies to less serious crimes.
Prosecutors work with the police on investigations, screen cases that originate
in their district, and vertically prosecute the cases that are of priority to their
community. Residents are encouraged to appear at sentencing hearings to give
their input on the damage caused by defendants in these cases. 

The neighborhoods that the program covers are mostly in the inner city, with a
poor minority population. Many community outreach avenues were already set
up through the Weed and Seed programs. As a result of the organizing that
now takes place, residents in many areas have formed crime watch groups that
patrol the streets at night to prevent drug dealers from doing their business.
Attorneys are required to meet with residents in their neighborhoods, attend
community meetings, and give talks when requested to do so. The attorneys
also go out to schools and teach classes about the criminal justice system,
something that had been required of all attorneys even before community 
prosecution. The community prosecution unit uses problem-solving strategies
that include nuisance abatement and narcotics eviction. In one instance, the unit
successfully closed a nuisance bar, which the city then bought and turned into a
community center.

Community partners include the community police and a community court that
also opened in summer 1999. The relationship between them is a positive one
and the attorneys train the police on legal and procedural issues. The
community has been receptive to the community court, which is responsive to
issues of importance to them, processes cases in an expedited fashion, provides
social services to defendants and residents alike, and requires defendants who
commit quality-of-life offenses to pay something back to the community. The
COMBAT unit coordinates all multiagency projects that require assistance from
state and federal agencies. This has resulted in cooperative relationships among
agencies, each with a single point of contact, which have gained enough
credibility with one another to get an immediate response when one is needed. 

Hennepin County (Minneapolis), Minnesota

Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar created a community prosecution
program in 1999 to ensure that the criminal justice system would be responsive
and accountable to county residents by building stronger connections between
the courtroom and the community.[65] The county has three community
prosecution sites in racially and ethnically diverse residential areas, focused on
addressing felony-level livability crimes including arson, burglary, and auto theft.
These sites include the Third Police Precinct, where a full-time prosecutor
works with local police and the community; the Fourth Precinct, where three
prosecutors, including two juvenile prosecutors, handle problems that the
community identifies as most serious; and Bloomington, where a full-time
attorney handles all juvenile cases that arise there. The attorneys are located in
field offices and carry a full caseload, which they prosecute vertically. Violent
crimes are handled by the violent crimes section of the office and drug crimes
are addressed at the drug court. In addition, attorneys act as liaisons with every
law enforcement agency and school in the county.

In the Third Precinct, a community council of local stakeholders and
neighborhood representatives provides insight into community concerns,
encourages neighborhood participation in cases of community importance, and
decides where community work squad projects should be done. The Fourth
Precinct uses restorative justice principles through sentencing circles for minor
juvenile crime, allowing the community to have a say in sanctions meted out to
juvenile offenders and facilitating face-to-face meetings between victims and
offenders. The office takes nuisance properties and felony-level damage done 
by graffiti seriously. The county also has a community court, which devotes
separate days each week to hearing adult community prosecution cases from
the Third and Fourth Precinct sites.

Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio

Cuyahoga County encompasses the city of Cleveland, where approximately
one-third of the county's 1.4 million residents are found, along with 60 percent
of the crime. The County Prosecutor's Office employs 200 attorneys, has
jurisdiction over felony cases, and represents city agencies in civil matters. The
office shares responsibility for misdemeanor cases with the Municipal
Prosecutor.

County Prosecutor William Mason created the Community-Based Prosecution
(CBP) program in 1999.[66] The city of East Cleveland was selected as the
target site because of its high crime rate and low economic status, and because
its mayor said that the city needed the program. A survey of residents and
feedback from community meetings indicated that the community would be
receptive to the prosecutor's help. Three attorneys were assigned, each to a
specific category of crime--adult, juvenile, and gang related. In July 2000, two
additional sites were opened in Cleveland, where two attorneys each were
assigned to the First and Sixth Districts, because of a rising crime rate resulting
from the displacement of crime caused by CBP in adjacent East Cleveland. 

The CPB program is described as "law and order based" in the sense that its
partnership with the police is of primary importance. Attorneys maintain field
offices near police stations and have benefited from existing relationships with
the community created by community policing. The attorneys are veteran
prosecutors who maintain caseloads only slightly smaller than those of
traditional trial attorneys, consisting of cases from their assigned areas that are
of community concern. These cases are prosecuted vertically. Community
cases that CBP attorneys are not able to handle are randomly assigned to
felony trial attorneys, who are required to consult with the CBP supervisor for
advice and approval of plea agreements. CBP attorneys are required to get out
into their neighborhoods and attend community activities and meetings.
Recognizing the difficulties of effectively and efficiently handling both of these
duties, the prosecutor has hired community activists and neighborhood residents
as outreach coordinators. They act as the eyes and ears of the attorneys in the
community, supplementing their efforts by coordinating community-based
activities and attending community meetings. Residents are engaged in CBP
efforts through membership on the citizen advisory board and input from the
board at community meetings. The board meets monthly to discuss quality-of-
life issues and develop strategies to address them.

CBP collaborates with state and local agencies to meet residents' needs. The
relationship between the prosecutor's office and the police, which had been
strained, has been greatly improved by the interaction between the agencies that
has resulted from CBP. Social service agencies have been drawn into the effort.
Their representatives are stationed in neighborhood centers run by a nonprofit
organization that provides services, such as mental health and family counseling,
to community members who had difficulty accessing them. A partnership with
school officials has created a truancy center and the Truancy Reduction
Alliance to Contact Kids (TRACK) program. This effort combines personnel
from the East Cleveland police department and the school district, social
service providers from the Neighborhood Center, and parents to reduce
truancy in the city. The center provides a convenient location for police officers
to drop off truants that they find on the streets during school hours, where they
are assessed to determine whether they need social services. School officials
and parents are notified of the child's whereabouts, and parents are responsible
for picking their children up and returning them to school. If a parent is unable
to transport the student, center staff will deliver the child to the custody of a
school official. TRACK also includes a diversion component for first-time
offenders. 

Brevard/Seminole County, Florida

Brevard/Seminole County State's Attorney Norman Wolfinger, whose office
has jurisdiction in misdemeanor, felony, civil public nuisance, and forfeiture
cases, created the Neighborhood State Attorney Initiative (NSAI) in 1999.[67]
Titusville was chosen as the pilot site for NSAI. The NSAI attorney is stationed
in a field office along with representatives from most of the community and
social service agencies. Services available there include a juvenile crime
prevention/intervention program, an AIDS support program, independent living
and mental health programs, and a food bank. Titusville is low income, urban,
mostly residential, and has one of the county's highest crime rates. It is divided
into three zones, one of which is the primary community prosecution focus.
Titusville was chosen because it has its own court, with one judge who handles
all felonies and one who handles all misdemeanors committed in the city. A
chief committed to community justice leads the city's police department. A
strong community structure was already in place, with active organizations that
cared about the city. The community prosecution initiative targets quality-of-life
issues such as blight, deteriorating housing, and code violations, which, together
with the high crime rate, have contributed to the closing of many area
businesses. One of the goals of community justice is to stimulate the economy
and attract businesses back to the city.

Two other community prosecution sites are Altimonte Springs in Orlando, 15 to
20 miles outside of Disney World, and Palm Bay. Altimonte Springs has a high
concentration of residential subdivisions and businesses in an urban setting. The
target problems are mainly code violations and drug dealing. Palm Bay was a
rural area that has recently begun a transformation to residential usage. New,
low-cost, single-family housing developments have attracted residents from the
North, but there is no infrastructure or sense of community. Although Palm Bay
has 80,000 residents, only after years of bussing are schools being built to
accommodate children within the neighborhood, which prosecutors believe is a
factor in the area's primary issues of juvenile crime and gangs. 

One attorney and one paralegal are stationed at each site. The role of the
attorneys differs from site to site. They attend community meetings and engage
community residents. They also take on as large a caseload of community
impact cases as they can manage without compromising community outreach.
Overflow cases are assigned to the trials division alphabetically and, except for
Titusville, are randomly assigned to four judges at the centralized courthouse.
Only specialized trial teams (sex crimes and career criminals) and the
misdemeanor division prosecute cases vertically.

The role of the community is primarily advisory. Surveys were conducted at
community activities to identify problems and receive input on possible
solutions. Focus groups of residents, community leaders, and other area
stakeholders such as private and nonprofit agencies and businesses were also
used to identify problems and brainstorm solutions. Businessowners have been
supportive, volunteering time and funds. Other community partners include area
police, the North Brevard Coalition of volunteers from social and human
service agencies, and faith-based organizations.

Montgomery County, Maryland

In 1991, Montgomery County State's Attorney Andrew Sonner created a
community prosecution program to complement a new community policing
program he had begun. The office was reorganized and the attorneys were
divided into five teams, each assigned to one of the five police districts.
Although this pilot effort ended about 1995, it served to pioneer the concept in
Montgomery County. A new program was created in July 1999 by newly
elected County State's Attorney Douglas Gansler, which again entailed
restructuring the prosecutor's office on the basis of police districts.[68] All 59
attorneys in the office have been assigned geographically to cover the county's
5 police districts to address neighborhood crime more effectively. 

Each trial team is staffed in proportion to the number of cases that arise from its
district, and includes attorneys who specialize in juvenile crime, family violence,
and economic crime. The attorneys are stationed in the central prosecutor's
office. The objective was to have dedicated teams of prosecutors who were
familiar with community problems and who had developed positive relationships
with local police, residents, and other community stakeholders. Each team has a
team captain who bears primary responsibility for community contact. Cases
originating in the district are prosecuted by the team working in that district. All
felony cases are prosecuted vertically. The community prosecutors work with
police and community organizations to solve crime-related problems. They also
work with every public and private school in the area. Community partners
include police, sheriffs, schools, civic groups, faith-based organizations,
chambers of commerce, apartment and property managers, and county
attorneys.

The most recent BJA grant has been used to place three senior attorneys into
the three busiest police districts to do more community problem solving and to
use office resources more efficiently. They screen citizen complaints, which in
Maryland account for approximately 50 percent of the criminal cases filed. An
early screening process routes cases appropriately, diverting some to mediation
or other alternative processing and removing those that do not belong in the
system before time is wasted on them. The attorneys carry reduced caseloads
of no more than five or six cases that are important to the neighborhood,
enabling them to spend most of their time in the community. They meet weekly
with members of their teams to keep them apprised of community issues and to
be informed on the progress of cases.

Programs operated through community prosecution include nuisance abatement
and use a Maryland statute to shut down nuisance properties, especially drug
houses. An elder abuse task force targets offenders who take financial or
physical advantage of the county's elderly residents.

Sacramento County, California

Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully created the community
prosecution program in 2000.[69] Seven attorneys are assigned to field offices
in six areas of the county. Most of the field offices are in community police
posts, and many share a storefront office with code enforcement and probation
officers.

Sacramento is an urban county with a racially and ethnically diverse population
of approximately 1.2 million. The district attorney has jurisdiction over the city
and county of Sacramento and handles felonies, misdemeanors and code
enforcement litigation. The office also has civil jurisdiction, and is responsible
for nuisance abatement and forfeiture matters.

The community prosecution attorneys attend community meetings, bring
together community resources, and coordinate problem-solving efforts. The
program uses only attorneys in its outreach efforts because officials believe it is
important to send into the community personnel who have the power to make
binding decisions and the ability to create strategies to deal with community
issues. The attorneys vertically prosecute a reduced caseload of matters
important to the community. Cases they cannot handle are assigned to the trials
unit. Case files generated by the community prosecution unit contain tracking
forms, requiring that the unit be updated on progress and outcomes, and
provide special instructions on how community prosecutors and neighborhood
residents would like the case handled.

Although target problems differ from one site to another, common to all are the
rundown hotels that serve as apartments for the borderline homeless
population. These hotels do not meet code standards and landlords have failed
to make necessary repairs, despite the fact that the city pays them to house the
homeless. The community prosecution unit is involved in efforts to shut these
hotels down. Additional problems include prostitution, traffic, drug houses, and
issues with the homeless. Some of the problems are addressed using nonlegal 
strategies, such as placing speed bumps in the road in areas with traffic issues
and installing armrests on park benches to discourage the homeless from
sleeping on them. An 8-hour training program has been developed for landlords
of nuisance properties, which instructs them on landlord-tenant law, code
enforcement, screening tenants, and spotting drug dealers. Landlords who have
been successfully prosecuted for maintaining nuisance properties must attend
the program as a condition of probation.

Community prosecutors also solve problems through collaborative relationships
with other agencies. The Nuisance Response Team, combining the efforts of
agencies such as the California Highway Patrol, city council, and social service
agencies, meets monthly to discuss community issues and plan joint responses. 

The community is engaged in the community prosecution effort in several ways.
Community forums are held to discuss specific crime problems, such as a
nuisance property where a crime has occurred. The owner is invited to a forum
where residents are given the opportunity to let the property owner know what
impact his business has had on the community. The forums often result in "Good
Neighbor Agreements," informal contracts that summarize the responsibilities
that the owner agrees to, as well as the role of the community and local
agencies in ensuring compliance. Although not enforceable, these documents
offer a clear understanding of what is expected of the property owner and
pressures compliance to avoid further alienating the community. The attorneys
are trained in mediation so that they can handle community forums. The
prosecutor conducts periodic needs assessments to remain in touch with
community issues and feelings about public safety. Surveys are distributed at
community meetings and to neighborhood groups at least quarterly to stimulate
feedback and generate the information that is used to set office priorities. The
office also provides legal educational classes on gun violence for school children
and organizes group meetings for adults on topics such as graffiti, school
attendance, and vice crime.

Placer County, California

In July 2000, Placer County District Attorney Bradford R. Fenocchio laid the
groundwork for the Community and Agency Multidisciplinary Elder Team, a
community prosecution effort to address elder abuse.[70] Elder abuse was
chosen as the target problem because Placer County has a large (19 percent)
and growing elder population (projected to reach 25 percent by 2040), and
elder abuse crime has increased significantly in recent years. In 1997, Adult
Protective Services opened 12 new cases of abuse per month, on average; by
1999, the number had increased to an average of 40 new cases per month.
Because many nursing and assisted-living facilities and retirement communities
are being located in Placer County, the office has had to respond to the
escalating victimization of this population. Elder abuse is defined as crimes
committed against individuals age 65 or older, and crimes against dependent
adults ages 18 to 64, involving the infliction of pain or mental suffering,
endangering health, and theft or embezzlement of property.  

Placer County's initiative involves a partnership of the prosecutor's office with
local police, residents, government agencies, the courts, judicial officers, victim
advocates, and health-care providers. The program involves one assistant
district attorney working out of the main office as a vertical prosecutor on all
elder abuse cases throughout the county, and an investigator who is the
program coordinator.

The county plans to have this multidisciplinary team educate personnel from
agencies that deal directly with the elder community on the causes of elder
abuse, methods to prevent it, and the proper handling of abuse cases. In
addition, the district attorney's office will develop a plan to increase community
awareness of abuse issues, focusing community ties and involving community
youth in the effort. Finally, the office seeks to enhance its own effectiveness in
preventing, investigating, and prosecuting crimes against the elderly. 

St. Joseph's County (South Bend), Indiana

In August 2000, St. Joseph's County Prosecuting Attorney Christopher A.
Toth started a community prosecution program in South Bend, Indiana.[71]
There are three sites in the county, staffed by prosecutors who are stationed in
new community justice centers that also serve as community meeting places.
The program's nuisance abatement officer and a program coordinator move
among the three sites. All of the sites have significant minority populations and
are located in urban areas with both residential and commercial land use. After
the sites were selected, the police chief adjusted his sectors to coincide with the
sites. The target problem in each area is quality-of-life crime. 

The attorneys' responsibilities include screening and charging cases filed by
police for their areas and prosecuting a reduced load of cases that are most
troublesome to the community. Overflow cases are randomly assigned to the
trials division, which is separated into misdemeanor and felony units, and are
prosecuted vertically. A small number of attorneys specialize in certain types of
crimes and cases falling within their specialty are assigned mainly to them.
Community prosecutors track cases that they do not handle personally and help
prepare them for trial and sentencing.

The program engages the community through meetings of attorneys with
community organizations and residents, and through the community justice
teams in each site which includes businessowners. The teams meet monthly to
help prosecutors identify community issues and develop strategies to respond to
them. A large steering committee consisting of partners in the community
prosecution effort initially helped set overall policy for community prosecution
and continues to participate in problem-solving initiatives that tap into its
members' areas of expertise.

The community prosecution unit runs a pretrial diversion program aimed at first-
time misdemeanor offenders. Sanctions assigned to these offenders include
community service, often performed for area nonprofit organizations that
request workers at community justice meetings. Efforts are made to assign
offenders to work sites in the areas where they committed their crimes or near
their homes.

Lackawanna County (Scranton), Pennsylvania

District Attorney Andrew Jarbola III initiated community prosecution in
Lackawanna County in 2000.[72] Lackawanna is a largely urban county,
populated primarily by low-income white and a growing percentage of Hispanic
residents. Economic growth has slowed and many people have moved away to
find better job opportunities.

The district attorney's office employs 26 assistant district attorneys, who handle
misdemeanor and felony cases. Before the community prosecution program, the
county operated an initiative called the School-Based Community Justice
Program. An attorney was assigned to each of the county's 11 school districts
to represent the district attorney's office at meetings of school officials, crime
watch groups, community- and faith-based organizations, and social and human
services representatives to discuss both general school issues and specific youth
identified as being at risk. To combat the county's significant drug problems, the
group implemented a countywide school drug policy. They also developed a
program through which students volunteered to clean up trash in the community.
The community prosecution program was created partly as a result of the
positive impact of this program, and some of the assigned attorneys are now
community prosecutors. Two attorneys are assigned to field offices in each of
three sites.

To select the initial target sites and identify the issues of greatest importance to
the community, surveys were distributed at community organization meetings,
senior centers, and schools. The three targeted areas have the county's highest
crime rates but also have fairly strong community organizations that care about
the neighborhoods. An issue common to all three is absentee landlords. The Hill
Section is mainly residential but is located near a college, where formerly single-
family homes are being rented to college students who have no stake in the
neighborhood. Poorly maintained buildings, trash, and low-level crime are
principal issues for the neighborhood. The South Side site has seen an influx of
Hispanic immigrants, many of whom do not speak English, creating a language
barrier between them and city agencies. Only one police officer is fluent in
Spanish. Housing is inadequate and many of the homes are poorly maintained
rental properties with absentee landlords. Crime is primarily related to driving
under the influence. A third site, Carbondale, has experienced an increase in
drug-related criminal activity, mainly in properties owned by absentee
landlords. A community action plan has been developed for each of the sites. 

The role of the community prosecutors consists of community outreach and
litigation of low-level, quality-of-life crimes, including third-degree
misdemeanors and summary offenses. Overflow misdemeanor cases and
felonies are assigned to trial teams, organized by major crime type. 

The community is engaged primarily through criminal justice councils of
residents chosen by the community to identify crime issues that the community
wants addressed and to craft solutions. In addition, an advisory panel of
community leaders, a state senator, representatives of human service agencies,
and faith leaders meet annually to discuss the progress and goals of the project. 

Westchester County, New York

Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro began planning and
implementing a community prosecution program in 2000 with a planning grant
from BJA.73 The target area selected was in Yonkers, an area with a
significant minority population that includes both African Americans and
Hispanics, and a combination of residential and commercial land use. The target
problem is quality-of-life crime, primarily committed by youth. The area was
experiencing difficulties with gang rivalries, drug-related crime, and prostitution.
Another crime problem involves attacks on Hispanic day laborers, who are
beaten and robbed of their day's pay. These victims are unlikely to turn to law
enforcement for help. The district attorney is seeking a Weed and Seed
designation as well as an implementation grant to help address the many issues
in the area.

One of the factors that has been identified as contributing to youth issues is the
lack of supervised afterschool and summer activities. The local Police Athletic
League program is completely filled and part of the plan is to open a community
center, where children can play and hang out, and where services can be
offered. It is hoped that the center will provide a neutral zone where gang turf
issues will not interfere. The community center is part of a 3-year plan focused
on reducing neighborhood crime.

One attorney will be hired to implement the program, whose primary
responsibilities will include community outreach and problem solving, in addition
to carrying a small load of cases of community importance, which will be
prosecuted vertically. The remainder of the misdemeanor cases will be assigned
to trial attorneys in the Yonkers-based branch of the district attorney's office.
Felonies will be randomly assigned to the felony trials unit in the main office, or
to specific major crimes divisions according to crime type. The community
prosecutor will maintain an office in the Yonkers branch.  

Community partners will include community police, who have a relatively good
relationship with the district attorney's office but have experienced some
tensions with the community. The school district also must be a partner,
although the district presently has an interim superintendent whose authority to
make long-term decisions is limited. The district is acting under a long-standing
desegregation order that stems from a 1980 lawsuit filed by the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Yonkers population
was effectively segregated, resulting in segregated schools that provided poor
education for minority students. A combination of busing and housing programs
aimed at integrating the community has created a more equitable situation. Thus,
the schools have their own issues to deal with, but it is hoped that they will be
able to collaborate with the district attorney's office to address community
concerns. The community will be engaged in an advisory capacity, identifying
issues and problems, and creating and participating in crime-solving strategies.
Once the strategy is established, the community should be able to sustain the
effort on its own.

Oakland, California

The Oakland City Attorney's Office, under City Attorney John Russo, recently
received a community prosecution grant to start a pilot program within its
jurisdiction, which includes civil proceedings on behalf of Oakland.[74]
Oakland is a relatively old city, and the community prosecution site contains
many older homes, primarily tenant- rather than owner-occupied, as well as
some commercial properties. The population is largely African American. The
target area was selected for its poverty, high crime rate, prevalence of
substandard housing, poorly maintained businesses, and graffiti. 

In Oakland, the city attorney has primary responsibility for civil prosecutions,
which will constitute an important element of the planned community
prosecution strategy. Through a Weed and Seed grant, the city attorney has
long played a vital role in community-based crime prevention strategies. The
city attorney drafted both seizure and urban blight ordinances and prosecutes
civil cases, such as drug nuisance actions, suits against landlords who own
substandard housing, and suits against nuisance businesses such as liquor stores
and hotels that permit prostitution on their premises. In conjunction with its
management of Oakland's Weed and Seed efforts, the city attorney's office has
collaborated with the Oakland Police Department to enforce nuisance
abatement ordinances.

The city attorney makes effective use of Oakland's seizure ordinance, which
permits vehicles that are used to purchase drugs or to solicit prostitutes to be
declared a public nuisance. A criminal conviction is not necessary to have the
property seized. This is done on the spot at the point of arrest. Seizures often
are done through reverse sting operations, in which police decoys come into
contact with those seeking to purchase illegal goods or services. Vehicles that
are ultimately forfeited are sold to produce revenue for community projects.
Even if the vehicles are not forfeited, the process generally takes a long time so
the possibility of forfeiture can be a strong deterrent against the consumers of
these illegal goods and services.[75]

The "blight" ordinance applies to abandoned or rundown residential,
commercial, and  industrial properties that attract illegal drug activity and
prostitution. These properties are often located in or near residential areas and
bring numerous citizen complaints. They contribute to urban blight, pose a
public health risk, act as a magnet for crime, and can bring a neighborhood
down quickly. A unit from the city attorney's office has been placed in the
police department to deal exclusively with nuisance properties. Property
owners are first notified that the city requires them to make repairs and that
significant fines and fees will be assessed if they fail to comply. The ultimate
remedy is closure of the property.

An example of successful use of the blight ordinance was a suit against a
rundown hotel that charged $400 a night and was frequented mainly by
prostitutes. The rooms had no doors, the toilets did not work, and the halls
were full of trash. The hotel was located in an otherwise fairly well-maintained
neighborhood. The property owner was alerted to the conditions and
compelled by the court to make repairs. A suit was filed under the blight 
ordinance and ultimately the property was closed down. After a closure is
ordered, the property may be placed into receivership and a third party placed
in control of the rehabilitation effort. If rehabilitation is possible at a reasonable
cost, the property can be repaired and the owner will be assessed the cost of
the repairs. If the owner fails to pay, the property may be sold. 

The community prosecution program will be staffed by an attorney and a
paralegal. The groundwork for the program was laid using a survey mailed to
area residents that requested their views on neighborhood crime issues and
information on problem locations. The survey was brief and anonymous to
encourage residents to respond. Interns were sent into the neighborhood to
retrieve completed surveys, supply new forms to residents who did not have
them, and wait while they were filled out. The form contained a hotline number
for anyone who had a specific problem or needed help. Of 1,500 forms
distributed, approximately 300 have been returned.

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

[32] Please note that this discussion illustrates differences among community
prosecution strategies on dimensions identified as critical to the working
typology of the community prosecution sites just described. 

[33] Please contact Cheryl Irons-Guynn at the Crime and Justice Research
Institute at cheri.irons-guynn@cjri.com to provide comments or additional
information.

[34] Information on the Manhattan Community Affairs Unit was obtained from
interviews with Executive District Attorney Kristine Hamann and Community
Affairs Unit Director Connie Cuchiarra; "Building Partnerships Among
Communities, Police and Prosecutors," New York County District Attorney's
Office, September, 1993; and Boland, 1998b.

[35] Information relating to Portland's Neighborhood DA program was
obtained from interviews and discussions with former Deputy District Attorney
Michael Kuykendall, now a Senior Attorney at APRI, and Deputy District
Attorney James Hayden; from Boland, 1996, 1998, and Wolf, 2000; and the
Multnomah County District Attorney's Office web site.

[36] Boland, 1996 and 1998; Wolf, 2000.

[37] Information on the Middlesex County Community-Based Justice Program
was obtained from an interview with Assistant District Attorney Kerry Ahearn
and from Community Based Justice, No Time to Wait, No Time to Waste,
Middlesex District Attorney's Office (1994); and Jacoby, 1995. 

[38] Information on Philadelphia's Public Nuisance Task Force is from an
interview with George G. Mosee, Jr., Deputy District Attorney and Chief of the
Narcotics Division, Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, and from
Community Guide to Drug and Alcohol Related Nuisance Enforcement: Public
Nuisance Task Force, published by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.
The Juvenile Division also engages in some community prosecution efforts,
including a truancy program. 

[39] Information on the Marion County Street Level Advocacy Program is
from interviews with Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Diana Burleson and
Catherine Coles, J.D., Ph.D.; Wolf, 2000; and Marion County Prosecutor's
Office, Street Level Advocacy Unit, Marion County Prosecuting Attorney's
Office (January 12, 2000).

[40] Information about Suffolk County is from Deborah McDonnah, who
heads Community Affairs, and Coles, 1997, Appendix B.

[41] Information on the Los Angeles initiatives is from an interview with Nancy
Lidamore, Assistant Head Deputy, Hardcore Gang Division; from the "CLEAR
Program Manual," prepared by the CLEAR administrative office and Lodestar
Management/Research, Inc. (January 21, 2000); and Strategies Against Gang
Environments (S.A.G.E.), Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office
Hardcore Gang Division.

[42] Information about the Seattle City Attorney's Precinct Liaison Program
was obtained from interviews with Criminal Division Chief Robert Hood. 

[43] Information on the Howard County Community Justice Program is from an
interview with State's Attorney Marna McLendon; from "Prosecutor Program
Wins Grant," Baltimore Sun, Howard Edition, page 1B (August 2, 2000); and
from the Community Justice Program pamphlet published by the Office of the
State's Attorney, Howard County, Maryland.

[44] Information on Plymouth County is from an interview with Assistant
District Attorney William Asci of the Brockton Safe Neighborhood Initiative
and from the Plymouth County District Attorney's web site, 
www.magnet.state.ma.us. 

[45] For a more complete description of the Safe Neighborhood Initiative, see
Suffolk County, Massachusetts.

[46] Massachusetts General Laws, Section 1271, Chapter 111 (1993). 

[47] Information on the Washington, D.C., community prosecution program is
from materials supplied by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Clifford Keenan and
DeMaurice Smith. 

[48] Information on Denver's Community Prosecution Division is from an
interview and materials provided by Susan Motika; site visits to Capitol Hill and
Globeville in April 2000; discussions with Community Justice Coordinator
David Mrakitsch and Community Justice Advocate Erin Lange; Wolf, 2000;
"The Denver District Attorney's Office: Community Prosecution in Denver"
(June, 1999); Ritter and Motika, 1999.

[49] Wolf, 2000.

[50] The process is described by Susan Motika in "Best Practices" on
www.communityjustice.org and Wolf, 2000.

[51] The process is described in Ritter and Motika, 1999: 2 and Wolf, 2000.
In 1998-1999, the Colorado General Assembly passed H.B. 99-1156, which
provides for the use of a restorative justice process in the juvenile justice system
(Ritter and Motika, 1999: 2).

[52] Information about the Erie County District Attorney's Office community
prosecution program was obtained from interviews with Assistant District
Attorney Michael Drmacich.

[53] Information about the Phoenix City Prosecutor's Office community
prosecution program was obtained from interviews with Director of Community
Prosecution Arron Carreon-Ainsa.

[54] Information on the Santa Clara community prosecution program comes
from interviews with Deputy District Attorney Christopher Arriola and Assistant
District Attorney Marc Buller, Supervisor of the Community Prosecution Unit,
and from the Santa Clara District Attorney's Office web site, www.santaclara-
da.org.

[55] Information on community prosecution in Pima County is from an interview
with Deputy County Attorney Christine Curtis and from "Civil Remedies
Outline 1999-2000," Pima County Attorney's Office.

[56] Information on the community prosecution program in Jackson County is
from an interview and materials provided by Chief Trial Assistant Kathy Finnell
and from Coles, 1997.

[57] Information on the Honolulu community prosecution program is from an
interview with Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Claire Merry and "Special
Report: Community Prosecution Program," Department of the Prosecuting
Attorney, City and County of Honolulu (January 2000).

[58] Information about the San Diego City Attorney's Office Neighborhood
Prosecution Unit was obtained from interviews and information provided by
Neighborhood Prosecution Unit Division Head Joan Dawson.

[59] Information about community prosecution in Kalamazoo County is from
interviews with Senior Neighborhood Prosecutor Karen Hayter and Reifert,
2000.

[60] Information on Chicago's community prosecution program is from an
interview with Deputy Supervisor of Community Prosecution Neera Walsh. 

[61] Information on Nassau County's community prosecution efforts is from an
interview with Assistant District Attorney Rene Fiechter; the district attorney's
newsletter, Rising Star, Volume II, Number II (2000); Rising Star, Office of the
District Attorney, Nassau County (August, 1999); DA Newsletter, Community
Crime Prevention Update (March 1998); and the web site, www.nassauda.org. 

[62] Information about the Knox County community prosecution program was
obtained from interviews with Community Prosecution Coordinator Rhonda
Garren.

[63] Information about Austin's community prosecution program comes from
an interview with Meg Brooks, Assistant District Attorney; and from "Austin,
Texas " on the Community Justice Exchange, Best Practices web page (at
www.communityjustice.org).

[64] Information is from an interview and materials provided by Assistant
State's Attorney James Martz, Chief of the Community-Based Anti-Crime
Task Force.

[65] Information about community prosecution in Hennepin County is from
interviews with assistant county attorneys Martha Holton-Dimick, Ericka
Mozangue, and Terri Froehlke and from materials found on the county
attorney's web site, www.hennepinattorney.org.

[66] Information about Cuyahoga County's Community-Based Prosecution
Program was obtained from interviews with Assistant County Prosecutor
Richard Neff.

[67] Information about the Brevard/Seminole County State Attorney's Office
NSAI was obtained from interviews and information provided by State
Attorney Phil Archer.

[68] Information on Montgomery County's community prosecution program is
from an interview with Assistant State's Attorney Tom Eldridge; from
"Community Prosecution-Implementation Grant Program Narrative," State's
Attorney's Office, Montgomery County, Maryland, November 4, 1999; and
from Jacoby, 1995: 299-300.

[69] Information about the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office
Community Prosecution Program was obtained from interviews with and
information provided by Community Prosecution Chief Karen Maxwell. 

[70] Information on Placer County's community prosecution program is from an
interview with and materials supplied by Assistant District Attorney Susan
Gazzaniga.

[71] Information compiled on community prosecution in St. Joseph's County is
from interviews with and materials provided by Assistant County Prosecutor
Khadijah Muhammad, Project Codirector.

[72] Information about the Lackawanna County District Attorney's Office
community prosecution program was obtained from interviews with Christine
Tocki.

[73] Information on community prosecution in Westchester County is from
interviews with Community Justice Coordinator Yolanda Robinson and
Assistant District Attorney Robert Maccarone.

[74] Information on the Oakland community prosecution program is from a site
visit and interviews with Paralegal Sandra Marion and Deputy City Attorney
Charles E. Vose and a presentation at the National Community Prosecution
Conference, sponsored by APRI, in September 2000.

[75] The seizure ordinance was challenged by the ACLU, but was upheld by
the First District Court of Appeals. A petition is pending in the State Supreme
Court but, if it is heard, agency officials believe that it will be upheld. 

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Table 3: Highlights of 36 Community Prosecution Initiatives in the United
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document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat graphic file available
from this Web site.
 
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Chapter 6

Community Prosecution: Thinking About Evaluation

The problem of measuring the impact of community prosecution--particularly
given its diverse adaptations--begins with an understanding of what that
innovation is (and what it is not) and what it proposes to accomplish in its own
terms. In the earlier chapters of this report, we have traced the origins of
community prosecution strategies, identified key dimensions in a working
typology that permits classification of diverse approaches, and highlighted the
attributes of existing community prosecution initiatives to illustrate the scope of
the movement today. It is clear from these discussions that the community
prosecution model represents a philosophy as well as an innovation. The shared
philosophy seeks to connect the prosecution function more directly with the
community, to develop a new and more collaborative working relationship, and
to be more responsive to the crime-related concerns of communities. The form
this idea takes varies considerably from location to location and from
prosecutor to prosecutor along the dimensions we have outlined in the working
typology of community prosecution strategies.

Many of the elements of community prosecution--dispersion of attorneys to
different geographic locations, vertical prosecution, organization of case
assignment to reflect the geography of the community, considerably more time
spent interacting with the community--represent notable departures from
traditional modes of functioning. They reflect the level at which a prosecutor's
office commits to the philosophy and raise difficult questions about impact and
resource allocation. Prosecutors who lead such efforts and their funding sources
have begun to demand evaluation of whether and how community prosecution
"works." The challenges for research in measuring the effects of community
prosecution, its strengths and weaknesses, are commensurate with the
challenges posed by community-oriented strategies to traditional prosecution
functions.

A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating Community Prosecution 

Table 4 proposes a multidimensional framework for conceptualizing community
prosecution evaluation measures that recognizes the distinct and joint roles
played by the prosecution and the community. It defines areas of impact based
on the key dimensions in the typology shared by community prosecution
initiatives across the nation. In addition, the framework differentiates between
measures appropriate for assessing the implementation of community
prosecution and measures reflecting outcomes or the impact of community
prosecution programs, once they have been effectively implemented. 

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Identifying the Roles of the Prosecutor and the Community

The evaluation framework incorporates separate as well as joint consideration
for the roles of the prosecutor and the community. As we have understood the
movement, community prosecution cannot be grasped as an in-house
reorganization plan, for example, that is strictly limited to what the prosecutor
does to or for the community. Instead, the concept suggests a new working
relationship between prosecutor and community that takes many forms in the
different sites, but does not merely amount to better prosecutor-public relations.
Because the community prosecution concept itself suggests new goals, roles,
and desired outcomes for both prosecutor and community, measurement of the
impact of community prosecution needs to take both critical components into
account. One of the challenges for evaluation is that the community and
prosecution roles in community prosecution strategies are viewed both as
agents of change (the community prosecution innovation being implemented)
and the targets of change (as they are transformed by the innovation into a new
justice function). 
 
Using the Typology To Organize Evaluation Questions

The separate and joint roles of prosecutor and community are examined in this
evaluation framework on each of the key dimensions of community prosecution
strategies outlined in table 2. In the earlier discussion of the key ingredients of
these strategies, the purpose of the typology was descriptive, to characterize
diverse initiatives according to common themes or functional components. In
table 4, the purpose is different. The descriptive elements of the typology help
establish categories of presumed impact that measures of community
prosecution should tap, taking into account the parts played by prosecutor and 
community. 
 
Distinguishing Between (Early-Stage) Implementation and Outcome Questions

The evaluation framework illustrated in table 4 builds in one other important
dimension. It divides impact measures into implementation and outcome
categories. The distinction is important for two reasons. First, it is difficult to
gauge the impact of an innovation if it is not implemented. Thus, the first type of
evaluation measure we propose measures the extent of implementation. By this,
we mean that when a community prosecution initiative promises to introduce
certain services or procedures in specific areas to accomplish certain effects
(crime reduction, fear reduction, improved civility), a first task of evaluation is
to measure the extent to which these services or procedures were put into
place.
 
Second, because many community prosecution programs are young and
evolving, evaluation should consider a program's maturity or stage of
development. A program in its first year would not expect to produce the same
measurable results as a program completing its third year of operation. In the
younger program, evaluation questions would logically focus more on measuring
the extent to which the promised innovation has indeed been implemented,
services delivered, and changes made. In the older program, after
implementation of the innovation elements is confirmed, evaluation could more
reasonably examine the impact of new actions, services, or procedures. In
short, evaluation of community prosecution needs to examine its success in
implementation, as well as the results the program produces once effectively
implemented. Stated another way, it is not possible to assess the impact of
community prosecution if it has not been well implemented.  

Target Problems

By way of illustration, table 4 suggests that an assessment of community
prosecution focusing on the role of the prosecutor would seek to identify the
types of problems targeted by the initiative and the strategies that are
formulated to address them. The prosecutor would want to measure impact in
each of the target areas, particularly relating to the prosecution function.
Implementation measures would also focus on the role of the community in
defining target problems and measure the extent of participation or
collaboration that produced agreements. Outcome measures would focus on
community improvement and increased community satisfaction in specific areas,
and would hold the community prosecution initiative accountable for the goals it
promised.
 
Target Area

Because community prosecution initiatives target specific geographic areas,
implementation measures related to the prosecution role would examine the
extent to which new services, procedures, or activities were set in place in the
target areas. This would include the extent to which representatives of the
community in specific areas participated in those strategies and became
involved in a new way. Because community prosecution initiatives focus on
particular parts of a jurisdiction, measures of program impact have to be
organized by geographic area (in an "impact per area" measurement). Thus,
community prosecution aims such as reducing prostitution or disturbances
associated with nuisance establishments would be measured per targeted
geographic area. This geographic dimension calls for new measures and new
uses of available data, such as police calls for service, arrests, frequency of
patrol, graffiti, or other relevant observation measures that can help evaluation
frame results by geographic area.
 
Role of the Community

The community role in community prosecution is to be both an agent of change
and a target of change, an impact that can be measured. The innovation
proposes to involve the community to bring about better community conditions,
but also promises to change the role of the community as a result of the strategy
making measuring impact a little confusing. A measure of community
prosecution implementation would examine how the community role was
defined and brought into play, how the prosecution encouraged the new role,
and how the community responded. New procedures put into place might also
be considered outcomes or accomplishments of the strategy. Thus, evaluation
should characterize the new community-prosecutor problem-identification and
problem-solving process as both an implementation and an outcome question
as the new working relationship becomes institutionalized, and an "effect" as
well as a cause. The community should experience measurable results, ranging
from increased satisfaction with the prosecution function to perceived positive
results in targeted problem areas.
 
Content of Community Prosecution Strategy

Most sites include various functions under the heading of their community
prosecution initiative, depending on the type of problems the initiative
addresses. The list of specific programs or activities sponsored by the sites is
long and highly individualistic, ranging from juvenile intervention programs, to
targeting drug offenders, to eliminating nuisance establishments and addressing
housing problems. An evaluation framework will need to examine the impact of
these programmatic elements of site community prosecution strategies, again
from both implementation and outcome perspectives. Assessment should
measure how well the specific programs were put into operation
(implementation) as well as the extent to which they brought about desired
results (outcome) both from a prosecution and community perspective. In this
category as in others, measuring successful prosecutions may or may not be
relevant to the full scope of the activities put in place and the objectives pursued
through the particular programs.
 
Organization of Prosecution

Depending on its form, community prosecution may involve significant changes
in the way prosecutor's offices are organized. As an implementation measure,
evaluation would examine the extent to which the strategy resulted in changes in
office organization and function. Some offices have reorganized minimally,
instituting a special unit to carry out community prosecution functions, while
others have restructured their offices and workloads along geographic lines
some with offices in satellite locations, some covering geographic assignments
from a central office. How well these changes are put into place is an
implementation question. How this is accomplished with community involvement
for example, linked with community councils or other organizations is also an
implementation stage concern. After the new organization and procedures are in
place, evaluation can address their impact in the targeted areas and their effects
on the operation of the prosecutor's office  and on its relationship with the
community.
 
Prosecutor Workload

Some advocates of community prosecution have argued that, taken at its most
challenging, adoption of community prosecution represents a change in the
"culture" of prosecution. Whether or not this proves to be so is one of the
fundamental research questions about the impact of community prosecution. In
their implementation stage, community prosecution initiatives change what
prosecutors do. Depending on the model, the prosecutor may spend more time
in the community meeting and problem solving and less time in court. When in
court, the prosecutor may specialize in certain types of cases (some even
involving civil actions) or in various cases selected because of their importance
to the target location. In some locations, the community prosecutor may serve
more as a legal facilitator than as the actual attorney in all cases.   

The new or nontraditional workload of the community prosecutor will require
other measures than those normally employed to evaluate attorney performance
in the office. In addition to successful outcomes in the cases that do go to court,
measures of impact can include the number of community contacts made, and
the number and type of matters addressed and resolved, many using other
means than the criminal process. Evaluation research would also examine the
impact on the prosecutor's office of the institution of a community prosecution
function, measuring the extent to which the overall office workload has been
affected, and the use and allocation of resources. Adoption of a new
prosecutor role also raises questions about professional satisfaction and career
advancement for staff who accept such assignments. One of the chief difficulties
confronted by community policing initiatives has been acceptance of the new
function by other police officers. In a parallel way, a measure of the impact of
community prosecution should include assessment of the perspectives of other
prosecutors on the new specialty. To the extent that the community prosecutor
is not viewed as a "real" prosecutor, good candidates will not pursue such
assignments without concern for career advancement.
 
Collaboration and Partnerships in Identifying Problems and Effecting Solutions 

In many of the community prosecution sites highlighted above, the prosecutor
has worked with community organizations to address crime-related, quality-of-
life problems through approaches involving multiagency collaboration and
partnerships with agencies such as housing and licensing, streets, police, and
schools. The nature and type of partnerships brought about through community
prosecution represent measures of an important dimension of the innovation.
The results of those collaborative strategies, services, or special actions are
outcome measures relating to problem resolution that would not have been
possible without community prosecution.
 
Conclusion

This report has traced the origins of community prosecution as a component of
the evolving role of the prosecutor and the prosecutor's need to deal more
directly with the crime-related problems of specific communities. At the same
time, community prosecution represents another element in the growing
repertoire of community justice initiatives responding to the needs of
communities not addressed by traditional criminal justice methods. The new
philosophy has taken on different forms and adopted different emphases in
various settings across the United States. In this report, we have tried to discuss
the implications of community prosecution strategies for evaluation, as the
increasing number of programs across the nation underscores the need for
rigorous assessment of their impact.
 
The evaluation framework we have described begins with an attempt to identify
the key ingredients of the community prosecution innovation or model,
commonalities that are shared by diverse applications of the concept across
different settings. The proposed schema is not intended to be authoritative or
definitive, but rather serves as a working typology that can be refined and
improved upon through feedback from community prosecution jurisdictions
across the United States. Using the working typology of community prosecution
strategies, we illustrated the model by briefly sketching programs in 36 sites. As
noted, we are certain that this is an incomplete list, as efforts are ongoing and
sites are identified through various means. 
 
With the community prosecution typology and site illustrations, we have also
organized a conceptual framework for evaluating the performance and impact
of community prosecution initiatives that incorporates the multidimensional
aspect of the goals and methods of the innovation. We propose this evaluative
scheme to identify the principal dimensions of concern in measuring impact. We
also hope to elicit feedback and comment from jurisdictions about how
evaluations can be developed and carried out. We looked to established sites
to provide the necessary data to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses
of different elements and approaches in a way that can contribute to the
development of best practices and inform the growing number of jurisdictions
participating in community prosecution undertakings across the nation. 

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