Richard R. Nedelkoff, Director

www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA

November 2002

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

Bureau of Justice Assistance Bureau of Justice Assistance Bulletin

Community Prosecution

Strategies: Measuring Impact

by John S. Goldkamp, Cheryl Irons-Guynn, and Doris Weiland

Crime and Justice Research Center

C ommunity prosecution initiatives put into practice the belief that crime problems are best prevented and

solved when community members work with prosecutors and

the police. As the community prosecution movement grows, it

is critical that communities develop the capacity to measure

the impact of these programs. This Bureau of Justice

Assistance (BJA) bulletin, which is organized by seven key

dimensions shared by community prosecution efforts nationwide,

reviews what we have

learned about evaluating

community prosecution sites.

Generally, community prosecution

initiatives deploy prosecutors or, in

some jurisdictions, nonlegal staff

in the community to identify the

public safety concerns of residents

and to seek their participation in developing and implementing strategies to

address the problems that are the community’s highest priorities. Community

prosecution represents a distinct departure from the case and conviction

orientation of traditional prosecution. Instead, community prosecution

seeks ways to prevent and reduce crime through initiatives that range

from cleaning up and maintaining public parks to using civil sanctions to

attack nuisance crime.
• 2 •

History of Community

Prosecution

The immediate origins of the community prosecution

movement are often traced to the pioneering efforts of

Multnomah County District Attorney (DA) Michael

Schrunk, who established the Neighborhood DA Unit in

Portland, Oregon, in 1990 in response to business leaders’

concerns that quality-of-life crimes would impede

development of a central business district.1 In 1991,

community-oriented prosecution initiatives in Kings

County, New York, under District Attorney Charles J.

Hynes and in Montgomery County, Maryland, under

State’s Attorney Andrew Sonner involved reorganization of

the prosecutors’ offices along geographic lines and efforts

to form new working relationships with their communities.

After the early 1990s, community prosecution spread

rapidly to other jurisdictions. Estimates of how many

prosecutors’ offices in the United States have adopted

community prosecution strategies vary. The American

Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI) recently estimated,

based on a national survey of prosecutors’ offices, that by

the end of 2000 nearly half of all prosecutors’ offices may

have been engaged in activities that would qualify as

community prosecution.2 In 1999, 33 sites received

targeted federal funding to support community

prosecution strategies; in 2000, 62 sites received grants 

to plan or implement new programs, or to expand or 

enhance existing programs; and in late 2001, 75 additional

sites received funding to plan, implement, or enhance

community prosecution programs.

Nine sites received leadership awards in 2001. These 

nine sites will serve as learning laboratories for other

communities looking to implement similar strategies.

Table 1 lists 38 community prosecution initiatives in

operation at the end of 2000. 

Key Dimensions

Like other community justice innovations, community

prosecution strategies vary according to the needs and

About BJA

The Bureau of Justice Assistance was established in

1984 as a component of the Office of Justice Programs,

U.S. Department of Justice. BJA provides leadership and

resources to state, local, and tribal governments and

communities to reduce crime, violence, and drug abuse

and to strengthen the nation’s criminal justice system.

BJA provides this assistance through formula and

discretionary grants, training and technical assistance,

publications, and the BJA web site.

Bureau of Justice Assistance

810 Seventh Street NW.

Washington, DC 20531

202–616–6500

Fax: 202–305–1367

Web site: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA 

For publications and information on other BJA-funded

programs, contact:

Bureau of Justice Assistance Clearinghouse 

P.O. Box 6000 

Rockville, MD 20849–6000

1–800–688–4252

Web site: www.ncjrs.org

Clearinghouse staff are available Monday through Friday,

8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. eastern time. Ask to be placed on

the BJA mailing list. 

About the Authors

The Crime and Justice Research Center in Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania, was formed to conduct, disseminate, and

facilitate research on a broad array of important crime

and justice concerns. Recent research projects have

been funded by the Center for Substance Abuse

Treatment, the National Institute of Justice, the National

Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug

Abuse, the Pennsylvania Commission of Crime and

Delinquency, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Edna

McConnell Clark Foundation, the city of Philadelphia, and

the State Justice Institute.

Crime and Justice Research Center

Temple University

1115 West Berks Street, Fifth Floor

Philadelphia, PA 19122

215–204–1670

Fax: 215–204–3872
• 3 •

Table 1. Chronology of Community Prosecution Initiatives

Manhattan, NY 1985

Portland, OR 1990

Kings County, NY 1991

Montgomery County, MD 1991

Middlesex County, MA 1991

Philadelphia, PA (LINE) 1991

Marion County, IN 1993

Suffolk County, MA 1993

Los Angeles, CA (SAGE) 1993

Seattle,WA (City Attorney) 1995

Los Angeles, CA (CLEAR) 1996

Howard County, MD 1996

Brockton County, MA 1996

Washington, DC (U.S.Attorney) 1996

Denver, CO 1996

Erie County, NY 1996

Phoenix, AZ (City Prosecutor) 1996

Santa Clara, CA 1996–97

Pima County, AZ 1997

Honolulu, HI 1997

Jackson County, MO 1997

San Diego, CA (City Attorney) 1997

Kalamazoo County, MI (CLOCK) 1998

Cook County, IL 1998

Nassau County, NY 1998

Knox County,TN 1998

Travis County,TX 1999

West Palm Beach, FL 1999

Hennepin County, MN 1999

Seminole County, FL 1999

Cuyahoga County, OH 1999

Virginia Beach,VA 2000

Sacramento County, CA 2000

St. Joseph’s County, IN 2000

Placer County, CA 2000

Westchester County, NY 2000

Oakland, CA (City Attorney) 2000

Lackawanna County, PA 2000

circumstances of each locality, but they share underlying

features. Seven key dimensions characterize community

prosecution initiatives. These dimensions are 1) the

target problems, 2) the geographic target area, 3) the

role of the community, 4) the content of the response to

community problems, 5) organizational changes within

the prosecutor’s office, 6) case processing adaptations,

and 7) interagency collaboration and partnerships relating

to the initiative. Drawing on the 38 identified community

prosecution programs, table 2 illustrates the diversity of

problems confronted by community prosecution and the

variety of strategies programs use to address these

problems. 

Target Problems

Most community prosecution initiatives have been

developed in response to crime problems that affect

particular neighborhoods or other geographic areas. Nine

of the sites studied devote substantial resources to juvenile

issues. For example, Michigan’s Kalamazoo County

Neighborhood Prosecuting Attorney Program focuses on

truancy and curfew violations. Its Center for Leadership

Options for Community Kids (CLOCK), created in 1999

and operated by the Boys & Girls Club, offers a diversion

program for youth who violate state curfew laws or are

repeatedly truant (youth who decline to participate are

sent to juvenile court). Participants are assessed for
• 4 •

personal, school, family, and employment issues and

referred to appropriate agencies for help. They learn

leadership skills and engage in positive activities. Youth

who complete the diversion program avoid formal

involvement with the juvenile justice system.

Prostitution, historically a low priority for the criminal

justice system, is a focus of community prosecution in

Honolulu, Hawaii, because it is detrimental to tourism.

Community prosecutors created a prostitution abatement

task force, which filed a nuisance abatement action to ban

Table 2. Key Dimensions of Community Prosecution Strategies

Key Dimensions Examples From the Sites

1.Target Problems/Goals Quality-of-life offenses.

Drug crime.

Gang violence.

Violent crime.

Juvenile crime.

Truancy.

Prostitution.

Housing and environmental issues.

Landlord/tenant issues.

Failure of the justice system to address community needs.

Community alienation from prosecutor and other justice agencies.

Improved cooperation of victims/witnesses.

Improved intelligence gathering for prosecution of serious cases.

2.Target Area Urban/inner city.

Rural/suburban.

Business districts.

Residential neighborhoods.

3. Role of the Community Recipient of prosecutor services.

Advisory.

Core participants in problem solving.

Core participants in implementation.

Community justice panels.

Sanctioning panels.

Ad hoc.

Targeted.

4. Content of Response to Community Problems Facilitating community self-help.

Crime prevention efforts.

Prosecuting cases of interest to the community.

Receiving noncriminal as well as criminal complaints.

5. Organizational Adaptations/Emphasis Field offices staffed by attorneys.

Field offices staffed by nonattorneys.

Attorneys assigned to neighborhoods.

Special unit or units.

Officewide organization around community prosecution model.

6. Case Processing Adaptations Vertical prosecution.

Horizontal prosecution.

Community prosecutors do not prosecute cases.

7. Interagency Collaboration/Partnerships Police.

City attorney.

Housing authority.

Community court/other court.

Other justice agencies (probation, pretrial services).

Other social services agencies.

Other regulatory agencies.
• 5 •

convicted prostitutes from the Waikiki District as a

condition of probation, and introduced legislation passed

in 1998 to prohibit convicted prostitutes from returning

to the district. They also created a 12-week intervention

program for women trying to get out of prostitution.3

Target Area 

The geographic area served by the community

prosecution program influences what resources are

needed and what kinds are available. The challenges and

logistical options for community prosecution efforts in

densely populated inner-city neighborhoods may be quite

different from those of smaller suburban or rural

jurisdictions.

The Santa Fe, New Mexico, District Attorney’s Office

targets an area of more than 7,000 square miles that

comprises 3 rural counties, a few small towns, and about

125,000 residents. Illegal drugs (particularly heroin) pose

a major problem, to the extent that two of the counties

are classified as part of a High Intensity Drug Trafficking

Area. The large area and dispersed population make

community outreach one of the great challenges of 

the program, which is still in an early stage of

implementation.

Community prosecution programs define their geographic

target areas in various ways. In Washington, D.C.,

community prosecution zones were matched to police

patrol service areas to enhance the ability of prosecutors 

to serve neighborhoods and work with Metropolitan

Police Department community policing teams.4 By

contrast, the Denver target areas are neighborhoods in

which residents often share ethnic and socioeconomic

backgrounds and are likely to have a sense of common

interest—or of “community.”5 In Multnomah County,

Oregon, prosecutors in the Neighborhood DA Unit are

linked to seven defined districts. The East Portland

District combines several principal neighborhoods. The

Gresham District is a separate city within the county, and

the Tri-Met District covers the three-county transit

system.6

Role of the Community 

How community prosecution sites define the

community’s role and which individuals or groups 

will represent the community determine the level of

community involvement. In some jurisdictions,

community activists identify the pressing crime-related

problems affecting neighborhoods, but the prosecutor’s

office orchestrates the response, often with the help of

community police or other agencies. In New York,

Manhattan, Kings County, and the Bronx have

community affairs bureaus headed by nonattorney

community organizers who do most of the outreach (in

Kings County, attorneys also participate), attending

community meetings and talking with neighborhood

leaders, residents, and other stakeholders to determine

issues and priorities, and linking the community with

prosecutors and other agencies to address specific issues.

In other locations, community representatives play a

central role in identifying problems, deciding priorities,
• 6 •

assessing needs, and planning strategies to employ the

resources that the prosecutor’s office can bring to bear.

The approach to community prosecution that District

Attorney William Ritter has implemented in Denver is

distinctive in that the community prosecutors provide legal

guidance and assist with access to city and county

resources, but the process of identifying and solving

problems is largely carried out by and within the

community.7 Nonattorney community justice advocates

from the targeted communities are selected to reach out

to the community and facilitate the problem-solving

process. In each area, active neighborhood community

justice councils of residents, teachers, school

administrators, business owners, and faith leaders identify

and prioritize problems and meet monthly with

community prosecutors and representatives of relevant

agencies to educate

themselves and to devise

strategies for overcoming

problems. One benefit of the

community justice council

approach is that some

quality-of-life issues are

resolved without formal

action by the state or city

prosecutor.

Response to Community Problems

The nature of the responses to the problems identified

varies among community prosecution efforts. Strategies

have taken many forms, ranging from targeted prosecution

of cases the community is concerned about (e.g., drug

dealing, nuisance establishments or properties, illegal

vending) to development of community-operated crime

prevention or service improvement efforts, such as

Indianapolis’s Street Level Advocacy Program. When

residents of an Indianapolis neighborhood identified open

prostitution as a problem, a community representative

took an active role in designing the Patronizing Diversion

Program, which aims to discourage prostitution by

focusing on patrons of prostitutes. First-time offenders can

avoid conviction by admitting to the charge, performing

community service, and meeting with a panel of

volunteers from the community who confront offenders

with the impact of prostitution on their neighborhood.

The public nature of this approach—and the face-to-face

interaction with residents of the neighborhood—is a

powerful deterrent to people who are considering

patronizing prostitutes in the area. Examples of many

other strategies used in response to community crime

problems are discussed in more detail in the full report

Community Prosecution Strategies: Measuring Impact.8

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, lay

employees, or an entire unit

of community-oriented

prosecutors, investigators,

community relations

specialists, and clerical staff.

Many programs began by

addressing single sites and

were staffed by one attorney

or staff member. The bestknown example of this

approach is the Multnomah County District Attorney’s

Neighborhood DA Unit, which began in 1990 with a

single prosecutor posted to Portland’s Lloyd District. By

1996, the Neighborhood DA Unit had grown to seven

community prosecutors covering almost the entire county.9

In Maryland’s Howard and Montgomery counties, and 

in a growing number of other locations, the community

prosecution philosophy governs the way business 

is conducted in the prosecutor’s office overall. The

emphasis on this new community-based problem-solving

philosophy is reflected in the reorganization of some

prosecutors’ offices along geographic lines and in the

perspectives of individual attorneys who view community

assignments as part of the career ladder complementing,

rather than detracting from, the more traditional

assignments and paths to advancement.

We are looking for people with a

common vision for neighborhood

safety. This is not a popularity

contest where the most popular

or powerful person wins.

Susan Motika, Community Justice Unit, 

Denver District Attorney’s Office
• 7 •

Case Processing Adaptations

Methods of prosecuting cases from targeted

neighborhoods differ among community prosecution

programs. Cases may be referred to the central office, or

neighborhood prosecutors may prosecute them

“vertically” (the same prosecutor handles the case at every

stage). In Kings County, New York, teams of attorneys

assigned to each of the borough’s five judicial zones

vertically prosecute the cases that originate in their zone.

The Kings County prosecutors

are physically located in the

central office to handle trial

caseloads efficiently; however,

they meet regularly with

residents and hear concerns

about crime and quality-oflife issues. The rationale for

this approach is that these

attorneys will understand the community context

associated with their criminal cases and will develop more

productive working relationships with the community and

precinct police. The familiarity with the community

fostered by vertical prosecution of cases is believed to

facilitate the pursuit of community public safety goals, help

prosecutors respond to community priorities, and generate

neighborhood support in prosecuting criminal cases. 

In some community prosecution programs, community

prosecutors do not try cases themselves. Instead,

community cases are assigned to the trial division for

litigation, and community prosecutors act as liaisons

between trial attorneys and community residents. This

allows community prosecutors to immerse themselves in

the community, participate in neighborhood meetings and

events, and facilitate problem-solving strategies. In other

jurisdictions, community prosecutors carry the same

caseloads as other attorneys in the office and must add

outreach and problem solving to these responsibilities.

Collaborative Partnerships

Community prosecution strategies often involve efforts

that are not strictly or exclusively within the prosecutor’s

domain and may be only tangentially related to criminal

justice. Programs vary in how much they participate in

interagency planning, enforcement, and service delivery,

and in how much they collaborate with other initiatives

such as community courts and community policing. In

many locations, community prosecution and community

policing go hand in hand, encouraged to work

collaboratively by federal policy and funding. Police can

provide enforcement support and, at times, a degree of

safety in situations that even a

seasoned prosecutor may be ill

equipped to handle. In turn,

community prosecutors can

offer the legal expertise and

authority to bring creative

community policing solutions

to fruition.

Some sites have combined

community prosecution with community courts. Travis

County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has been the force

behind various community-based initiatives in Austin,

Texas, including a community court, a drug court, and

programs to prevent juvenile crime and truancy.

To solve their target problems, community prosecutors

often find it helpful to join forces with other agencies,

combining resources that community members might

otherwise access in a piecemeal manner, if at all. In

nuisance abatement efforts, community prosecutors have

relied on the civil justice system and housing and licensing

agencies. In Philadelphia, the Local Intensive Narcotics

Enforcement (LINE) program was piloted in 1991 to

prosecute serious drug offenders. When LINE prosecutors

learned what most troubled community residents—

nuisance bars, neglected properties, crackhouses, houses of

prostitution, and “weed stores”—they called on the police;

Philadelphia’s departments of law, public health, licenses

and inspections, and liquor control enforcement; the

Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board; and the Philadelphia

Legislative Delegation for help. When LINE became the

Special Narcotics Prosecution Unit in 1998, its

community role was assumed by the District Attorney’s

I got into the community and found

out they wanted me to take care

of the little things.

Michael Schrunk, Multnomah 

County District Attorney
• 8 •

Public Nuisance Task Force, which pursued the same

nuisance abatement strategies.

Some community prosecution initiatives are purely

collaborative, functioning as part of a task force with other

agencies. The CLEAR program in Los Angeles, California,

was created in 1996 by an interagency gang task force to

address the community’s gang problems by targeting

specific geographic areas or gangs and using suppression,

intervention, and prevention tactics. It is a partnership of

law enforcement agencies (the police, sheriff, district

attorney, city attorney, and probation department), public

officials, and community residents.

Future of the Community

Prosecution Movement:

Evaluating What Works

Is community prosecution working? Measuring the impact

of community prosecution in

its diverse adaptations begins

with understanding what it is

and what it proposes to

accomplish. The philosophy

behind community

prosecution is to develop new

collaborative relationships in

an effort to be more responsive to the crime-related

concerns of the community. As an innovation, many of its

elements represent notable departures from traditional

operations, and prosecutors who lead the efforts and those

agencies that fund them need to agree on and implement

measures of impact, performance, and cost effectiveness. 

The conceptual framework proposed in table 3 for

evaluating community prosecution initiatives recognizes

the distinct and joint roles played by the prosecutor and

the community. Because community prosecution

represents an effort to forge a new working relationship

between the two, not merely better public relations, the

prosecutor and the community must be viewed as both

agents and targets of change. Measurements of

performance and impact should factor in the new goals,

roles, and desired outcomes for both the prosecutor and

the community. 

Using the Key Dimensions To

Organize Evaluation Questions

The separate and combined roles of the prosecutor and

the community in community prosecution strategies may

be examined in terms of each of the key dimensions of

community prosecution. The descriptive, structural

dimensions of the community prosecution model help to

establish categories of presumed impact that should be

measurable and take into account the parts played by the

prosecutor and the community.

Table 3 distinguishes between implementation- and

outcome-related objectives because it is difficult to gauge 

an innovation’s impact without measuring the extent to

which planned aspects of the

program are in place. Many,

if not all, community

prosecution programs are

young and evolving, and

evaluation strategies should

consider a program’s relative

maturity when measuring

results. In short, community prosecution programs

should be evaluated based on their achievement of

implementation-stage goals first and on measurable results

after the planned strategy is successfully implemented.

As an innovation, community prosecution represents

elements unique to prosecution and its relationship 

with the community. It also shares goals, problems, 

and methods in common with other community justice

initiatives such as community policing, community courts,

and community probation. Efforts to measure the impact 

of community prosecution initiatives can both draw on

lessons learned in evaluating innovations in related

community justice areas and address the unique features 

of community prosecution. 

The prosecutor and the community

must be viewed as both agents

and targets of change.
• 9 •

(continued)

Table 3. Implementation and Outcomes of Community Prosecution

Key Dimensions Prosecution Function Community Role Interaction of Both

Target Problems

Implementation Types/number of problems Input in defining Collaboration in identifying 

identified. problems. problems.

Strategies implemented to Participation in devising/ Collaboration in devising/

address problems. implementing strategies. implementing strategies.

Outcomes Outcomes per Community Problems successfully

problem area. improvement. addressed.

Accountability.

Satisfaction with outcomes.

Target Area

Implementation Services, actions added Cooperation, Defining, agreeing 

per geographic area. assistance. to area.

Outcomes Improved measures of target Improved working 

problems in geographic area. relationship.

Role of Community

Implementation Types/methods/frequency of Types/methods/frequency Access to government and 

involvement. of involvement. policy formulation.

Problems identified. Community access.

Suggested strategies. Suggested strategies.

Outcomes Improved community Improved community Improved communication 

links. access/participation. on crime/related problems.

Improved satisfaction. Improved satisfaction. Ownership.

Improved impact on target Impact on target areas.

problems.

Improved accountability.

Content of Response 

to Community

Implementation Specific programs, components, Specific role (cooperation, Project-specific functions.

services added. participant, recipient).

Outcomes Impact of specific programs. Community view of success. Measure of success, impact.

Organization of 

Prosecutor’s Office

Implementation Geographic assignment. Organization, representation. New partnerships.

Reorganization. Areas/neighborhoods. Improved prosecution.

New procedures/staff Access to prosecutor/other 

assessment/values. agencies/resources.

New programs.

Outcomes Effectiveness, Effectiveness of procedures New procedures for 

efficiency. for participation. collaboration.

Relative costs.

Culture change/acceptance.

Impact of new procedures.

Improved reputation.

Case Processing

Implementation Content of workday.

Community contact/outreach.

Identification of problems.

Litigation/vertical.
• 10 •

Analysis suggests that an evaluation framework must begin

by identifying the key dimensions of the community

prosecution approach to frame performance measurement

appropriately. The structure of community prosecution

strategies presented in table 3 is one such useful

framework for evaluation, one that can be refined through

feedback from jurisdictions involved in community

prosecution and participants in the process. The

proliferation and diversity of community prosecution

programs underscore the need for rigorous assessment of

their impact. Evaluation can provide jurisdictions with data

to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various elements

and approaches and contribute to the development of best

practices for community prosecution initiatives across the

nation.

Notes

1. Barbara Boland, 1998. 

2. Elaine Nugent and Gerard A. Rainville, 2000. 

3. Information from 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).

4. 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 for the District of

Columbia (Draft, January 2000).

5. Based on visits to two Denver community prosecution

sites, Capitol Hill and Globeville.

6. Neighborhood DA Unit Projects Update, March 1998,

www.multnomah.lib.or.us/da/nbda.html.

7. The description of the process is based on observation

of a Capitol Hill Community Justice Council meeting and

conversations with members and site officials. 

8. John S. Goldkamp et al., 2001. 

9. Boland, p. 258.

References

Boland, Barbara. 1998. “Community Prosecution:

Portland’s Experience.” In Community Justice: An

Emerging Field, David R. Karp, ed. 253–277. Lanham,

MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Goldkamp, John S., Cheryl Irons-Guynn, and Doris

Weiland. 2001. Community Prosecution Strategies:

Measuring Impact. Philadelphia, PA: Crime and Justice

Research Institute.

Nugent, Elaine, and Gerard A. Rainville. 2000. “The State

of Community Prosecution: Results of a National Survey.”

Paper presented at the American Society of Criminology

2000 Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California,

November 13–17.

Weinstein, Susan P. 1998. “Community Prosecution:

Community Policing’s Legal Partner.” FBI Law

Enforcement Bulletin 67/4: 19–24.

Table 3. Implementation and Outcomes of Community Prosecution (continued)

Key Dimensions Prosecution Function Community Role Interaction of Both

Case Processing(continued)

Outcomes Community contacts.

Problems identified.

Strategies decided.

Matters addressed/type.

Resolutions/cases/types.

Staff satisfaction.

Collaboration

Implementation New working relationships with New overall working New planning, problemagencies, organizations. relationship. solving role.

Expanded planning.

Added multiagency services.

Outcomes Impact of collaboration on Routine interaction, growth 

services and outcomes/problems. of relationship.
• 11 •

Web Sites

American Prosecutors Research Institute

www.ndaa.org/apri/programs/community_pros/index.html

APRI’s National Center for Community Prosecution, a

partnership with BJA, provides research, training, and

technical assistance to prosecutors through workshops,

publications, site visits, and consultations.

Center for Court Innovation

www.courtinnovation.org

Provides information on the center’s demonstration 

projects, use of innovative technology, web sites,

publications, and technical assistance services.

Community Justice Exchange

www.communityjustice.org

Offers information and assistance to help bring together

criminal justice agencies and ordinary citizens to make

communities safer. Includes an online library, a national

programs database, and sections on best practices,

planning, and site visits.

Executive Office for Weed and Seed

www.ojp.usdoj.gov/eows

Provides federal leadership for multiagency strategies to

weed out violence and crime in target neighborhoods

and seed economic and social revitalization.

Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office

www.multnomah.lib.or.us/da/nbda.html

Chronicles the activities of this pioneering agency’s 

Neighborhood DA Unit in Portland, Oregon. Discusses

specific problems and strategies in each district served by

the office.

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

www.usdoj.gov/cops 

Promotes and supports strategies to reduce crime

through problem-solving tactics and community-police

partnerships.

U.S. Conference of Mayors 

www.usmayors.org/uscm/best_practices 

Compiles communities’ best practices in community 

problem solving.

Vera Institute of Justice

www.vera.org

Offers information and web links on the Vera Institute’s

demonstration programs and technical assistance

projects.

RESOURCES

RELATED Publications

Community Courts: An Evolving Model

BJA Monograph. 2000. NCJ 183452 

Examines the community court movement and the 

role of the community court in a community’s 

daily life.

Community Justice Profiles

Center for Court Innovation. 2000. NCJ 182871

Profiles specific elements of four community justice 

programs: developing new community justice tools 

(Austin), engaging the community (Denver), building 

partnerships (Indianapolis), and the dynamics of 

problem solving (Portland).

Community Justice in Rural America:

Four Examples and Four Futures

BJA Monograph. 2001. NCJ 182437

Describes the experiences of four small, rural

communities in which community justice is flourishing.

Developing an Evaluation Plan for Community

Courts: Assessing the Hartford Community 

Court Model

BJA Monograph. 2001. NCJ 185689

Discusses the Hartford, Connecticut, adaptations of the

Midtown Community Court model and outlines an 

evaluation plan for assessing the Hartford court’s 

progress and impact.

Responding to the Community: Principles for 

Planning and Creating a Community Court

BJA Bulletin. 2001. NCJ 185986

Presents common principles for planning and creating

community courts, using the Midtown Community

Court in New York City as a case study.

Strategies for Prosecution: Red Hook 

Community Justice Center

Kings County Office of the District Attorney. 2001.

NCJ 190645.

Discusses the experiences of the Red Hook

Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, New York, as a

criminal justice agency and as a vital community

resource.

To access these publications, visit the National Criminal

Justice Reference Service web site at www.ncjrs.org.
This document was prepared by the Crime and Justice

Research Center, 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.

Photos © 2001 Corbis and © 1997–1999 PhotoDisc, Inc.

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

Bureau of Justice Assistance

Washington, DC 20531

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The analytic framework and the site data on which this

bulletin is based involved observations, interviews, and

discussions with officials and key actors in prosecutors’

offices across the country. Unfortunately, they are too

numerous to mention here. Our thanks to them all for

their cooperation, enthusiasm, and patience.

We are extremely grateful to Barbara Boland and

Catherine Coles, pioneers in community prosecution

research, for generously sharing their time, knowledge,

insights, and extensive research into community justice.

We also wish to thank Michael Kuykendall, Community

Prosecution Program Director of the American

Prosecutors Research Institute, for his support of our

efforts.

NCJ 192826

November 2002

*NCJ~192826*