Youth Force has utilized the community court model developed by the Center for an Urban Future and partnered with the Department of Probation to design a peer court that is based on input from young people who have been incarcerated in Spofford Juvenile Detention Center and Rikers Island. In addition to all of the local agencies mentioned, the federal government has taken a keen interest in community courts and allocated millions of dollars through federal grants providing seed money to scores of new community courts throughout the country. Through the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department, more money is being channeled into extensive study of the growing community justice movement and the development of performance measures for these programs. The National Center for State Courts, the nation s primary court association, has formed a research wing to document all current and developing community court programs and promote them as an innovative model. Because it is one of the first truly grassroots efforts in the nation that has successfully blended in with the often ignored court system of local districts, counties and neighborhoods.
Community courts sound Republican and Democratic at the same time.
But, the community court movement is a democratic response to the tragedies of youth violence in high crime neighborhoods. Community courts allow neighborhoods to turn young people away from a life of crime early, rather than allow them to be yanked out of their homes and into state run prisons by a court process they have no connection to. Back to Center for an Urban Future . This page copyright 2001, by The Center for an Urban Future. This page maintained by David Cameron .