Center For Court Innovation - Research

Research

The Center publishes research about its own experiments and innovative initiatives around the United States and world. The purpose of the research is to identify best practices as well as strategies that don't work or can be improved upon.

Researchers from the Center spent three years documenting the performance New York’s drug courts. The resulting impact evaluation found significant reductions in recidivism at all drug courts (urban, suburban, rural) —an average of 29 percent over a three-year post-arrest period. When researchers looked at just drug court graduates, they found a 71 percent reduction in recidivism.

The findings, released in 2003 and reported widely around the country (including an article in the Sunday New York Times), were significant because they were among the few studies to track participants in multiple drug courts over a long (three-year) study period. In another study, Center researchers followed over 400 domestic violence offenders from the Bronx in a randomized trial and found that batterers programs had no discernible impact on recidivism. This finding, which calls into question the efficacy of batterer programs, could eventually lead to changes in how misdemeanor offenders are handled, not just in New York but across the country.

In another study, Center researchers explored whether problem-solving justice always requires a specialized court or if core principles and practices from these specialized courts are transferable to conventional courts. After interviewing judges, attorneys and representatives from probation departments and service providers, researchers concluded that a number of principles—such as judicial monitoring and linking offenders to services—could be transferable. The study, conducted in cooperation with the Collaborative Justice Courts Advisory Committee of the Judicial Council of California, was the first of its kind in the country.

Other Center research projects include a national survey seeking to determine how and why courts use batterer programs to hold domestic violence offenders accountable; a comprehensive evaluation describing the Brooklyn Mental Health Court model; an in-depth study of the implementation and early results produced by the Brooklyn Youthful Offender Domestic Violence Court; a study of the Suffolk County Juvenile Drug Court’s effects on recidivism; a study examining the degree to which criminal defendants processed at the Red Hook Community Justice Center believe they were treated fairly; and a five-year national study with the Urban Institute and the Research Triangle Institute that is expected to shed light on which aspects of the drug court model are most important.

In 2010, Urban Institute Press published Trial & Error in Criminal Justice Reform: Learning from Failure by Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox. In 2005, The New Press published Good Courts: The Case for Problem-Solving Justice. The first book to describe the problem-solving court movement in detail, Good Courts features profiles of Center demonstration projects, including the Midtown Community Court and the Red Hook Community Justice Center, portraits of practitioners in the trenches and a review of research findings. “Sociologists and those within the legal system will no doubt be intrigued by this accessible and provocative call for change,” Publishers Weekly said in its review. All authors’ proceeds from the book, which is being used in law schools and public policy classes, benefit the Center for Court Innovation. The book is already being used in law schools and public policy schools, thanks in part to a law school course on problem-solving justice that the Center piloted at Fordham Law School. The Center has also published the books Daring to Fail: First-Person Stories of Criminal Justice Reform, A Problem-Solving Revolution: Making Change Happen in State Courts, Documenting Results: Research on Problem-Solving Justice, and Personal Stories: Narratives from Across New York State.

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