Today, there are literally thousands of problem-solving courts that are testing new approaches to difficult cases where social, human and legal problems intersect. These include community courts that seek to improve the quality of life in neighborhoods struggling with crime and disorder, drug courts that link addicted offenders to treatment instead of incarceration, and domestic violence courts that emphasize victim safety and defendant accountability. In recent years, many in the field have sought to "go to scale" with problem-solving justice, testing key problem-solving principles outside of the specialized court context. For example, the Bureau of Justice Assistance of the U.S. Department of Justice launched the Community-Based Problem-Solving Criminal Justice Initiative, which funded ten demonstration projects around the U.S. This page contains numerous resources to help practitioners interested in applying problem-solving techniques more widely at the local level.
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Theron Bowman has been chief of the Arlington Police Department since 1999. In January 2007, he participated in a roundtable, assembled by the Center for Court Innovation and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, to discuss failure and innovation in criminal justice, a transcript was published in the first issue of the Journal of Court Innovation. In June 2007, he spoke with the Center further about how he encourages innovation in Arlington.
Chief Bowman at the "Failure Roundtable" held in the Center for Court Innovation's
New York office in January 2007
Q: It sounds like you do a lot of experimenting with new ideas. How do you create an environment that welcomes experimentation?
You have to engrain this philosophy into the culture of the organization, until it becomes who you are. We have a fairly elaborate awards and recognition system where we recognize desirable behavior. We make a big deal when employees engage in innovations, and make sure that everybody knows about them. We have throughout the city what we call the BEST program that challenges employees to create new ways of becoming more efficient and more effective, and though the BEST program selected projects receive some sort of monetary or gift award at the city level. So we reward good behavior, we talk about it every time we get the opportunity to put it in front of employees, and we encourage innovations. Employees know that innovation is good and that mistakes are sometimes inevitable.
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ROUNDTABLE
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Statewide Coordination of Problem-Solving Courts
The Center for Court Innovation and the Bureau of Justice Assistance sponsor a roundtable on statewide management of problem-solving courts.
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FEATURED PUBLICATION
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Don't Reinvent the Wheel: Lessons from Problem-Solving Courts
by Robert V. Wolf
A review of nine practical strategies to break down the conceptual and in some cases practical barriers that separate specialized courts from each other and the world of problem-solving from traditional courts.
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