Website of the Month: Community Justice Exchange

http://www.communityjustice.org 

The Community Justice Exchange is a project of the Center for Court Innovation in New York and provides information and assistance to community justice planners across the United States. The website includes information of interest to newcomers as well as those involved in community justice programming.  

About the Exchange provides an overview of resources, with a link to “What is Community Justice?” Community justice involves collaboration between the criminal justice system and citizens in order to support neighbourhood-based problem-solving and decision-making.   

Three main sections provide practical information about community justice:

• Best Practices introduces problem-solving courts and principles of community courts.  Numerous interviews and programme profiles are arranged under headings of “national scene” (by location), “first person” (personal perspectives), “project profiles” and “what works” (highlighting problem-solving strategies).

• The Planning Guide provides step-by-step advice on programme development.  Topics include problem definition and concept development, funding, community engagement, facilities and technology, publicity and evaluation.

• Connect With Peers features a searchable national database of programs.  It also includes a form for signing up to the Exchange network, a list of available publications and recommended reading, and information about visiting New York's Midtown Community Court and the Red Hook Community Justice Center. 

The Contact page provides information for reaching the Community Justice Exchange, while the Links page briefly explains and connects to several related groups, categorized by type of organization.  Under Headlines on the homepage, a late 2003 story discusses the current development of the community court model outside the U.S.  Also, an Ask the Experts section functions as a “virtual roundtable”, with answers to several questions about community justice listed. 

From the homepage, “ Interested in Community Courts?” links to an index of the pages on the website that relate specifically to community courts, in the three categories above.  Similarly, the “ Interested in Community Prosecution?” page highlights community prosecution information on the site.  The latter of these includes some additional pages under Connect With Peers, such as an organizational Prosecution Links page, and a list of U.S. communities that have receive Community Prosecution grants. 

The Bureau of Justice Assistance in the U.S. Department of Justice provides support for the Community Justice Exchange.

Jonathan Morton
June 2004