Center for Justice Innovation: National Community Court Initiative

Under Category 6 of the FY23 Adult Treatment Court Planning, Training, Technical Assistance, and Resource Center Initiative, Justice Innovation Inc. doing business as Center for Justice Innovation (Center) requests $2,500,000 over two years to support jurisdictions around the country to plan, launch, and operate community courts that reduce the use of incarceration, prevent further crime, and improve public trust in the justice-system through the National Community Court Initiative project.

To achieve this goal, the Center will: (1) Ensure courts provide services that reduce stigma and are culturally responsive; (2) Provide targeted training and technical assistance to grant recipients; (3) Convene grantee learning communities to explore best practices and lessons learned; (4) Provide training and technical assistance to the community court field at large; (5) Assist grantees in collecting and reporting performance metrics data and make recommendations for improvement; (6) Assist grantees in disseminating information and updates about their projects within their community throughout the life of the project; and (7) Conduct meetings with BJA to assess and report site progress and performance.

The Center will create grantee learning committees and provide expert TA coaches to assess and implement individualized TTA to each grantee based on adult learning theory; develop and disseminate community courts-related publications, host webinars, attend and present at conferences, maintain online resources, and conduct trainings; and develop data collection and evaluation protocols. The Center also will employ subject matter experts and establish a National Community Justice Advisory Board to ensure implementation of evidence-based best practices.

As the only BJA Community Courts Initiative TTA provider since the inception of the National Community Courts Initiative in 2010, and the current TTA provider for several other BJA programs, including the BJA State-Based Adult Drug Court Program, the Center is well positioned to successfully continue to serve as BJA’s Community Courts TTA provider.

The Center’s approach to providing community courts TTA is: 1) Practitioner-based: the Center is the world’s leading community court practitioner and has unparalleled expertise to support community court grantees; 2) Data-driven: the Center encourages criminal justice agencies to use data to target problems and track program success; 3) Community-focused: the Center encourages criminal justice agencies to focus on solving local problems and engaging the community; and 4) Results-oriented: the Center works to produce concrete results, including reducing crime, aiding victims, changing the behavior of offenders, and improving public trust in justice.