|
BLACK-SHEEP COMMENTARIES by DCC IS COURTING DISASTER September 17, 2008 HERE we go again, skipping down the harm-reduction lane with a Downtown Community Court, opened for business on Sept. 10. Set in a sterile and disused pre-trial jail behind the Criminal Court at 222 Main Street, the DCC will be a revolving-door court for drug addicts, a finger-in-the-dyke experiment that lacks the critical support of detoxification and residential treatment premises. Chief Judge Stansfield, Judge Thomas Gove and Attorney General Wallace Oppal have been rhapsodizing over this so-called community court – promoting it as a silver bullet that will purge the Downtown Eastside of drug addiction and criminality. This evangelical promise is based on the success, real or imagined, of New York City’s Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn. But to compare the two is misleading. Red Hook deals with a core problem of drug addiction and minor felony offences. Through vigorous leadership by acclaimed Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes, and community support, it has become a wide-ranging community justice centre. In a commentary published in the San Francisco Sentinel on August 23, 2007, Hynes described a wide range of services available to “offenders, victims and any one in the community who comes in seeking help. Sentences frequently include intensive drug or alcohol treatment, mediation, batterer’s programs, anger management classes, youth groups, vehicular programs, “John School” and more. At any given time the Justice Center monitors over 100 defendants in court-mandated treatment, usually for low-level drug offences.” “The Red Hook Community Justice Center opened in phases. First we established an Americorps program of 50 volunteers who fix broken windows in public housing developments, tutor students who need extra help, and link victims to crime assistance and other social services. Later, we established a youth court that trains local teenagers to serve as jurors, judges and attorneys, handling real-life cases involving their peers. Finally, in 2000, the full court – christened Red Hook Community Justice Center – opened for business.” “Red Hook is also a multi service court. It hears housing cases and family cases – and it brings those cases along with criminal cases before a single judge.” Hynes, who has been Brooklyn’s elected district attorney for 18 years, is justifiably proud of the transformation of the Red Hook waterfront neighbourhood “which includes both the largest public housing development in Brooklyn and blocks of quaint row houses – revitalized, with safe streets, safe parks, new businesses, and supportive citizens who are working together on even greater improvements.” By contrast, when you sift through the preaching of Oppal and Gove you are left with nothing more than another adventure in harm reduction, and once again the unspeakable: let victims be damned. Wily addicts will manipulate the DCC: too many of them idling along on methadone mixed with other drugs; most of them accustomed to endless access to syringes; some of them enjoying the comfort of enablement at Insite; and all of them absolutely certain that they will not receive a significant stint in jail for their parasitical thievery and thuggery. On Sept 9, Oppal and Gove were interviewed on CKNW by Bill Good. When Good said “We don’t have the services to make this court work”, Oppal countered with a lame response that there will be a lot more housing, but said nothing about insufficient detox and residential treatment facilities. Gove waxed on about his belief in individual “problem solving,” yet he admitted that “it’ll take us a few years” to do what New York did. Oppal blundered when he attributed the remarkable drop in homicides and crime in New York City to their community courts. Crime and homicide in New York City tumbled down in the 1990s after the NYPD was reorganized by then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commisioner William Bratton. Their 40,000-strong police force was made extremely effective and accountable in the embrace of COMPSTAT, a computer program that produces instant data on the incidence of crime. It was only under the umbrella of effective policing that Red Hook Community Justice Center became a success and a factor in the reduction of crime. With one judge working five days a week, the Downtown Community Court will not reduce the menace of addict-driven criminality raging unchecked around the Downtown Eastside. It is first and last a pot-bound court in an old jail building, fiddling along while the Downtown Eastside burns. * * * Published by the North Shore News on Wednesday, September 17, 2008.
Contact Judicial
Gadfly at:
wallace-gilby-craig@realjustice.ca |
|
|
