Center City Philadelphia

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TESTIMONY BEFORE PHILADELPHIA CITY COUNCIL

COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY

RESOLUTION NO. 080177

William Babcock, Esq.
Community Court Coordinator
CENTER CITY DISTRICT

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

We thank Chairwoman Miller and the Committee on Public Safety for your interest in the Philadelphia Community Court (“the Court”) and for the opportunity to testify before the Committee today. I am Bill Babcock, Coordinator for the Court and an employee of the Center City District.

If I have a simple message today it is that after 7 years of operations, the Community Court is an overwhelming success. It is effectively addressing quality of life crimes and reducing their negative impact on Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. Since 70% of those arrested for quality of life crimes suffer from drug and alcohol abuse, the Court is addressing those underlying problems by providing on-site access to a broad array of social and medical services and preventing many individuals from spiraling downward into more pernicious forms of addiction and from committing more serious crimes. Finally, through an emphasis on restorative justice, the Court is insuring that defendants are repaying communities for the harm they have caused by performing community sentences. In the interest of time, I will skip over the background of the court in my oral testimony, but have provided it in detail in the written testimony that I’m submitting.

The Court originated as a response to surveys conducted by CCD in the early 1990s, to determine what people who lived, worked and visited Center City liked and did not like about the central business district. The survey results showed that people appreciated the cleaner Center City, but that they continued to be concerned about public safety. However, it was not major crimes that caused the concern; it was quality of life (“QOL”) crimes, such as prostitution, public drunkenness, and theft from auto that made people fearful.

And the criminal justice system at that time was not equipped to handle those cases. Police statistics showed that about 70% of the arrestees had drug or alcohol problems and an overlapping 30% had mental health disorders. Yet, defendants were released to the street unsupervised with citations or subpoenas to appear in court 30 or more days later. Not surprisingly, none of these defendants received treatment for their disorders and many both failed to appear for their scheduled hearings and committed additional crimes while back on the street.

In a search to find a more effective way to handle QOL crimes, we visited the Midtown Community Court (“Midtown”) in New York City’s Time Square district. Midtown was the very first community court and was designed specifically to address QOL crimes by combining social services with the judicial system. Following visits to Midtown by representatives of all of the City’s criminal justice and social service agencies, a steering committee was formed and Bill was hired by CCD to staff the committee and coordinate the efforts to create a community court in Philadelphia. That effort resulted 4 years later in partial funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts and other foundations and government entities, the creation of an operational plan, the renovation of the 2d floor at 1401 Arch St to house the Court, and a Memorandum of Understanding entered into by the City and all of the participating agencies.

The Court opened for business on February 25, 2002. While the initial plan was for the Court to include only the 6th and 9th police districts, in order to provide a sufficient caseload to make optimal use of the assignment of a full-time Municipal Court judge, the boundaries when the Court opened also included the 3rd, 17th and 23rd police districts and portions of the 16th and 18th. In 2003, the boundaries were expanded again to increase the caseload. At the request of the Police Department, that was accomplished by adding the 1st, 4th and 22nd Districts. The final expansion up to our current boundaries of ten police districts occurred when the Police Department requested that the Court include all of the 16th and 18th Districts, an area of approximately 26 square miles in which 421,000 Philadelphia residents live and where over 500,000 people work and visit each day.

To avoid the high failure to appear rates customarily found in these cases, the Court’s operational plan provides that defendants arrested during hours of operation are brought to the Court for same-day adjudications, and those arrested during non-business hours are given citations or subpoenas to appear on the very next business day. To address the high percentage of arrestees with substance abuse problems, four social service staff from the Department of Behavioral Health (“DBH”) are located on site to do initial screenings, make sentencing recommendations, perform full drug and alcohol assessments, conduct drug treatment readiness and anger management classes, and place defendants in long-term treatment programs, including obtaining insurance coverage and providing case work oversight. From our opening in February 2002 through December 2008, social service staff had done 1,711 drug and alcohol assessments; 11,328 clients had attended at least one of our offered classes; and 486 clients had completed long term treatment.

To address the problems of defendants with mental health disorders, DBH has provided mental health training to the Court’s social service staff and back up support to determine the proper placement for those in need of treatment.

To address non-treatment needs that may have resulted in a defendant’s criminal behavior, the Court may also order a social service assessment to determine whether the defendant may need assistance with housing, employment, literacy training, etc. The social service staff has developed an extensive network of referrals for such services, and in the case of one agency, BEBASHI, has arranged to have staff from that organization on site once a month to meet with clients to address HIV/AIDS issues.

The Court also has a part-time public health nurse on site to provide an array of services, including emergency care, health education classes, primarily for defendants charged with prostitution, medical examinations to determine ability to perform court-ordered community service, and testing and counseling for sexually transmitted diseases (“STD”). The latter is especially important because of the number of defendants charged with offenses that put them at risk for STDs. For those requiring a continuation of care and do not have a primary physician, the nurse arranges for them to be seen at the Mary Howard Health Clinic. The nurse also works closely with the social service staff to identify defendants with drug/alcohol or mental health treatment needs. Through December 2008, the nurse had seen 3,116 clients.

In addition to addressing the defendants’ underlying social service needs, the Court also includes a punishment/restitution component. Rather than imposing incarceration at a time when our jails are far beyond their rated capacities, the Court assigns community service – usually 3 or 4 days – which serves as both a punishment and restitution to the neighborhoods that have been harmed by the crime. Defendants are placed with pre-approved non-profit organizations, which supervise the assignments and report back to the Court as to whether a defendant has appeared and performed the work. The work generally involves outdoor cleaning services not otherwise provided by the City. Through December 2008, our clients had performed 407,772 hours of community service. Using the minimum wage as the standard, the value of the work performed to the neighborhoods was $2,356,167.

The Court also has been effective in collecting monetary restitution, where appropriate, as well as fines and costs. Through December 2008, the Court had collected and dispensed $33,319 in restitution to individual victims. We do not yet have data on fines and costs through 2008, but through June 2007, we had collected $1,439,894. It should be noted that this is money that by and large had not previously been collected in summary offense cases prior to the establishment of the Court, and none of that money comes back to the Court.

When a defendant pleads guilty or no contest, the Court’s sentence is suspended. The carrot at the end of the stick for the defendants is that, if they complete their community service and social service requirements and pay their court costs, the District Attorney’s Office withdraws the charges and no conviction appears on an individual’s record.

In the design and early operation of the Court, we obtained a great deal of technical assistance from the Center for Court Innovation, a spin-off from the Midtown Community Court and the organization that oversees the development of subsequent problem-solving courts in New York City, such as Red Hook. However, it is fair to say that, after seven years of operation, the Philadelphia Community Court has become a model for other jurisdictions in its own right, not only in the United States but around the world. Since our opening, we have been visited by representatives from Washington, D.C., California, Germany, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Ireland, and, more locally, the Judiciary Committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

We support the idea of creating additional community courts in Philadelphia, much as New York City has done with courts at Midtown, Red Hook, Harlem and the Bronx. In fact, when we first appeared before City Council to request funding for this Court, we presented it as a demonstration project, which, if effective, could be exported to other neighborhoods in the City. However, it is our position today that the City must first make sure that it appropriately funds the existing Community Court that is working successfully before it begins planning other community courts.

It is important to underscore that the Community Court succeeds not only because of the expenditure of criminal justice resources, but because of extensive social services and administrative coordination. The current consolidated budget for the Community Court is about $1,750,000. Of this amount, in rough numbers, $200,000 is provided by the First Judicial District; $580,000 is provided from the budgets of the District Attorney, Public Defender and Police Department; the Department of Behavioral Health provides $195,000; the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation/Independence Foundation contribute $60,000; the City of Philadelphia directly pays rent, utilities and operating expenses in the amount of $200,000; and the Center City District will contribute about $515,000 this year to support all administrative and coordination functions, as well as community service supervision, that help these diverse partners function as an effective team. Without all these partners committing resources and staff the Court simply would not work.

However, even before the current budget crisis in Philadelphia, we were informed by Municipal Court that it would not be able to fund two of the personnel positions integral to our operation beyond June 2009. Now, with the City asking the First Judicial District to take additional budget cuts in FY10, the very survival of the existing Community Court is very much in jeopardy. And without a commitment from the City to continued funding of the Court, the CCD will no longer be prepared to provide the over $500,000 each year to administer and support the operation, despite its obvious success.

An option to opening a new community court(s) would be to expand the boundaries of the existing one by adding an additional police district(s). However, because we already include 10 police districts, such a decision must take into consideration the size of the Court’s caseload and our ability to service and supervise clients who are even more geographically removed from 1401 Arch Street. (How far will clients travel to take advantage of the Court’s services?) The Court’s existing caseload includes not only new arrests, but all of those clients who are brought back for status hearings to determine whether they have completed the terms of their sentences, AND a third list of cases that are not technically Community Court cases but are assigned here for trials because Municipal Court has nowhere else to put them. Therefore, an analysis would need to be done as to how many new cases an additional police district would generate and whether the Court could absorb them, both in terms of courtroom personnel and program personnel.

In conclusion, we believe that the Philadelphia Community Court actually saves the City money, reducing prison costs, reducing the cost of more serious drug addiction, reducing recidivism, and reducing the number of more harmful and more serious crimes. So we are fully supportive of replicating or expanding the Community Court. But none of these conversations make much sense if the City is not prepared to continue funding for the existing operation.