Center for Court Innovation
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| Type | Nonprofit organization, think tank |
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| Headquarters | New York, NY, United States |
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Director
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Greg Berman |
| Website | www.courtinnovation.org/ |
The Center for Court Innovation is an American non-profit organization headquartered in New York which helps the justice system aid victims, reduce crime and improve public trust in justice.
The Center for Court Innovation works closely with the New York State Unified Court System, functioning as the judiciary's independent research and development arm. In that role, the Center creates demonstration projects that test new ideas. The Center’s projects include the Midtown Community Court and Red Hook Community Justice Center as well as drug courts, reentry courts,domestic violence courts,mental health courts and others.
The Center also works closely with jurisdictions around the U.S. and the rest of the world, disseminating lessons learned from innovative programs and providing hands-on assistance to criminal justice practitioners interested in deploying new research-based strategies to improve the delivery of justice. The Center, which received an Innovations in American Government Award from the Ford Foundation and Harvard University, was founded in 1996. The Center's first director was John Feinblatt, who went on to serve as a senior advisor to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Since 2002, the Center has been led by Greg Berman.
The Center for Court Innovation grew out of a single experiment in judicial problem solving. The Midtown Community Court was created in 1993 to address low-level offending around Times Square. The Midtown Court combines punishment and help, sentencing offenders to perform community service and receive social services. The project’s perceived success in making justice more visible and more meaningful led the court’s planners, with the support of New York State’s chief judge, to establish the Center for Court Innovation to serve as an engine for ongoing court reform in New York.
The Center works within the court system, but is administered as a project of the Fund for the City of New York, a non-profit operating foundation. The Center works closely with court system staff but, as an independent organization, retains the perspective of independent observers. According to former New York State Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, "In creating the Center, we essentially adapted a model from the private sector: we chose to make an ongoing investment in research and development, and we chose to shield these functions from the daily pressures of managing the courts. The results have been unmistakable: the Center for Court Innovation has helped keep New York at the forefront of court reform for more than a decade."
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