Alternative approaches to problem solving.

• Position: Special state courts - Panel Discussion

PANELISTS:

Susan Finlay Center for Problem Solving Courts

Richard Hopper Hennepin County Community Court

Derek Denckla Center for Court Innovation

John S. Goldkamp Temple University

Susan Finlay Center for Problem Solving Courts

Good morning, everybody. I am Susan Finlay from San Diego. I retired from the Superior Court bench a couple of years ago after twenty years in the trenches doing criminal, civil, and juvenile matters.

Looking back, the highlight of my career was helping to start an adult drug court in the Southern Jurisdiction where my courthouse was, and then moving on to the juvenile court at the presiding judge's request to oversee the juvenile drug court there.

Those two courts, which were different systems, were really important to me in my career. I believed that I was helping make my community a better place, which was why ! wanted to be a lawyer in the first place.

I have been in this business for thirty-four years, not as long as some but I remember as a brand-new lawyer, after being in my office for several months, going in to my senior partner and saying, "I'm just sick of people's problems."

And he said, "Susan, what do you think a lawyer is supposed to do? People don't come to you unless they have some problems." And I said, "Oh, okay." And he said, "If you're not interested in problem solving, you had better look at a different profession."

Well, here I am, all those years later, working with the Center for Problem Solving Courts with Judge Tauber, looking at ways, creative and innovative ways, that courts, lawyers, and other people in the system have discovered to solve the problems that they are facing every day.

The Center for Problem Solving Courts is trying to take an overview of this proliferation of innovative, creative problem solving from coast to coast, and it is an amazing experience because new courts are springing up every time I take a look, and I find out about another one.

We are also interested in educating people in the criminal justice system in regard to the various models and approaches, including the case-management systems that are compatible with problem-solving-court philosophies.

That said, I used to believe that judicial education was the way to effect change, so I became dean of the California Judicial College while I was a judge, followed by Judge Peggy Hora, who came after me. I took a course offered by Judge Hora in alcohol and other drugs in 1994, and all of a sudden the light came on when I understood addiction, and I realized that just telling a person, "Don't do it again or I'm going to send you to jail," was spitting in the wind. It didn't make a difference.

I was shocked to think that I had spent so much of my career, well-meaning--and as a defense lawyer I got people in programs and I really tried--well-meaning but not really understanding what addiction is.

In the defense of those in my generation, I would like to add that the information wasn't always there. It is through science and recent discoveries as to how the human brain works that we have learned more, but now there isn't really an excuse anymore, and we should know.

After leaving the bench, I went to work with West Huddleston at the National Drug Court Institute doing trainings across United States for jurisdictions interested in setting up drug courts. Marilyn Roberts, from the Office of Drug Court Programs, who is seated behind him, helps bring order to chaos, along with organizations like National Drug Court Institute, the Center, and the ABA. They bring order by attempting to find out what are the best practices, what are the red flags, what is dangerous here, what hurts people, what helps people, what works, what doesn't work, what are the technologies available to assist us in our efforts, and how we can do a better job.

So, with that, I would add my thanks to Fordham for being forward-looking, for bringing together an interdisciplinary group to look at this phenomenon called problem-solving courts, and trying to get a grasp of the picture of what is going on here: Where are we going from here?

My goal today is to just give you an overview of what we have seen regarding the various alternatives to problem solving in a justice system context--and I did not say criminal justice system because it also applies to civil--so in the justice system context, which of course is my background.

Problem-solving courts are all about collaborations and they are all about partnerships, and they are about disciplines working with each other.

We have problem-solving courts in about eight or nine other countries--Brazil, Australia, Canada we heard about; we mentioned Scotland earlier. Puerto Rico, where Professor Bruce Winick's partner, David Wexler, is ensconced. There is an International Association of Drug Court Professionals that Judge Tauber is either president of or former president.

The interest all over the world in how the court system, the justice system, can meet the needs of the community is stunning. It is really exciting and innovating.

So these are the professionals represented by us. There are others out there with whom we work together as partners to collaborate in this effort. And, of course, communications is important, as Jim McMillan pointed out--how do all these different agencies talk to each other?

One example that came to mind, when I was working in the juvenile drug court, we had a computer hookup between the schools, the probation department, the police, and the court. If a kid on probation was tardy at 7:30 in the morning, his probation officer knew about it when she got to work at 8:30 or 8:45, and the Court knew about it if the Court had asked to be immediately informed. Bingo! That was something that could not occur years ago without the technology.

And why is it important? Kids who aren't in school are in trouble nine times out of ten, and we needed to know what was happening. If school was a condition of their probation, certainly we would want to know that they were going to school. Maybe they're sick and home alone. We found that out. A lot of times, with both parents working, the child would be ill. Nobody knew. The phone would ring from the school or it didn't. Nobody answered, but the probation officer or the liaison police officer could visit the home to see, "Are you okay? Is everything all right here?"

The topic today, as I indicated, is "Alternative Approaches to Problem Solving," and the goal, my goal, is just an overview. We have heard about different types of problem-solving courts already. We've heard about the adult drug court, of course. That's the first so that's probably why. We've heard about juvenile drug courts, and we think there may be a little bit over 100 now juvenile drug courts.

There is an adult drug court in every state of the United States including Guam and Puerto Rico. That is amazing. We have mental health courts in eight states now, the last time I counted. It may be more. New York is coming on-line in March. The other states--Indiana, Alaska, Washington, Florida, California--that's Washington State. This is an amazing development.

The newest one is a juvenile mental health court that just started in January--we think that may be the first in the country--out of Los Angeles to deal with mentally ill and disturbed juveniles who heretofore have not had a place to be in the system to get the kind of help that they needed.

Unified family courts, that's a big movement. Family DV courts, that's family domestic violence hookups, where the family court that hears the divorce also becomes aware of the domestic violence, and when there's another domestic violence criminal case; the same judge gets both of them.

Back to the unified court theory, which was mentioned by Mark Thompson from Minnesota, a unified court means that there is one trial court instead of two different levels, like misdemeanors over here and felonies over here, and sometimes the same person committing a number of each. You have an opportunity to have one judge get familiar with that case, or at least one court level, one court home.

Homeless courts, speaking of home. We're seeing those grow in California up and down the coast. Maybe we get a lot of homeless because they don't freeze to death in the winter, I don't know. But the homeless courts take in the mentally ill, you bet. They take in the substance abusers, you bet. That's a high percent of who is out there on the streets. And then they hook them up with the services in the community that they need to get sober, to get medication, to get health care, dental care, a shower, food, whatever it is, and temporary housing to get them back on their feet.

I was in a homeless court a week ago Wednesday, and there were eighty-eight cases on calendar. Eighty-eight cases, for those of you who have been in court, can take a long time. The city attorney and a public defender met before the court. They went over all the proof that so-and-so had been to this program and done this community service and had a job, and blah-blah-blah.

The judge came out at two o'clock, called the calendar. Everything was done by 3 P.M.--eighty-eight cases. Of course, one guy, I still remember him--his name, well, I won't say his name--had two pages of the calendar all to himself. He had eighteen cases. We talk about the revolving door. My goodness! He had two pages of the calendar, and the judge congratulated him. All the cases were dismissed, the warrants had been recalled. Homeless people have a lot of warrants. They don't exactly have a post office or a mailbox where these notices to appear can arrive from the courts, so we could never find them to tell them we wanted to see them except by issuing a warrant arresting them.

So homeless courts, juvenile dependency drug courts, teen or youth courts--we heard about Red Hook's, and they are growing. School attendance performance court. I heard about a court in New Mexico, a juvenile court...