South Carolina's 14th Circuit: 'Bringing the Teaching Hospital Model to the Criminal Justice System'.

• Author: Stone, Duffie

If you were staring down a serious disease and could pick any medical facility in the United States for treatment, I would bet that the Cleveland Clinic, the Mayo Clinic, Duke University and, of course, Johns Hopkins would be at the top of your list. All of these facilities offer excellent patient care. They also have one other thing in common. They are built on the teaching-hospital model created by Johns Hopkins.

In 1873, Baltimore financier and philanthropist Johns Hopkins died and left $7 million in his will for the creation of both a medical university and "a hospital that would administer the finest patient care, train superior physicians and seek new knowledge for the advancement of medicine." (1) Hopkins intended to integrate the two to produce innovation in clinical care, teaching and discovery. In the 150 years since, the teaching-hospital model has revolutionized medical care.

I believe a similar model can bring improvements to the criminal-justice system, as well. That is the aim of the 14th Circuit Justice Institute, which officially opened in October 2019 in Okatie, S.C.

With no wealthy benefactor, the Justice Institute is not a turn-key operation. It will be developed over time. However, there was no question about where to begin. We started with the "hospital" component and an emphasis on practical application.

We first relocated from a cramped office park to a 25,000-square-foot building to house our prosecutors, victim advocates, investigators, treatment-court professionals and intelligence unit. Of course, these functions are prevalent among most prosecutors' offices throughout the country. Indeed, they already existed within our office. But with the additional space, we were able to add the first two components of the Justice Institute programs--a Victim Services Center and a Childrens Center.

The Victim Services Center is staffed by nongovernmental organizations and provides a wide range of services for crime victims. Hopeful Horizons, our area's primary sexual assault and domestic violence victim assistance organization provides child and adult counseling and emergency shelter. Low country Legal Assistance provides victims assistance in civil court for everything from child support to restraining orders. The Center also has outreach organizations such as the Child Abuse Prevention Association and the Low country Coalition for a Healthy Youth. We provide each of these organizations rent free office space with the...