A COURT OF SECOND CHANCES

In a Tough New York Neighborhood, Justice Means More Than a Quick Ticket to
Jail

NEW YORK - For two years, Alex Calabrese has presided over a courtroom in
one of Brooklyn's toughest neighborhoods. But today, sitting in the former
parochial school that houses the Red Hook Community Justice Center, he
sounds more like a small-town principal than a New York City judge. "Are
you studying as much as you used to?" Judge Calabrese asks the dark-haired
16-year-old before him. The teen, accused of marijuana possession, stares
at his feet.

The judge already knows the answer. He reads the youth's report card, line
by line, to drive his point home: poor work habits, excessive absences, B's
turned to F's.

"All we're asking you is to do well in school," Calabrese says.

If the boy can stay out of trouble with the law, and in the classroom,
Calabrese tells him, he'll drop all charges.

Justice is dispensed differently at this courthouse, planted two years ago
in an isolated neighborhood wedged between a highway and New York Harbor.

Most "downtown" urban courts function like factories, more concerned about
quickly locking up felons than fixing a community's underlying problems.
But at Red Hook, Calabrese is more likely to sentence defendants to drug
treatment or community service than jail time. There is mediation for
squabbling neighbors, and a youth court where kids serve as judge and jury
(see story below).

And when Calabrese - the only judge here - is not lecturing defendants in
the courtroom, he might be watching Little League games coached by court
staff or mixing it up with parents at community meetings. It makes for a
long week, but Calabrese sayshe sought such involvement when he came to Red
Hook after two decades in New York's centralized criminal court.

To get a community's residents to trust and participate in the judicial
system, he says, "you have to go out and treat them with respect."

Changing perceptions of the system was as important to this court's
creators as changing the nature of punishment. That's where the Little
League comes in. That's why there is Monday afternoon model building and
the club dedicated to fixing things in the neighborhood park.

Whether the notion of justice that's compassionate rather than merely blind
has succeeded may become clearer this fall when Columbia University
researchers release an exhaustive study of the court's first two years.

For now, Calabrese points to evidence such as the rising number of teens
completing high school equivalency diplomas and the number of defendants
completing drug treatment.

Studies of similar programs show they've reduced street crimes such as
prostitution. They also show something else: Community courts cost more.

Perhaps that is why nationally, their growth has slowed since the concept's
debut a decade ago in Manhattan's Times Square.

In New York State, the commitment to justice that intervenes as well as
punishes remains high.

"We've shown that community justice works," says Jonathan Lippman, New York
state's chief administrative judge. The state opened its fifth such court
this year in Harlem.

Community justice came to Red Hook after gang crossfire killed local
elementary school principal Patrick Daly in 1992. Mr. Daly had gone to look
for a truant student in the sprawling housing project where 65 percent of
Red Hook's residents live.

After his death, Brooklyn's top judges and prosecutors began thinking about
how to reduce the area's drug crimes. Calabrese, then a Brooklyn criminal
court judge growing frustrated with repeatedly sentencing the same drug
users to short stretches in jail, signed up to implement the new approach
they proposed.

At Red Hook, Calabrese can sentence drug abusers to clean off graffiti
instead of going to jail. He can steer them toward high school equivalency
classes, job training, and drug counseling. "Downtown, you feel like you're
an artist with only two colors," he says. "Here, I have the whole Crayola
box. There are so many tools to bring to a problem."

Although Calabrese will oversee some 16,000 court appearances this year -
his court also serves adjacent communities in which about 200,000 people
live - he tries to give each defendant some personal acknowledgement. He
reminds one defendant caught with 27 Ziplocs of marijuana, that he wore the
same shirt with a gang color at his last appearance, and asks if the
defendant is a cousin of another repeat offender. "I know the whole
family," Calabrese says later.

And many others. Outside court, the Brooklyn native, who lives only 10
minutes away, serves as a goodwill ambassador to a community often wary of
law enforcement. When his caseload fell after Sept. 11, he handed out
fliers on the neighborhood's main street offering counseling.

His actions reflect the kind of trust-building activities the court's
organizers emphasized from the start. Residents helped pick the court's
location. When they said it was as important to create jobs as to fight
crime, the court hired a platoon of AmeriCorps members from within the
community. Called the Public Safety Corps and paid under the federal
national-service program, these workers do everything from mediating
disputes in high schools to helping domestic-violence victims fill out
paperwork. In return, they get on-the-job training, a $9,300 annual
stipend, and funds for education.

At first, local kids taunted them as a "snitch corps," believing them to be
police spies. Now, PSC member Stephanie Lovett says, residents seek her out
for advice. Lovett grew up in Red Hook and joined the safety corps as a
stay-at-home mother without a high school diploma. After finishing her two
years, she plans to go to college to become a teacher.

"[The PSC] has built more goodwill," says Phaedra Thomas, director of Red
Hook programs for the Lower Brooklyn Development Corp., which helps find
jobs for its graduates.

If the PSC is one of the court's successes, combating drug addiction
remains its greatest challenge. One in 10 people arraigned is referred for
drug treatment.

Unlike traditional courts, where addicts must first serve jail time,
treatment begins immediately. And someone charged with stealing car radios
may wind up in drug treatment as well as those arrested on drug charges.

Calabrese has seen the program work and seen it fail. One defendant, a
middle-aged mother, swung between counseling, inpatient rehab, and
continued drug abuse after her arrest for possession.

This April, she stood before the judge's bench for a ceremony marking three
months drug free.

"Treatment is not easy, treatment is difficult," Calabrese told her as he
showed her a picture taken at the time of her arrest. In a small ceremony,
he handed her a certificate and joined others in the courtroom in applause.

But three months later the woman, who had promised to continue counseling,
had vanished into the community.

"I'm not under any illusions we're going to help them get clean in 90
days," says the court's clinical director, Christina Herman. "My hope is
we've gotten people the most clean time they've had in a long time."

Such modest progress is the way Calabrese and other staff judge their
success. Where traditional courts measure speed from arrest to arraignment,
Calabrese points to the fact that 75 percent of defendants complete 30-day
drug treatment or community-service sentences. More alternative sentences
means less expensive prison time.

"It's helping the community get stronger," says Jean Bakitko, who arrived
at the court in 2000 as a crack addict under arrest. After 17 months of
inpatient rehab, he's about to move into a halfway house.

Then there are the intangible benefits. Residents have told PSC
interviewers they feel safer and less alienated from the courts. Playing
Little League with court officers or being mentored by prosecutors may
ensure fewer kids return as adult offenders.

Such involvement, however, is expensive. A study of Manhattan's Midtown
Community Court found it cost as much as $150 more per arraignment and that
no more than two-thirds of that added cost was offset by benefits such as
reduced use of jail space.

Community-justice advocates also question how far they should stray from
traditional justice.

"When you branch out that far you are exposing yourself to greater risks,"
says David Rottman of the National Center for State Courts, who has studied
community courts. "There's a danger that the core purposes of a court can
get downplayed."

For his part, Judge Lippman is convinced community courts can serve as
laboratories for improving the entire court system and helping to improve
individual neighborhoods such as Red Hook one person at a time.

Back in his chambers, surrounded by children's books that he gives young
visitors, Calabrese says he's never felt more committed to his job
dispensing justice. "I know we're succeeding on a day-to-day basis."

A court of peer pressure for these teen defendants

Stones carved with the words "boys" and "girls" adorn the entrance of the
Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. They're a vestige of
the former parochial school the building once housed, but might just as
well be welcoming the young people who still are a significant presence
inside this unusual center of justice.

Peek in the model courtroom one day and you may witness a teenager facing a
jury of his peers. On another day, the room echoes with the laughter of
10-year-olds building model planes. These are just two ways the center
tries to reach youths long before they might show up in handcuffs.

Not that the mock court doesn't have real consequences.

Teens serve as jurors, judge, and lawyers in cases such as truancy. Today's
"defendant" is a 17-year-old, caught outside school, who first claims he
was on the way to a doctor's appointment and then acknowledges he didn't
have permission to leave.

Wearing a baggy denim shirt and baggy pants, he sits beside the teenage
judge as the jurors pepper him with questions.

"What would you do differently to avoid the situation?" one asks.

"Stay in school," he says softly.

"What's your goal?" another asks.

"Go to college and to be a marine biologist," he replies.

The jury needs 10 minutes to deliver its verdict: The teen must attend a
life-mapping workshop to define his goals.

Often peer pressure is more effective than a judge's warnings, says court
staffer Robert Feldstein.

"If it's another kid from the [housing projects]," he says, "they can't
turn off in the same way."

Those dispensing justice get lessons, too. Before serving six-month terms
of office, they learn about the law, and acquire skills such as public
speaking.

"We can help people and prevent them from going on the wrong path," says
15-year-old Leland Mack, a youth-court member. "It's an early turning point
for them."