View Research by Author - Adele V. Harrell

Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/AdeleVHarrell

The Judicial Oversight Demonstration (JOD) was designed to test the feasibility and impact of a coordinated community response to intimate partner violence (IPV) that placed the courts and justice agencies in a central role. The Urban Institute conducted a detailed process and impact evaluation in three sites. The demonstration received mostly positive responses from justice system agencies, service providers, offenders, and victims. However, reductions in repeat violence did not occur in all sites. The mixed results indicate that the most effective justice system responses to IPV must include a focus on protecting victims, close monitoring of offenders, and rapid responses with penalties when violation of court-ordered conditions are detected.

The Judicial Oversight Demonstration (JOD) in Milwaukee featured domestic violence courts, probation review hearings, expanded victim services, additional batterer intervention services, and enhanced probation supervision. This process evaluation documents and assesses program implementation for program planners and policy makers. The impact evaluation compares offender supervision, probationer compliance, and rearrest for domestic violence among samples of domestic violence offenders sentenced to probation before and during JOD. JOD was found to increase offender accountability at the cost of higher rates of probation revocation and subsequent incarceration.

This evaluation examined the impact of Maryland's Break the Cycle (BTC) initiative, designed to reduce drug use and crime among probationers and parolees. The evaluation was based on a quasi-experimental design and used statistical procedures to control for systematic differences between BTC and non-BTC jurisdictions. The designs and exclusive reliance on secondary data from existing computer systems did have limitations. The evaluation concluded that BTC was an effective strategy for reducing drug arrests among probationers and parolees with drug conditions.

In 2001, the Urban Institute was commissioned by the District of Columbia Pretrial Services Agency (PSA) to develop a risk assessment instrument to assist its diagnosticians in recommending conditions of pretrial release. The instrument designed by the Urban Institute and described in this report serves two goals: 1) make the development of release recommendations more objective and consistent across defendants and improve the transparency of PSA processes, and 2) improve the accuracy of decision-making based on risk assessment. This instrument should increase public safety, reduce court costs associated with non-appearance, and reduce the number of low-risk defendants whose liberty is restricted.

The BTC demonstrations tested the feasibility and impact of system-wide intervention to reduce drug use among offenders by requiring felony defendants to undergo screening and participate in drug testing and screening as a condition of pretrial release. The core elements of the BTC model were early intervention, judicial oversight, graduated sanctions and incentives, and collaboration among justice and treatment agencies. The quasi-experimental evaluation of the three BTC sites found significant reductions in drug use, criminal offending, and family problems. The ratio of the costs averted for each dollar invested ranged from 3.2 to 7.7 across the sites. The report includes lessons from the process evaluation on how to implement BTC strategies.

It's something we know almost instinctively, that what we see and hear in our neighborhoods affects how we feel in and about those neighborhoods. It affects our comfort level or the livability of the neighborhood or the community. So, what do you do when someone or some family is doing something to make your community less livable? You try to talk it through, it doesn't work; you enlist the cooperation of other neighbors, it still doesn't work. So, what's left? Livability court, that's what.

For the fiscal years 1995 through 2000, more than $440 million was spent funding nearly 9,000 subgrants reported on Subgrant Award and Performance Reports (SAPRs). These subgrants funded 3,444 separate projects. Although the median award was modest, at just over $30,000, many projects received multiple grants and multiyear funding. Sixty percent received funding for more than one year, and a third for more than two years. This sustained support has helped promote stability and continuity in all kinds of local efforts to build community responses to violence against women.

The Brooklyn Treatment Court (BTC) began in 1996 as a pilot demonstration project at The King’s County Supreme Court (NY) to test the feasibility and effectiveness of reducing drug use and crime by linking drug-addicted defendants in drug felony cases to drug treatment and support services, under the close supervision of the court. The results of the evaluation indicate that BTC provided substantial drug treatment and supervision for severely addicted women facing drug felony charges and that the program resulted in significant improvements in the level of drug use and re-offending among program participants. Using high professional standards for drug treatment in general, and drug courts in particular, BTC’s implementation of the model and provision of treatment was outstanding.

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