Community Oriented Lawyering:An Emerging Approach to Legal PracticeBy Roger Conner

“City Street,” by Greg Otto.Courtesy of the artist, with permission of the Baltimore Community Law Center

National Institute of Justice Journal ■ January 200027

In the 1980’s, a number of policedepartments began to experi-ment with a new approach that

shifted away from the traditionalreactive response and toward proac-tive problem solving in partnershipwith the community. In the 1990’s,a strikingly similar development has appeared among lawyers whose work affects public safety.Innovative practitioners have begunto move from an exclusive focus oncase processing toward addressingproblems in concert with neighbor-hood residents. There are nowenough of these attorneys, and theirwork is so distinctive, that it appearsa new form of legal practice isemerging: community orientedlawyering. Thus far, however, therehas been little public or scholarlyawareness of their work and thebreadth of the changes under way.

The Trinidad StoryWilhelmina Lawson, a neighbor-hood activist in Washington, D.C.’sTrinidad neighborhood, has been atground zero in one of the newlawyering experiments. She is con-vinced that lawyers hold a key torestoring hope and health to trou-bled neighborhoods.

The War for theNeighborhood

To those who have traced the courseof the crack crisis, Ms. Lawson is afamiliar figure: An African-Americangrandmother with the courage of awarrior and the moral authority of apriest, battling drug dealers with abroom and a telephone. For yearsshe and her allies fought againstopen-air drug markets, sweeping upbeer cans and drug debris by nightand deluging public officials withphone calls and letters by day. As shetells it, these efforts were goingnowhere until prosecutors began tosee their work through the eyes of

Trinidad residents. Building onlessons learned from experiments inPortland, Oregon, New York City,1

Kansas City, Missouri, and otherplaces,2 U.S. Attorney Eric Holder3

created a “community prosecution”pilot project in 1996. He assigned ateam of prosecutors responsible fordeveloping crime-fighting strategiesin partnership with the neighbor-hood and the police, in addition toscreening and prosecuting casesfrom the police district that includ-ed Trinidad.4 Police reorganiza-tion—along the neighborhood linesbased on the Compstat model5—came shortly thereafter.

Enter Reinforcements

Veteran homicide prosecutorStephanie Miller, reassigned to workin Holder’s community prosecutionunit, recalls her response to earlymeetings with Trinidad residents.“They couldn’t see much effect from what we were doing. At first I thought they didn’t understand.My office downtown was filled withlawyers working incredibly longhours to get dangerous criminals offthe street. But I came to realize therewas a disconnect between the prob-lems that made neighborhoodsunsafe and the decisions we weremaking as prosecutors.”

Community lawyering transformedthe day-to-day work of line attor-neys. Individual prosecutors beganto discover how various actors,groups of actors, and places in theneighborhood were linked to crime.For example, while interviewing awitness to a crime, one of Miller’scolleagues discovered that the leader

of a violent gang, who had eludedpolice for years, had lured several12- and 13-year-old girls into sexualliaisons. Soon the gang leader foundhimself in prison for unlawful sexu-al relations with a minor. Violencein Trinidad plummeted.

New Weapons and Tactics

Prosecutors also began to evaluatecases differently. Their chargingdecisions began to be influenced bythe potential to solve neighborhoodproblems in addition to the poten-tial years of incarceration. On learn-ing that a chronic inebriate wasintimidating two entire city blocks,the community prosecutor went towork and unearthed a pendingcharge on the verge of dismissal andan outstanding probation violation.Faced with the prospect of timebehind bars, the defendant agreed toenter treatment. For the affectedblocks, the results were immediateand noticeable.

Working with city agencies, prose-cutors became advocates on neigh-borhood problems that lay beyondtheir jurisdiction, such as trash-filled lots, nuisance properties, and apark without lighting or play equip-ment. Trinidad’s next big break,according to Lawson, came whenone of the city’s largest law firms“adopted” the neighborhood’s civic group. In just 2 years, the firm,Shaw Pittman, helped TrinidadConcerned Citizens for Reformclose 17 crack houses, prevent thelicensing of a night club, negotiate a lease for a new neighborhood center, obtain nonprofit status, andpersuade the parks department to

about the authorRoger Conner, J.D., is a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Justice and formerExecutive Director of the Center for the Community Interest.

This article was adapted from a presentation made before the National Academy ofSciences (NAS) at a symposium sponsored by the NAS Commission on Social Sciencesand Education, Committee on Law and Justice, held July 15, 1999. The author invitescomments, which can be sent to RLConner@aol.com, or mailed to Roger Conner,National Institute of Justice, 810 7th Street, NW., Washington, DC 20531. Support forthis work was provided by NIJ grant 99–IJ–CX–0002.

Community Oriented Lawyering: An Emerging Approach to Legal Practice28

pick up trash and repair lights in thelocal park. “Now, people listen to usbecause we can make things hap-pen,” Lawson said. “And I thankthese attorneys from Shaw Pittmanand the prosecutors’ office for that.”

Crime has declined markedly in andaround Trinidad.6 Murders fell from12 in 1995 to 3 in 1999. CaptainRoss Swope, the local Patrol SectorCommander, thinks he knows why:“There is a level of commitmentand cooperation that was neverthere in the past” among police,prosecutors, and the community, hesaid. “Without community prosecu-tion these relationships rarely devel-op.” Researcher Barbara Boland,who has studied community prose-cution in several cities, includingWashington, D.C., agrees. She notesthat the partners worked together soclosely that it is impossible to sepa-rate the lawyers’ contribution to thisoutcome—lower crime—from thatof the police officers and the com-munity.

Integrating Old and NewCommunity oriented lawyering isdistinctive in integrating a newapproach with the conventionaladvocate’s role. (For a summary,see “Traditional Practice andCommunity LawyeringCompared.”)

The basic unit of work is different. Community orientedlawyers think in terms of the prob-lems of particular people and places,not just crimes and cases. Theythink beyond the individual drugsale to the drug market itself; be-yond the civil action for terminationof parental rights to the womanwho seems trapped in a cycle ofabusive relationships.

The definition of successhas changed. Previously, successwas a simple concept: Win the case,secure the benefit, resolve the com-plaint in a way favorable to theclient. For community orientedlawyers the bottom line is solvingproblems, increasing neighborhood

safety, preventing crime, improvingthe quality of life, and fostering eco-nomic development.

The relationship to the com-munity is different. In the newparadigm, the community helpsdefine what is important, what constitutes success. The new breedof lawyers are, however, not somuch controlled by the communityas oriented to it, listening actively tovictims, service providers, criminaljustice researchers, offenders (andskeptics). And they see the commu-nity as a potential partner in solu-tions, not merely a passive com-plainant.

Collaboration with othergroups is frequent andintense. In more conventionalpractice, lawyers work alone or insmall groups (of lawyers). Once they shift to solving problems andgenerating outcomes, they discoverthat success depends on educating,persuading, cajoling, meeting, shar-ing information, and even sharingpower with other agencies and organizations, public and private.

The tool kit is larger. The newbreed of lawyers treats conventionalcase processing as a tool, not an endin itself. They use civil remedies,invent new forms of action, createnew organizations (communitycourts, for example), mobilizeneighborhood residents, educatevictims, use nonadversarial reme-dies; in other words, whatever ittakes. They are much more likelythan their peers to rely on negotiat-ed, voluntary compliance.

The key question is different.The lawyer in conventional practiceasks, “What happened?” Communi-ty oriented lawyers ask, “What’shappening?” In other words, theangle of vision is profoundly differ-ent: One is trying to assign respon-sibility for what has happened, theother to reshape what will happen.

New neighborhood center about to open in Washington, D.C.’s Trinidad neighborhood.The lease for the center, in an abandoned liquor store, was negotiated by a pro bono lawfirm. The Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) divided the cityinto public safety areas (PSA’s), of which Trinidad is number 508. Photo courtesy ofLieutenant Robert Tupo, Washington, D.C. MPD.

National Institute of Justice Journal ■ January 200029

Why Now? Perhaps the most important singlefactor setting community lawyeringin motion is a growing sense offutility among lawyers who couldnot help noticing the enthusiasmgenerated by community policing.The lawyers involved note the con-vergence of several other forces aswell: The crack crisis and the ensu-ing, more rigorous drug enforce-ment produced crushing case loads,convincing prosecutors, judges, anddefenders to change their strategy.Increased understanding of the needfor intervention to break the cycle ofcrimes rooted in addiction, child-hood sexual abuse, and untreatedmental illness also played a part.

Important constituencies werepressing for change as well. Thecontinued hemorrhaging of humanand financial resources from ourolder cities generated political andeven monetary support. The grow-ing demand from low-incomeneighborhoods for public safety andeconomic renewal forced public-and private-practice lawyers to shiftpriorities. The widespread move-ment to reinvent government hashad its effect as well, as have timelyinvestments of Federal funds forsuch locally based initiatives as theOffice of Justice Programs’ Weedand Seed program and the Bureauof Justice Assistance’s Comprehen-sive Communities Program andCommunity Prosecution Program.

Who Are thePractitioners?The new approach is not confinedto prosecutors and pro bono attor-neys. The settings are remarkablydiverse, but what all these lawyershave in common is a consciouseffort to generate outcomes thecommunity values, in ways consis-tent with their roles and profession-al ethics.

Prosecutors.7 Developments intwo cities exemplify the work of thecommunity prosecutor. In Portland,Oregon, “neighborhood districtattorneys” work on quality-of-lifeproblems in the neighborhoodswhere they are assigned. The prob-lems have ranged from a suddenrash of car thefts near the down-town to chronic drug markets tostreet prostitution. For each, theyhave come up with innovative solu-tions. The drug markets, for exam-ple, were handled through stay-awayorders issued to all dealers whenthey were arraigned. In Boston,attorneys working for the districtattorney, the U.S. Attorney, and theState’s attorney general all con-tributed to the city’s dramatic

reduction in homicide. They did soby changing their charging practicesto support police and probationofficers’ warning to probationers,parolees, and released felons thatinfractions would mean certainprosecution and a high probabilityof a prison sentence if they persisted.8

City/County Attorneys. Seattlecity attorney Mark Sidran believesmunicipal lawyers are well posi-tioned to be advocates for solutionswhere police need cooperation fromcity agencies or when the law doesnot equip police with the tools theyneed. For example, Seattle policefound that issuing criminal citationsto people who violate alcohol and

Traditional Practice and CommunityLawyering Compared

Traditional— New—CommunityCase Orientation Orientation

Unit of work ■ Crimes ■ People ■ Cases ■ Problems ■ Complaints ■ Relationships

Definition of success ■ Win cases ■ Reduce severity of the problem ■ Uphold rule of law ■ Improve quality of life for individuals

and micro-communities ■ Be fair and impartial ■ Restore relationships

Community role ■ Source of clients ■ Influences priorities and witnesses

■ Complainants ■ Helps define what constitutes success

■ Political support ■ Necessary partner

Extent of inter- ■ Limited to high-visibility ■ Frequent, intensive agency collaboration cases, “issue du jour”

Tools ■ Investigation ■ Community mobilization ■ Negotiation ■ Training (e.g., police, citizens) ■ Litigation ■ Civil remedies

■ Negotiated voluntary compliance ■ Motivating agency cooperation

Favorite question ■ What happened? ■ What’s happening?

Community Oriented Lawyering: An Emerging Approach to Legal Practice30

noise restrictions in parks was noteffective, since arrest warrantswould not be issued until monthslater. Sidran came up with a solu-tion that worked: Drafting an ordi-nance allowing officers to issue civilorders banning rule violators fromall nearby parks for up to 7 days.

Police Legal Advisors. Mostlarger police departments have staffattorneys whose time is spent onsuch matters as union issues andabuse of force lawsuits. But in ahandful of departments, they arebeing assigned to help officers withproblem solving. In New York City,the police department now boastsmore than 50 precinct-level lawyerswho develop civil remedies to tackleproblems ranging from noisy estab-lishments to car theft rings to con-sumer fraud. The Charlotte and SanDiego police departments haveadded lawyers to fashion civil reme-dies when properties such as liquorstores, nightclubs, and multifamilydwellings are not well managed.

Lawyers in Other CityAgencies. In other municipalagencies there are lawyers who canchoose to address neighborhoodproblems strategically. In Baltimore,civil and criminal housing codeenforcement is the province oflawyers in the city’s Housing De-partment who are cross-designatedas city solicitors and State’s attor-neys. Staff Director Denise Duvalhas reorganized her staff along geo-graphic lines, requiring that they getto know neighborhood leaders face-to-face. With more than 10,000 out-standing code violations, she hasdeveloped a simple priority system:The office’s every action must bepart of an overall strategy for neigh-borhood improvement that has thesupport of both residents and rele-vant city agencies.

Public-Interest Law Groups.In Baltimore, a new kind of publicinterest law firm has emerged thatrepresents neighborhood organiza-tions rather than individual resi-dents of low-income areas. TheCommunity Law Center has usedcivil actions to close down hundredsof heroin shooting galleries andboard up vacant houses, helpednumerous neighborhood groups toincorporate and to develop compre-hensive crime control strategies, anddeveloped such new legal tools asnuisance abatement and receiver-ship.9

Legal Services. Legal aid lawyersfrequently are faulted for protectingdrug dealers, but in North Carolina,Piedmont Legal Services has taken anew route. They represent commu-nity groups that bring civil suitsdemanding responsible behaviorfrom owners of properties that har-bor drug dealing and spawn vio-lence. One defendant was a commu-nity development corporation thathad allowed its shopping center tofall into disrepair.

Pro Bono Lawyers. Lawyers areexpected to volunteer a certainnumber of hours of service, andmost of this pro bono work involvesrepresenting individual indigentclients. But some law firms inWashington, D.C., are taking entireneighborhoods as clients. The ShawPittman firm, noted earlier for itswork in the Trinidad neighborhood,is an example. The District ofColumbia Bar Association’sCommunity Economic Develop-ment Project recruits lawyers to rep-resent community development cor-porations and small, nonprofitdevelopers.

Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft,New York City’s oldest law firm,wrote a 500-page manual on civil

remedies for attacking open-airdrug markets. Davis, Polk andWardwell, another major New Yorklaw firm, represented public housingresident associations in their strug-gle to tighten rules for evicting drugdealers. Wilmer, Cutler and Picker-ing has represented neighborhoodgroups throughout the country inupholding ordinances on crime and quality-of-life issues. The LosAngeles office of Latham andWatkins conducted the research for a precedent-setting civil suit to control gangs.

Law School Clinics. Here too,lawyers are finding ways to advancethe interests of the community aswell as those of individual clients.Harvard Law School’s CommunityEnterprise Project helps small busi-nesses as well as nonprofits torestore the economic health of low-income neighborhoods. At theUniversity of Maryland, the LawSchool’s Housing and DevelopmentClinic represents community orga-nizations in Baltimore’s empower-ment zone. Twenty percent of lawschools have clinical programs thatpromote neighborhood economicdevelopment.10 The CommunityLegal Resource Network, a consor-tium of four law schools, is develop-ing models for private, fee-paidattorneys to help meet communityneeds.

Defense Lawyers. A growinggroup of public defenders is begin-ning to view their job differently.11

Jim Hennings, director of theMetropolitan Defender Service inPortland, Oregon, explains why:“The same people kept cyclingthrough my office, and the onlychange was the sentences got longer.My goal now is for the client to bebetter off after he leaves than whenhe came in, independent of the dis-

position of the criminal case.” Inrecent years he has chosen to spendprecious budget dollars on addic-tion and education specialists ratherthan lawyers, and an evaluation ofthe client’s assets and social serviceneeds begins with the first interview.The public defender’s office inNashville, Tennessee, operates itsown drug treatment program in jailand has a case manager to assistmentally ill clients after their release.

Judges. Generating outcomes thecommunity values might seem atodds with the notion of having animpartial third party. By tradition,judges try to be insulated from com-munity pressure. But in communitycourts, drug courts, and many fami-ly courts, judges maintain contactwith offenders and sometimes vic-tims over an extended period, takingon the roles of coach, parent, andmentor as well as impartial jurist.

In drug courts, for example, judgesmeasure success by the number ofrecovered addicts, not by the num-ber of cases processed. Such changesin judges’ behavior are not confinedto specialty courts. One trial judgein New York routinely delays felonydrug distribution cases for nonvio-lent offenders when she is convincedthe defendant is making a commit-ment to drug rehabilitation. Cal-ifornia Chief Justice Ronald M.George concedes that court-com-munity collaboration “is not risk-free.” On the other hand, he said, itcan give citizens “a sense of owner-ship...that will help ensure that theindependence of the courts is main-tained.”12

The Risks Community oriented lawyering isnot without its pitfalls. The veryattributes that distinguish it—thefocus on outcomes, the collaborativeapproach, the flexibility—introducenew difficulties.

The following organizations can be contacted forinformation about their involvement in communi-ty problem solving:

Community ProsecutionNational District Attorneys Association

99 Canal Center Plaza, Suite 510

Alexandria, VA 22314

703–549–9222

http://www.NDAA-APRI.org

Courts and JudgesCenter for Court Innovation351 W. 54th StreetNew York, NY 10019212–373–8099 http://www.courtinnovation.org

Judicial Council of CaliforniaSpecial Task Force on Court/Community Outreach455 Golden Gate AvenueSan Francisco, CA 94102–3660http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/community

National Association of Drug Court Professionals901 N. Pitt Street, Suite 370Alexandria, VA 22314888–31NADCPhttp://www.drugcourt.org

National Center for State Courts300 Newport AvenueWilliamsburg, VA 23185757–253–2000http://www.ncsc.dni.us

Defender ProgramsProject for the Future of Equal JusticeHolistic Services ProjectNational Legal Aid and Defender Association625 K Street, NW, Suite 800Washington, DC 20006 http://www.equaljustice.org

Nongovernmental CommunityOriented Law ProjectsCommunity Law Center2500 Maryland AvenueBaltimore, MD 21218410–366–0922http://www.communitylaw.org

Community Legal Resource NetworkCUNY School of Law65–21 Main Street, Room 009Flushing, NY 11367718–340–4451

National Association for Public Interest Law 2120 L Street, NW, Fourth Floor Washington, DC 20037202–466–3686http://www.napil.org

David CastroNeighborhood Legal Defense ProjectCenter for the Community Interest115 Petrie AvenueRosemont, PA 19010610–581–0143e-mail: dc@communityinterest.org.

Community LawyeringAs part of his fellowship project, the author created a Web site to gather resources andencourage communication among specialties.Visit http://www.communitylawyering.org.

PublicationsCenter for Court Innovation, Overcoming Obstaclesto Community Courts: A Summary of WorkshopProceedings, Bureau of Justice AssistanceMonograph, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1998(NCJ 173400).

Judicial Council of California, Dialogues: Courts Reaching Out to Their Communities––A Handbook for Creating and Enhancing Court and Community Collaboration (includes video), San Francisco, CA, 1999. Copies are available by calling 415–865–7654, or by e-mailing jack.urquhart@jud.ca.gov.

Sigmon, Jane N., et al., Adjudication Partnerships:A Guide to Successful Cooperation, National Center for State Courts, National Legal Aid andDefender Association, and American ProsecutorsResearch Institute, Washington, D.C.: U.S.Department of Justice, Bureau of JusticeAssistance, 1997 (NCJ 178405).

Spangenberg, R.L., and M.L. Beeman, ImprovingState and Local Criminal Justice Systems: A Reporton How Public Defenders, Prosecutors, and OtherCriminal Justice System Practitioners Are Collab-orating Across the Country, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of JusticeAssistance, October 1998 (NCJ 173391).

For More Information

National Institute of Justice Journal ■ January 200031

Community Oriented Lawyering: An Emerging Approach to Legal Practice32

New Outcome Measures Needed

The new lawyering plays havoc withstandard tools of evaluation. It iseasy to count cases won, lost, andprocessed as a measure of success,but there is no common language todescribe what community orientedlawyers do, no taxonomy to classifyproblems. Research has producedsome detailed descriptions of com-munity prosecutors’ work, but nei-ther researchers nor practitionershave developed a metric for theincrements of progress to be expect-ed from good community orientedlawyering.

Practitioners need and want helpfrom researchers to develop tools foranswering hard questions aboutresource allocation: What propor-tion of the lawyers in an officeshould spend time on problem solv-ing or strategic thinking in place of,or in addition to, case processing?Should a police department spendits discretionary budget dollars foran additional lawyer, another officer,or new technology? Should thehousing agency add more inspectorsor more attorneys? If a drug court ishalf as “efficient” at processing cases,is it worth the expenditure if anoth-er judge must be added to handlethe case load? Is community orient-ed lawyering a specialty practice fora few or an approach that shouldtransform entire offices? And so on.

Ensuring Equity

At what point might a communityfocus threaten fairness and equaltreatment? These lawyers have enor-mous discretion. Prosecutors decidewhom to charge and for what crime.Municipal lawyers select whichneighborhood problem will be thepriority for their attention. Pro bonolawyers must choose which projectwill receive their time. When onedrug dealer or nuisance property is

given special attention instead ofanother, on the basis of communityimpact rather than existing guide-lines, charges of discrimination mayarise.

Confronting Skepticism

The new approach is not without itscritics. Some of them contend thelawyers will not really listen. Othersare concerned that communities willhave undue influence. And, as withthe introduction of communitypolicing, there is substantial initialresistance among lawyers. Oftenlawyers report that their problemsolving is not valued by their officesor their peers, and they are not rec-ognized by the law schools, by theirprofession, or by their key con-stituents. Some endure ridicule; oth-ers are accused of “selling out.” Inmore than one instance low “stats”have placed a project or office at riskfor funding cuts.

The Opportunities Evidence collected to date is entirelyanecdotal, but it suggests that com-munity oriented lawyering couldhelp address some very seriousnational problems.

Maintaining Legitimacy

There is a growing concern amongsome scholars about a loss of legiti-macy for the justice system, feltespecially in low-income, minoritycommunities.13 Evaluation work byCatherine Coles and George Kellingindicates that community orientedprosecution in Boston dramaticallyenhanced trust in the entire justicesystem—not just the prosecutors—on the part of residents in minorityneighborhoods.14 It may be that thesystem appears arbitrary when thechoices lawyers make are not orient-ed to outcomes the community values.

Restoring Morale

There has been much hand-wringing by lawyers and academicsin recent years about lawyers’ un-happiness with their work. This isespecially pronounced in officeswhere lawyers feel like cogs in anassembly line. By contrast, the singlemost common observation of thoseinvolved in community orientedlawyering is that they like their job.Salt Lake City prosecutor CherylLuke reports that before she adopteda community prosecution approachthe typical line attorney left after 18months. Now she cannot persuadeher staff to accept promotions tomore conventional lawyering jobs.

Harvard Law professor Mary AnnGlendon is not surprised. Lawyersface constant pressure to be “hard-ball litigators,” but, she writes,“many of the most rewardingmoments of law practice occurwhen a lawyer devises a viable solution to a problem that hasbrought a client to wit’s end, orwhen [lawyers] resolve a conflict in a way that expands the pie for all concerned.”15

Ultimate Goals?During a focus group session, oneparticipant ventured that the goal ofcommunity oriented lawyering is“something like peace for troubledneighborhoods.”16 WilhelminaLawson agrees. She longs for thepeace of mind that comes from hav-ing a safe place to live, worship,work, and play. “The big change inTrinidad,” she said, “is that now wehave hope that we can get there.”

NCJ 180080

Notes1. Boland, Barbara, “Community

Prosecution: The PortlandExperiment,” in Community

National Institute of Justice Journal ■ January 200033

Justice, ed. David Karp, Lanham,MD: Rowman and Littlefield,1998; and Boland, Barbara,“The Manhattan Experiment:Community Prosecution,” inCrime and Place: Plenary Papersof the 1997 Conference onCriminal Justice Research andEvaluation, NIJ Research Forum,Washington, D.C.: U.S. Depart-ment of Justice, NationalInstitute of Justice, July1998:51–67 (NCJ 168618).

2. For experiments in Kansas City and elsewhere, see Coles,Catherine M., and GeorgeKelling, with Mark Moore,“Prosecution in the Com-munity: A Study of EmergentStrategies––A Cross-SiteAnalysis,” final report submittedto the National Institute ofJustice, U.S. Department ofJustice, September 1998 (grant95–IJ–CX–0096). Copies can be obtained either from theNational Criminal JusticeReference Service or by e-mailingedward_Gomeau@harvard.edu.

3. In Washington, D.C., the U.S.Attorney serves as the city’s district attorney.

4. An evaluation of the Washing-ton, D.C., experiment was conducted by Barbara Boland.See her report, “CommunityProsecution in Washington,D.C.: The U.S. Attorney’s FifthDistrict Pilot Project,” finalreport submitted to the NationalInstitute of Justice, August 1999(grant 97–IJ–CX–0058).

5. The Compstat (computer statis-tics) model of crime control waspioneered in New York City. Aspecial police department unitcompiles and analyzes crime sta-tistics by area, tracks crime pat-terns, and meets regularly withprecinct commanders to deviseresponses tailored to area-specificpatterns.

6. Boland, “CommunityProsecution in Washington,D.C.”

7. Two panels on community prosecution were presented atNIJ’s 1999 conference on crimi-nal justice research and evalua-tion. To obtain a transcript,e-mail RLConner@aol.com orvisit http://www.communitylawyering.org.

8. See Kennedy, David, “PullingLevers: Getting DeterrenceRight,” National Institute ofJustice Journal 236 (July 1998):2–8. Some prosecutors arebecoming more community ori-ented without significant reorga-nization or additional resources.See Glazer, Elizabeth, “ThinkingStrategically: How FederalProsecutors Can Reduce ViolentCrime,” Fordham Urban LawJournal 26, 3 (March 1999):573.

9. Blumenberg, Anne, and BrendaBratton Blom, “A Co-ProductionModel of Code Enforcementand Nuisance Abatement,” inCivil Remedies and CrimePrevention (Crime PreventionStudies, Vol. IX), ed. LorraineGreen Mazzerolle and Jan Roehl,Monsey, NY: Criminal JusticePress, 1998:261; and Artigiani,Erin, Revitalizing Baltimore’sNeighborhoods: The CommunityAssociation’s Guide to Civil LegalRemedies, Baltimore, MD:Community Law Center, 1996.The guide is available athttp://www.communitylaw.org.

10. This finding is from a surveyconducted by the author as partof his fellowship project.

11. Taylor-Thompson, Kim, “Effec-tive Assistance: Reconceiving the Role of the Chief PublicDefender,” Journal of the Institutefor the Study of Legal Ethics 2(1999):199. An example ofinnovative defense work, theNeighborhood Defender Service

of Harlem, is described inAnderson, D.C., Public Defendersin the Neighborhood: A HarlemLaw Stresses Teamwork, EarlyInvestigation, Program Focus,Washington, D.C.: U.S.Department of Justice,National Institute of Justice,1997 (NCJ 163061).

12. Open letter to court leaders,April 15, 1999, in Dialogues:Courts Reaching Out to TheirCommunities—A Handbook forCreating and Enhancing Courtand Community Collaboration(includes video), by the JudicialCouncil of California, SanFrancisco, CA, 1999.

13. See American Bar Association,Justice Initiatives: The Courts,the Bar, and the Public Workingto Improve the Justice System,Chicago, 1999; Cole, David,“Race, Policing, and the Futureof the Criminal Law,” HumanRights (summer 1999); andMoore, Mark H., “The Legitima-tion of Criminal Justice Policiesand Practices,” in Perspectives onCrime and Justice: 1996–1997Lecture Series, Volume I,Research Forum, Washington,D.C.: U.S. Department ofJustice, National Institute ofJustice, 1997:47–74 (NCJ166609).

14. Coles, Catherine M., and GeorgeKelling, “New Approaches toFighting Crime: PreventionThrough Community Prosecu-tion,” The Public Interest(summer 1999):69.

15. Glendon, Mary Ann, A NationUnder Lawyers (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press,1994):106.

16. The focus group session wasconducted by the author as partof his fellowship project.