Greg Berman
I am often asked how a New York-based organisation like the Center for Court Innovation got involved in justice reform efforts in the UK. I wish I could say that our engagement was the product of brilliant strategic planning, but the truth of the matter is that it is the result of a series of serendipitous encounters. Three moments in particular stand out:
In the early days of the Blair government, the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored an exchange that brought together the reformers responsible for the Youth Justice Board with a handful of juvenile justice experts from the United States. The Center for Court Innovation was selected to convene and facilitate this gathering, which took place in Brooklyn in 1999. During the planning for this event, I made two trips to England where I spent time touring magistrates courts and visiting with youth offending teams and non-governmental organisations like NACRO. I also met a number of officials, both inside and outside of government, including folks like prison reformer Rob Allen who would become important allies.
In 2003, Lord Chief Justice Harry Woolf found himself with some unscheduled time during a visit to New York. On the advice of New York State Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, he spent a few hours visiting the Red Hook Community Justice Center. I served as one of his tour guides. I thought it was a good visit, but we host hundreds of such visitors each year. Without any urging on our part, Lord Woolf returned to England and began talking, both in public and in private, about what he had seen in Brooklyn. In quick succession, a number of other high-ranking officials came to visit us, including Home Secretary David Blunkett, who decided to replicate the Red Hook center in England. This led to numerous trips across the Atlantic by both British officials and Center for Court Innovation planners.
In 2008, a team of researchers from the conservative think tank Policy Exchange visited New York to study how the justice system dealt with mentally-ill offenders. After visiting our Brooklyn Mental Health Court, they asked me if I would be interested in writing a report on the state of problem-solving justice reform in England and Wales. Together with Aubrey Fox (and with an assist from Ben Ullman and Gavin Lockhart), I produced Lasting Change or Passing Fad: Problem-Solving Justice in England.
During our travels in England to research Lasting Change or Passing Fad, Aubrey and I kept meeting people who encouraged us to think about creating something like the Center for Court Innovation in England.
In particular, we heard over and over again that there was a need for an agency that was capable of bridging the worlds of research and practice and promoting grassroots-level criminal justice innovation.
We heard this from voices like the Young Foundation, which called for the creation of a UK Centre for Court Innovation in 2008. We heard it from government policymakers, who were interested in an approach to change that wasn’t driven by the time constraints of politicians or the media. And we heard it from private foundations as well.
Thankfully, three foundations – Hadley, Esmee Fairbairn and Monument – have decided to make an investment in helping us test this idea. After three years of honing the idea, first under the umbrella of the Young Foundation, then as a project of the Center for Court Innovation, in 2013 the Centre for Justice Innovation was officially incorporated as a registered charity in England.
While the Centre for Justice Innovation is now an independent entity, those of us in New York still plan to stay involved. The Centre for Justice Innovation is a small organisation in terms of personnel, but I’m hoping that it will leave a big footprint because it will have access to researchers and subject matter experts from its New York parent organisation when it needs them. I’m also hoping that in the days ahead, we will find a way to create meaningful links to the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation currently being piloted at Monash University.