Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox
As part of the team behind the Red Hook Community Justice Centre in New York City, we’ve been flattered by the attention that our experimental courthouse has received in the United Kingdom.
In recent months, our project has been visited by a number of high-ranking government officials interested in learning more about our efforts to promote alternatives to incarceration while simultaneously enhancing the accountability of low-level offenders. The Justice Centre has also been the subject of several stories in the Guardian, including “Seeing justice being done” by Jack Straw.
What has driven this wave of interest? It is not the inherent charm of Red Hook, which is a geographically isolated neighbourhood in Brooklyn that is home to one of New York City’s largest public housing projects. Rather, it is the results that the Justice Centre has managed to achieve, which include reducing levels of neighbourhood fear, improving compliance with court orders and bolstering public confidence in justice.
The achievements of the Red Hook Community Justice Centre, however, shouldn’t obscure one of the most important lessons that it has to teach, which, ironically, is about the value of failure. The Justice Centre has been a laboratory where we have tested numerous ideas. Some succeed. Others … well, not so much.
Take technology. In an effort to create a paperless court, we created a state-of-the-art computer system in Red Hook. It’s a good system, full of nifty bells and whistles. There’s just one problem: the judge and attorneys still prefer using paper.
Technology is just the tip of the iceberg. We could tell a similar story about other initiatives in Red Hook that have fallen short of their goal. But our point in writing is not to exhaustively review Red Hook’s implementation history. Rather, we want to send the message that failure is inevitable, even in the most successful projects.
Indeed, failure is often the handmaiden of success. Michael Jordan clearly understood this. In a famous Nike commercial aired at the height of his career he said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot … and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Unfortunately, human nature – and the instinct for self-preservation and self-advancement – makes failure difficult to admit to, let alone talk about. But there are real consequences when we don’t. Most obviously, it leads to an environment that stifles innovation. Without a willingness to try new ideas (and risk failure), it is impossible to imagine how we are ever going to meaningfully address the most difficult criminal justice problems on both sides of the Atlantic – including chronic offending in low-income, urban neighbourhoods, rampant drug use and an over-reliance on incarceration.
The good news is that the US department of justice has recognised this. At their request, we’ve spent the last few years taking a closer look at the issue of failed criminal justice reforms. Along the way, we’ve learned that there are three basic types of failure: failure of concept (a bad idea), failure of implementation (poor execution) and failure of marketing (an inability to attract the necessary money or manpower). Sometimes, reformers just get things wrong, launching new programs based on faulty assumptions or making bad decisions that end up undermining a decent plan.
Failure may be inevitable, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used as a learning experience. Indeed, in some cases it may even be possible to prevent failure before it happens. Science, with its emphasis on trial and error, has a lot to teach the field of criminal justice in this regard. For example, in recent years hospitals have begun to grapple with the gut-wrenching reality that commonplace medical errors contribute to at least 40,000 deaths annually – and that’s just in the United States. This has led doctors and researchers to take a closer look at how simple actions – such as reminding medical professionals to wash their hands regularly – can save lives.
Even when failure can’t be prevented ahead of time, a willingness to talk honestly about it can have enormous benefits, creating a culture that encourages risk-taking. We’ve seen this first-hand in Red Hook, where many of the Justice Centre’s greatest successes – a tutoring project that brings together court officers and local teens, a youth baseball league that has encouraged community service among participants, an effort to make a local park more hospitable by screening family-friendly movies – have emerged spontaneously from the good ideas of the men and women who work in Red Hook.
It is our hope that the justice centres recently launched in England and Wales, starting with North Liverpool, will have a similar experience. And if they want to know the secret of Red Hook’s success, the answer is simple: failure – you should try it some time.