Community courts reach out to put a dent in petty crime.

Specialized criminal courts geared to everyone from drug defendants to domestic violence and housing code offenders have sprung up around the country in recent years, but a new breed of court--the community court--is beginning to emerge in several cities.

The first of its kind, the Midtown Community Court in the Times Square area of Manhattan, is celebrating five years of existence and a handful of awards for its progressive approach to dealing with misdemeanor "quality of life" crimes that play out along Broadway and its environs. The hallmark of the court is its focus on bringing misdemeanor criminal proceedings, social services, and community group activities under one roof.

"You don't have to be a brain surgeon to know that the court system is not working as well as it could," said Greg Berman, deputy director of Center for Court Innovation, the research and development arm of the New York State court system that created the Midtown Community Court. "The courts are a tough institution to reform. They are built on tradition."

In 1993, the center designed a new court to handle arraignments for misdemeanor crimes, such as prostitution, illegal vending, graffiti, shoplifting, and turnstilejumping in the city's subway system--crimes Berman said hurt the quality of life for pedestrians, shopkeepers, and residents of the Times Square neighborhood.

Because underlying problems--such as drug abuse, homelessness, or an individual's history of mental illness--often motivate offenders to commit crimes, Berman said the court attempts to both punish and help them. The court does this, in part, by imposing community service sentences that make the defendants "give back"to the neighborhood and by connecting them with available social services, most of which are housed in the courthouse itself.

Community court programs that borrow from parts of the Manhattan project are either up and running or being developed in Baltimore; Hartford, Connecticut; Hempstead, New York; Indianapolis; Portland, Oregon; and St. Louis.

Community courts have the potential to be controversial, however, as they usually receive both public and private funding. The creators see this as a boon--first, of course, because the court might not exist if planners had to rely solely on scarce public resources, and, second, because private funding provides the community participation that the planners seek in delivering justice.

Detractors worry that retailers and residents may essentially be buying a higher brand of justice than that which is available in a traditional system.

In a 1994 issue of New York magazine, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau was quoted as saying, "It bothers me that people who can put up money and have influence can get their own court. It's a nice deluxe operation. But is it helping to prevent crime? I don't think so."

The Manhattan court received funding from the Schubert Foundation, The New York Times Co. Foundation, the Times Square Business Improvement District, and others--organizations that have a vested interest in seeing their neighborhoods cleaned up.

The court also received funding from public sources that a traditional city justice system would not be eligible to receive, such as a planning grant from the city's public housing authority and U.S. Department of Justice funds. Other financial sources include federal programs that do not explicitly target community courts, such as those for public health and drug abuse, Berman said.

Tim Murray, planning and policy director at the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance within the U.S. Department of Justice, participated in a national conference of community court planners in late 1997, telling conferees that "what you're seeing is not a courtroom in a theater district. What you're seeing is a new way of involving partners to address problems."

And problem solving--especially of the innovative type--is the buzzword that frequently reverberates among community court system proponents.

The Midtown Community Court and the Center for Court Innovation were among 10 recipients of $100,000 grants from the Ford Foundation last October as part of the prestigious annual Innovations in American Government Awards Program. The Consumer Product Safety Commission's "fast-track" products recall program and North Carolina's "Smart Start" program for children were other grantees.

Technological advances--especially those that allow for multiagency, intergovernmental, or public and private collaboration--figured prominently in many winning programs, and the Manhattan court was not lacking in its efforts to use technological applications in new ways.

To the casual courtroom observer, the most obvious evidence of difference between a community and a traditional court would probably be the computer on the judge's bench. While computers in the courtroom are far from new, this program involves more than a mouse connected to a computer filled with case law and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Berman said.

"We use technology in three ways," he said. "To help judges make more informed decisions, to enhance offender accountability, and to share information among disparate city agencies.

"In terms of making informed decisions, the technology allows the judge to see who is before her, whether this offender has a criminal history, whether this offender has a substance abuse problem," Berman said.

"In terms of enhanced accountability, we deal with maybe 50 to 80 cases a day, so the cases are turned around very quickly. The technology prevents the defendant from playing the system. The judge wants to be able to tell, at the touch of a button, that this is someone who has been here before, someone who did or did not complete his sentence.

"In terms of information sharing, there are a lot of players in these courts, and they all need to work together as a team. We use technology to make sure everyone is on the same page," Berman said.

To that end, he said that everyone from the judge and district attorney to the police and various social service agencies has access to certain information in each other's databases. "We're not inventing new information," he said. "What we've done is aggregate and disseminate, as appropriate, information that is contained in the databases. It's just that the information is in five different databases."

Jimena Martinez, director of technical assistance at the center, explained: "For example, the judge has access in the courtroom to online booking information on the defendant's arrest, the complaint from the district attorney's office, and the defendant's criminal history. The judge can click from one screen to another, quickly scanning the rap sheet so she can craft an individualized sentence.

"The second thing that takes place is getting information from the state criminal justice agency, which is our pre-trial agency. Since staff there are conducting interviews with the defendant anyway, we ask them to give us additional information about homelessness, substance abuse problems, education levels, and health. The judge can sentence someone to community service, social services, or a combination of both."

Barbara Kelly, senior technology associate at the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Virginia, said her group has been following the progress of the New York model program since its inception.

"What the New York system has done is a really important achievement. We evaluated the technology, and we think it's a great system," said Kelly, whose organization studies ways to improve state courts. "It's got everything you'd want if you were a judge or a law enforcement officer. It's also got a cool, interactive screen with good icons. It's really intuitive."

For more information on the Center for Court Innovation's programs, visit the center's Web site, located at http://www. communitycourts.org, or contact the center at 351 W. 54th St., 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10019, [phone]. Visit the National Center for State Courts's Web site at http://www.ncsc.dni.us/or contact the center at 300 Newport Ave., Williamsburg, VA 23185, [phone].