Research Brief
Criminal Justice Coordination
June 2001
Prepared by
Memphis Shelby Crime Commission
With research
support from the
Center for Community Criminology and Research
At The University of Memphis
I. Criminal Justice Coordination
II. Coordinating Agencies and Forms
Summary
of Criminal Justice Coordination Issues
III. Coordination in Shelby County
Office
of Criminal Justice Coordinator in Shelby County
Appendix A. Program Listing
Appendix B. Orange County (FL) Integrated Criminal Justice System Information
Appendix C. East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership
Appendix D. Louisville-Jefferson Crime Commission Information
Appendix E. Improving State and Local Criminal Justice
Systems
Appendix F. Fulton County (GA) Justice System Coordinating Committee (FCJSCC) Information
Appendix G. Los Angeles (CA) Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Committee (LACCJC)
Information
Appendix H. Pinellas County (FL) Government Justice Coordination
Appendix I. Assessing the Effectiveness of Criminal Justice
Programs
Appendix J. Developing Performance Measures for Criminal
Justice Programs
Research Brief on Criminal Justice Coordination
The relatively high incidence of crime in Shelby County, Tennessee, the increasing costs of the individual elements of the criminal justice system (law enforcement, courts and corrections), and recent local developments in the administration of justice have led the Shelby County Board of Commissioners to create the Office of Criminal Justice Coordinator.
This report presents an overview of various types of agencies and organizations devoted to criminal justice coordination, and offers preliminary suggestions for the organization and function of the coordination of criminal justice in Shelby County. Supporting documents are attached in Appendices A-J.
I. What is Criminal Justice Coordination?
Over the past three decades, significant attention has been directed towards the problem of coordinating criminal justice responses to complex social and crime problems. Mounting concern over crime on economic development and on quality of life and the growth of justice agency administration and processing combined with funding constraints have led justice administrators and elected officials to explore various ways to improve service delivery through cooperative or consolidated planning and activities within the justice system and the larger community.
The origins in the early 1970's of comprehensive justice planning can be traced to the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA); planning commissions were created to address in a coordinated fashion how funding would be allocated among the various components of the justice system. Upon termination of the LEAA program in 1980, many jurisdictions retained the Commission structure, or a related form, to support a centrally planned allocation of federal and state funds.
There are a variety of agencies and initiatives designed to address the complex issue of criminal justice coordination. A partial listing of programs examined for this paper appears in Appendix A. Additional information is available about these programs on request. At the federal level, these programs are generally initiated or supported by funding and technical assistance through various arms of the Department of Justice (DOJ). The Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development are also promoting coordination and consolidated planning, and have participated in conjoint efforts with DOJ. Many of these programs involve the delivery of social, educational and life skill services to children and juvenile delinquents.
At the State level, many coordination programs are empowered and operated through the central justice agency (e.g., the Department of Law and Public Safety) or through the Office of the state Governor. Orientation towards coordination and capacity for state support of these efforts often contribute to the success of statewide local level coordination efforts. Many state legislatures, including California, Florida and Georgia, have created statutory obligations for criminal justice coordination efforts.
At the County and Municipal levels, many coordinating ventures began with a triggering crisis experienced by the jurisdiction. Research for this paper indicates that this crisis is frequently identified as related to jail and prison overcrowding, but also may involve overcrowded court calendars, overcrowded probation and parole services, and a lack of alcohol, mental health and substance abuse treatment services. A few coordination efforts were started or expanded because of the foresight and initiative of system employees who saw a particular need for coordination, and had the ability to promote coordination within a unit, bureau or other local operational level.
Over time, coordinating agencies generally grow to address or manage more than one issue. Coordination efforts broadly address three interrelated focal concerns:
1) coordination and distribution of funding;
2) coordination of information systems and sharing; and,
3) coordination of response to a particular issue within a fragmented justice system.
Funding coordination seems to be the most basic, and perhaps universal function addressed at the State level, and at this level may be housed in a Department of Public Safety or State Bureau of Investigation. Required reporting emanates from both federal and state funding, accomplished through the mechanism of the Single Point of Contact (SPOC). Even when funding is a "pass-through", these agencies require programmatic and fiscal reporting. Evaluation components of planning and programmatic grants are common requirements of funding.
Information systems and sharing are a huge focus of cooperative attempts as jurisdictions try to grapple with the issues of stand-alone systems, legacy systems, multiple data entry points and sources, and technological limitations seemingly inherent in public administration (see JAIBG, 2000; Establishing and Maintaining Interagency Information Sharing). It is never easy to fund capital investments or technology purchases; combining the two across agencies requires substantial funding and commitment from the agencies and officials involved. A related area is the production of statistical and analytic reports about criminal justice agencies and crime. Most states and localities have developed reporting and recording mechanisms for criminal activity and agency processing; however, few agencies have the capacity to conduct advanced internal analyses or to integrate those results into the decision-making. Statistical reporting capacities are generally housed at the state level, and may be linked to allocation of some types of funding. Orange County (FL) has made great progress towards a county-wide information sharing system; details of this effort appear in Appendix B.
The final focal area is strategic issue response, or the coordination of a response among agencies to a particular issue within the justice system. Several initiatives at the federal level, including the Comprehensive Communities program. Weed and Seed, and the National Campaign Against Youth Violence (NCAYV), have tried to cultivate coordinated approaches to reduce violence and to redress urban deterioration. Other federal initiatives, such as Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiatives (SACSI), Community Mapping, Planning and Analysis for Safety Strategies (COMPASS), and Community Safety Information Systems (CSIS), use a data-driven process to shape responses to problems of public safety and coordinated planning. Memphis is a site for Weed and Seed, SACSI, CSIS and the National Campaign. One particularly notable multi-agency initiative is the East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership, a program to address violence and community safety that involves approximately 50 agency from three geographically contiguous cities. Additional information about this program is contained in the monograph in Appendix C.
Many coordinating agencies also produce statistical reports about the operations of the agencies within their domain. Frequently, this reporting is compiled and released by a Statistical Analysis Center (SAC). This information is frequently produced for internal and external consumption. Internal, or justice agency, personnel might use the information to refine personnel allocation, service assignments, and service indicators as well as project funding, personnel and capital equipment needs. External users generally seek to use the information to demonstrate needs, galvanize support for funded programs and identify areas for future improvement efforts by agencies and community members. The Louisville-Jefferson Crime Commission is an example of an agency that is responsible for local planning, research and coordination of criminal justice matters; additional information on this program appears in Appendix D.
Characteristics of successful coordination include:
"Well-defined management responsibilities and clear lines of authority;
Trustworthiness, reliability, perseverance, patience and commitment;
Honesty about what can and cannot be accomplished;
An ability to view both successes and failures as learning experiences;
Strong leadership and organizational skills"
(BJA, Comprehensive Communities Program, 1998:6.)
The influence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on public policy and social services continues to grow rapidly. Over the past two decades, research centers and non-profit organizations have become increasingly involved in the development, delivery, administration and evaluation of programs to redress problems of crime and social disorder. In conjunction with and addition to governmental funding sources, these organizations have assisted justice organizations in the process of data-driven decision-making and internally initiated applied research within local agencies. They also provide a variety of facilitation, planning, research, training, advocacy, lobbying services to both justice agencies and government organizations.
The Institute for Law and Justice (ILJ), the Urban Institute, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) are among the long-standing providers in this regard. Other examples include the Hudson Institute Crime Control Policy Center, the Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence and the Neighborhood Design Center. Each of these agencies has constructed multi-disciplinary planning, program development and evaluation activities in conjunction with local justice agencies. In the mid-1990's National Institute of Justice recognized and attempted to institutionalize the promising trend of collaborative research between law enforcement agencies and local university partners through its locally-initiated research program.
Criminal justice coordination may take a variety of structures and forms; Table 1 indicates seven model types of collaboration between prosecution and public defender; identified by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1998 (Appendix E). That so many forms of collaboration have developed around these agencies and their functions indicates the crucial role in improving justice systems and services.
Table 1. Criminal Justice Collaboration Forms*| Commissions | Los Angeles Countywide Criminal Justice
Coordination (CA) Fulton County Justice System Coordinating Committee (Atlanta, GA) Louisville-Jefferson Crime Commission (KY) Lancaster County Justice Council (Lincoln, NE) |
| Cooperative Programs | Los
Angeles County, CA Delaware Criminal Justice Council (DE) |
| Task Forces | Nebraska (NE), Washington State (WA) |
| Gap Coalitions | Florida (FL): Arizona (AZ) |
| Prosecution Alliances | California (CA), Minnesota (MN) |
| Case Tracking Cooperation | Florida (FL), Delaware (DE), Rhode Island (RI) |
| Fiscal Impact | Maryland (MD) |
| *Source: Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1998; Appendix B. |
The commission structure is a formal body, composed of ex-officio, appointed and often staff members to address a particular issue or set of issues. Criminal Justice Coordinating Commissions are generally standing bodies devoted to continual involvement and coordination of systems or activities.
Cooperative programs generally involve one or more agencies addressing a shared concern, and perhaps formal letters of cooperation, led by a central or local agency. The Delaware Criminal Justice Council administers federal and state justice and victim funding; it operates simultaneously as an "independent body committed to leading the criminal justice system through a collaborative approach". Its membership includes a wide array of state and local justice and social service officials. In Los Angeles, funding for a videoconference system between prosecutors and public defenders is scheduled to reduce transportation time, costs and difficulties and speed the flow of court processing. This program is administered by the Los Angeles Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination (see below).
Task forces are the traditional agency approach to cooperative ventures that involve representation from local justice agencies to address specific or on-going interests. Prosecution alliances have been formed to establish parity in salary between district attorneys and public defenders in Minnesota and California.
Fill the gap coalitions are generally working groups or standing committees that advocate and oversee the dedication, allocation and expense of funding for justice programs. In Florida, where the phrase for this concept originated, the state courts, Florida State Attorneys Association, the Florida Public Defenders Association and the Office of the Attorney General, came together to demonstrate that additional fund would be needed to meet state legislative mandates.
In terms of case tracking, Delaware and Rhode Island are developing a statewide criminal justice computer system designed to link all the systemic and geographic elements of justice administration agencies. (Geographically, these are the smallest states, making the task somewhat easier.) Dade County, Florida has a centrally administered criminal justice information system that is shared proprietarily among county agencies. Other initiatives in Florida include funding information systems sharing programs in and between judicial circuits.
In Maryland, the General Assembly has a staff devoted to the preparation of fiscal impact statements of proposed legislation upon any agency, including criminal justice, affected by same. This innovative approach to understanding the costs of implementing justice should be an important function of criminal justice coordination at the State and perhaps local level.
The following sections highlight features of three potentially valuable models for criminal justice coordination in Shelby County. The programs selected for discussion below have developed in states that have some level of state legislative support for criminal justice coordination at the local level. Background documentation for these programs is found in Appendices F-H respectively. Additional information on these or other programs may be obtained upon request.
#l. Fulton County (GA) Justice System Coordinating Committee (FCJSC). The Fulton County Justice System Coordinating Committee was formally established in 1995 as the result of an external review of the County public defense capabilities earlier in the decade. The review by the Spangenberg Group presented serious flaws in the system of public defense and prompted the Atlanta Bar Commission to report on the topic and form an ad hoc coordinating committee to address the problems related to indigent defense, including funding. This Committee is comprised of members of the County justice community, including several Bar Associations and local municipal leaders; the committee continues to address serious systemic problems such as jail overcrowding and information sharing.
#2. Los Angeles County Countywide Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee (LACCCJCC). In Los Angeles County, the Coordinating Committee was established in 1981 with the goal of stabilizing ongoing interactions between justice agencies to enhance efficiency and fairness in the administration of justice. Currently there are 40 members from a wide range of justice, health, education and human service agencies. This committee meets monthly and operates through approximately subcommittees and workgroups, and addresses a variety of topical and problematic criminal justice issues. Duties of the committee include coordination of funding and activities, system-wide strategic development, legislative support, and operational oversight and support for ongoing interagency activities. In 1995, the CCJCC merged with the Information Systems Advisory Board.
#3. Pinellas County (Florida) Department of Justice Coordination (PCDJC). In Pinellas County, the Department of Justice Coordination was created in 1991 to coordinate research and planning and to increase the efficiency and effectiveness and of the criminal justice system. Initial coordination efforts began through the judiciary beginning in 1983 with the Office of Justice Planning, and formed the basis of the DJC. The Committee is a policy and planning organization, composed of representatives from various justice agencies. Efforts include gathering and dissemination of information to aid justice decision makers and citizens. The Committee reports to County Administration and is overseen by the County Board of Commissioners.
Summary of Criminal Justice Coordination Issues
Five universal considerations in organizing criminal justice coordinating efforts are well identified by the Florida Corrections Commission in its report Task Force for the Review of the Criminal Justice and Corrections Systems Final Report (1995). These are: staffing, participant membership, support of participating bodies, funding, and (lack of) technical assistance.
The Office of Criminal Justice Coordinator in Shelby County is not currently affiliated or resident within an extant administrative structure; therefore, special deliberation must be given to the crucial human element to be involved with systemic assessment, planning and growth. Staffing, membership and the support of member bodies must be considered in terms of the general purpose of the Office. Lines of authority, management obligations, reporting requirements and participation need to be identified and established early in the justice coordination process. Many of the cooperative endeavors involve primarily criminal justice personnel (elected, appointed and professional) and identifying and satisfying system processing needs.
The source of operational and programmatic funding is one of the biggest challenges of criminal justice coordinating bodies regardless of their purpose. In a time when all municipal and state governments face an increase of justice administration costs and constraints, a realistic assessment of desirable and expected personnel and operational costs must be developed to determine and obtain appropriate and sufficient supports. This includes developing evaluation measures for funded programs, gathering and centralizing information on funding and programmatic overlap to aid coordination of jurisdiction-wide multi-agency public safety initiatives.
The need for technical assistance is surely the easiest of the organizational and operational elements in criminal justice coordination to identify. Procuring technical assistance may be difficult in the absence of funding, although a variety of (previously mentioned) sources at the federal, state and non-profit level are available.
III. Coordination in Shelby County
The tasks of an office or body of Criminal Justice Coordination in Shelby County are enormous, and complicated by the number of agencies involved in justice funding and justice processing in Shelby County.
Basic justice agency functions, such as arrest, detention and processing are conducted by multiple municipal enforcement agencies1 within a detention structure managed by the Shelby County Sheriffs Department (which also conducts enforcement activities), and a prosecution district managed by the Shelby County District Attorney General. The majority of serious offenses generated by these agencies are prosecuted in the state Criminal Division court2 administered by County Personnel.
Additional inter-agency cooperative issues are introduced by the fact that Memphis is both the County seat and the urban center for the five-county Metropolitan Statistical Area. These efforts may be complicated by changes (in agency recording mechanisms and analytic capability) related to impending transition from Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data to the National (and Tennessee) Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS, TIBRS) data as the official crime measurement system. In Tennessee, there is a fair amount of coordinative activities at the State level by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, largely around information systems and TIBRS reporting. Apparently, Tennessee is the most populous NIBRS compliant state3 in the country, and the Memphis Police Department, the state's largest agency, is currently compliant.
That both the Shelby County Sheriff and District Attorney General are elected officials introduces an additional level of goal conflict to attempts to better manage these interrelated processes. In Fulton County, GA, the input of the Fulton County Justice System Coordinating Committee "provides county commissioners with cohesive proposals for changes...that reflect consensus among Committee members"; this assistance to elected policymakers who "are not necessarily familiar with the system" is invaluable (BJA, 1998; 4).
There is an increasing awareness and focus upon "smoothing" the links, or improving "through-processing" in the criminal justice system, within the judicial component. As elected officials, the judiciary may be bound by legal constraints or historical conventions about participation with other agency members of the justice system in conjoint activities. Significant gains can be made in systemic improvement including the crucial judicial processing link in developing a coordination process and function.
Office of Criminal Justice Coordinator in
Shelby County
Created by memorandum of understanding4 in Spring 2001, the Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator (OCJC) has been given a broad mandate to develop a master (County) plan for criminal justice coordination, to coordinate justice funding within the County, to support information systems sharing and to address urgent topical criminal justice issues. No additional provisions for staffing or funding for this office have been promulgated.
In Shelby County currently, there are many directly and tangentially-related initiatives already underway; several important efforts are discussed below.
In terms of multi-agency initiatives and data sharing programs, three ongoing efforts are particularly relevant to the OCJC. The Community Safety Information System (CSIS) is an established forum consisting of agency representatives from about 14 justice and service agencies. This forum developed from prior Department of Justice funding and initiatives, including the Strategic Alternatives to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI). The forum was originally envisioned as a means to stimulate agency data-sharing and to promote data-driven decision making between agencies; as many of the data quality, migration and data-sharing issues are resolved or are close to resolution, this group is beginning a new phase of identifying, exploring, and internalizing data-driven decision making. At the County level, the Assessors' office has been facilitating countywide Geographic Information Systems interaction. Recently, plans were announced to create a non-profit corporation to manage that process and form a backbone for Shelby County's e-government. The Director of the OCJC, or his representative, should remain informed, if not directly involved, with both these endeavors.
In many jurisdictions, the practice of managing external and internal funding is coordinated through a single point of contact at the state or local level. Currently, there is no single point of contact for funding at the County level. This year, the allocation mechanism for distribution of the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant (LLEBG) is being redesigned to allow centralized consideration of programmatic funding to support identified justice needs within Memphis and Shelby County. This process, led by the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, is likely to generate a template for future efforts to coordinate area justice funding through a single distribution point. One of the primary goals and expected deliverables from the redesigned LLEBG distribution process is to establish uniform program evaluation measures for funded projects. The OCJC should remain attentive to this process and its outcomes in terms of future funding coordination efforts. Further, the OCJC should endeavor to identify current state-directed or supported coordination efforts to ensure that no unnecessary reinvention of established processes occurs.
In Shelby County, two of the most pressing justice issues are related to the Shelby County Jail and juvenile crime. Special care must also be taken to avoid allowing the new Office of Criminal Justice Coordinator to be subsumed in current, intensive efforts ameliorate conditions and satisfy court orders regarding the same at the Shelby County Jail. There are currently substantial internal and external efforts underway to address the conditions at the Jail; the OCJC must stay informed of these efforts and concomitant progress towards identified goals. As an external coordinating and oversight body, the OCJC is positioned to identify resources and technical support to assist in those efforts. The OCJC is not nor should it become responsible for amending the long-standing situation at the Jail; this remains the responsibility of the Office of Shelby County Sheriff.
The County's poverty rate and the quality of City schools complicate both these issues, particularly that of juvenile crime control. Concerted effort should be directed towards identifying youth violence, school safety and juvenile justice issues in conjunction with extant and developing programs run by the Memphis City Schools, public agencies and private social service agencies, including Memphis 2005. The Memphis Shelby Crime Commission through the National Campaign Against Youth Violence (NCAYV) and the related Mentoring Partnership program provide an excellent starting point for identifying agencies and issues involved in juvenile justice issues.
One of the most important early tasks for the OCJC is to construct a systematic inventory of agencies, budgets, and programs for justice-related organizations (including non-profits) in the County that receive public funds. This comprehensive identification process will generate a master listing of all agencies within the jurisdiction of Shelby County, and provide a starting point to begin to examine agency operations and inter-agency activities. At a minimum, data collected should include agency personnel and characteristics, equipment and facilities, funding and sources, information systems characteristics and agency products and outputs. Supplementary information about assessing effectiveness and evaluating performance in criminal justice programs appears in Appendices I and J.
Under the terms of the memorandum, the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission has agreed to provide technical assistance as possible to the Office of Criminal Coordinator. Early tasks in this technical assistance process should include participation in the construction of the master listing and identification of salient measures of agency performance. Some consideration should be given to how to store and maintain this master listing information for ongoing use by the OCJC, as well as distilling significant data as appropriate into an easily digestible form for continuing use by County leaders and citizens regarding criminal justice issues.
References
Aune, Kris (Project Lead). 1999. Strategic Plan for the Creation of an Integrated Criminal Justice Information System for Orange County Florida: Work Plan and Content Abstract, Deliverable #1. Jackson, MS: Nichols.
Bureau of Justice Assistance. 2001. Comprehensive Communities Program. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.
Bureau of Justice Assistance. 1997. East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnerships. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.
Florida Corrections Commission. 1995. Task Force for the Review of the Criminal Justice and Corrections Systems Final Report (1995).
Hatfield, Jerry M. 1994. Developing Performance Measures for Criminal Justice Programs. Washington, D.C.: Justice Research and Statistics Association.
Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grant, 2000. Establishing and Maintaining Interagency Information Sharing. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.
Louisville-Jefferson Crime Commission. 2001. 2000 Annual Report. Louisville, KY: Louisville-Jefferson Crime Commission.
Kirchner, Robert A, Robert K. Przybylski and Ruth A. Cardella. 1994. Assessing the Effectiveness of Criminal Justice Programs. Washington, D.C.: Justice Research and Statistics Association.
Spangenberg, Robert L. and Marea L. Beeman. 1998. Improving State and Local Criminal Justice Systems. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Assistance.
| For additional information, contact: | Robyn R. Mace, Ph.D. Director of Applied Research Memphis Shelby Crime Commission rmace@memphiscrime.org 901-527-2600, ext.106 |
Notes:
1The five municipal law enforcement agencies in Shelby County are: Memphis, Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown and Millington. The Shelby County Sheriff's Office and the Shelby County Police Department also have enforcement responsibilities within the county.
2 General Sessions Courts are responsible for arraignments, misdemeanors and other "minor" offenses-traffic fines, forfeitures, and municipal ordinance violations.
3 Personal conversation, 3/29/01. Jackie Vandercook, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Statistics Assistant Director.
4 Parties to the memorandum were the Mayor of Shelby County; Mayor of Memphis; Sheriff of Shelby County; District Attorney General; Criminal Court Clerk; Administrative Judge, Criminal Courts; Administrative Judge, General Sessions Criminal Court; and the General Sessions Court Clerk.
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