New Seattle community court aims to help low-level offenders, end racial disparities

As debate over criminal justice reform grips the city and the nation, Seattle is already taking steps of its own with the launch of a new community court program to help keep low-level offenders out of jail, while also connecting them right away with wrap-around services.

“This is a reimagining of pretrial release and justice program, and what that means is that we are trying to address people as early in the stage as possible,” said Seattle Municipal Court Judge Damon Shadid.

Seattle has long struggled with the issue of repeat offenders of crimes like shoplifting, criminal trespassing, property crimes and other low-level offenses, including those dubbed prolific offenders. Locking them up has not worked, so the court, city attorney and public defender’s office spent the last year and a half hashing out this new program.

“When someone is arrested, if they’re coming through the jail or through the court to arraignment, we immediately make contact and we can send them to be evaluated immediately,” Shadid explained. “We can connect them with services the same day, and we can try to make an improvement in their life without having to wait all the way down the line for a conviction or some other kind of deposition in the future.”

Racial disproportionality

The program also hopes to significantly address racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system. For instance, the court says, just over a quarter of defendants for low-level crimes like theft and criminal trespassing through July of this year are Black, despite Black people making up just 7% of the city’s population.

“One criticism of the criminal legal system is that somebody’s criminal history isn’t reflective of who they are as a person, [and] because people of color get contacted by police so much more often than white people, so we’re not going to look at the criminal history in that regard,” Shadid said. “We’re going to still allow you to access these services, no matter what.”

“There’s also a lot of racial disproportionality in release from jail, and that goes for almost every court in the nation, so our program is an automatic release from jail,” he added. “If somebody agrees to be in the program, then they will be released from jail and we’ll connect them to those services right away.”

While nobody is turned away from the program for their criminal history, this program is only for misdemeanors.

“Not only is it misdemeanors only, but it is property based crimes, trespass quality of life crimes, no assaults, no harassment, no domestic violence, no driving offenses, no DUIs,” Shadid said.

Three areas of focus

The program focuses on three main areas to keep people out of the criminal justice system and hopefully find a path forward.

“The three things that we’re trying to accomplish are to get people housing, treatment, and we’re trying to get people long term connections in the community, long term case management,” explained Shadid.

“We’re not going to fix all the problems in somebody’s life when they’ve stolen $5 and 23 cents worth of groceries from Safeway. That’s not an option. We’re also not going to be able to solve their problems by putting them in jail, and so we have to, as a community come together and say, ‘What do we need to do to help this person exit the criminal legal system eventually?'”

So, the community court offers those who want the chance to be released help right away, and a way for them to be held accountable.

“We say, we’re going to have you do community service to give back to your community, and then we can dismiss your case after that, instead of going the trial route, Shadid said, pointing out this incremental approach has been shown to have better outcomes and reduce recidivism in places that have such programs, like Spokane.

Prolific offenders

It could also help address the prolific offender issue.

“That’s the hope. We also think that this will really incentivize people to move forward with their rehabilitation,” Shadid said.

The community court is not an open ended free pass.

“You only get four attempts at community court,” Shadid said. “After that you will be processed through the traditional court system. So it’s not an open ended type program where people can come into it 20, 30 different times when they’re still not completing the program successfully.”

Since the program launched earlier this month he says they’ve already seen positive results.

“We had our first graduation, it was very exciting. The man came in, he had been connected with services and had done his community service, he talked about how meaningful the connections were and we gave him a certificate and a round of applause,” he said. “It was really great. The defense attorneys and the city are 100% behind us they’re really pushing people to try out the program, and there’s no downside to trying it. I think it is going spectacularly.”

Results driven

The community court will also be a results driven program, with recidivism rates one of the main benchmarks, but the focus will be on long term outcomes.

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“If you throw someone in jail for 90 days for stealing one year from the date of arrest, you’re going to have decreased the amount of crime that person is committed because they’ve been in jail for 90 days,” Shadid explained. So I have a real problem with this idea that short term recidivism is the way to judge whether or not somebody is making progress. Long term recidivism, however, three years, five years really tracking these programs and seeing what kind of differences are made in people’s lives. That’s a great metric.”

“So while we will be tracking yearly recidivism rates, our benchmarks are going to be at three years and five years,” he added.

The bottom line, he says, is that they’ve been locking such low-level offenders away for years and it just does not work, so it is time to try something else.

“We’re trying to get people from the very start when they need the services the most, and when they’re probably most likely to accept the services,” Shadid said. “We’re trying to give that to them on the front end, we’re trying to help them exit the criminal legal system in a better place than when they entered, and we’re trying to do that the right away.”

“We feel that this method of contacting people so early in the process is going to have a lot more success and eventually get them out of the criminal legal system,” he added.

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