Community Justice Centers

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Law - Comparative Legal Systems, Comparative Law, grade: very good, Saarland University, course: English Legal Terminology, language: English, abstract: A CJC is a court based in the community dedicated to problem solving and not punishing.

It handles low-level criminal cases; typical neighborhood problems like drugs, crime, domestic violence and landlord-tenant.

The community court model is based largely on the broken windows theory which says that disorder in a community grows when left unchecked. If a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired all the rest of the windows will soon be broken.

In the Center a single judge hears the cases but instead of sentencing in the ordinary way he has an array of other sanctions and services at his disposal.