Over the years, a small library of materials that analyze the pitfalls of reform efforts and how to avoid them has accumulated. The titles and subtitles of some of the best pieces in this vein capture both their red flag warnings and their aspirations: Social Change in Complex Organizations; What Works?; Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Court Reform on Trial: Why Simple Solutions Fail; Thinking about Crime; Why Government Fails So Often; A Government Ill-Executed. Indeed, policy analysts Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky became famous for turning the evaluator’s question on its head: not “Why do policies fail?” but “Why do some policies succeed?”
In criminal justice, this has led reformers to be more self-conscious and careful when designing programs, more careful when implementing them, and more sensitive when evaluating them. In turn, this has led to the establishment of research and development (R&D) units outside the courts which lack them and to more and better and more extensive evaluations. One of the most important of these R&D organizations is the Center for Court (now Justice) Innovation, established in New York City in 1994. It has fostered the development of a number of innovative courts.
It has also invited more and more extensive evaluations of its projects. The long history of assessments of Red Hook and the article under consideration in this symposium illustrate this commitment. Two of the founders of the Center for Court Innovation as well as founders of the Red Hook Project and still other problem-solving courts, Greg Berman and John Feinblatt, (later joined by Aubrey Fox), have also written primers on how to avoid the pitfalls that have plagued so many promising court reforms and how to increase chances of success. These are welcome additions to the library on failed reforms that result from failed implementation. Indeed, these founding leaders learned the lessons they impart in their books first hand, in their experience creating the public-private partnership that manages the Midtown Manhattan Community Court, in fostering national attention on problem-solving courts, and from their development and continuing involvement with the Red Hook Community Justice Center that is the subject of Dixon and Dancig-Rosenberg’s article in this symposium.
Author
Claire Sanders Clements Professor Emeritus, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, School of Law, University of California at Berkeley.