What Is Community Justice: Case Studies of Restorative Justice and Community Supervision

Past methods of probation and parole supervision have largely relied on caseworkers who monitor their "clients" as well as they can. But, as numbers of "clients" increase, studies indicate that this model is ineffectual. The time has come to significantly rethink the approaches to community supervision.

As described in What Is Community Justice?, the aim of the new efforts is to explicitly integrate the community and the criminal justice process in probation programs. There are five key goals that this book addresses to achieve this end:

• The building of partnerships between community supervision agencies and the community
• Expanding the "client" definition to include the victim of crime, the family of the offender, and the community itself
• Focus on places: agencies must take into account important local differences in neighborhoods
• Preventing problems between the community and the client rather than reacting to them
• Adding value to community life

This book addresses the specific ways of achieving these goals by presenting six case studies of probation programs that represent a practical side of the community justice ideal. What emerges is a provocative and enlightening new approach to the problems of probation and parole. 

David Karp, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he teaches courses in criminology and criminal justice. He conducts research on community-based responses to crime and has given workshops on restorative justice and community justice nationally. Currently, he is engaged in a qualitative research study examining Vermont’s community reparative probation boards and is a member of the New York State Community Justice Forum. He is the author of more that 30 academic articles and technical reports and two previous books―Community Justice: An Emerging Field and The Community Justice Ideal: Preventing Crime and Achieving Justice (with Todd Clear).