Some of the participants in the Community Outreach Court are, left to right, Executive Director Marge Palmerlee of Dégagé Ministries; Michelle Lupanoff of Lupanoff and Kramer Law PLC, a board member of Community Legal Services of West Michigan; Heather Pelletier, Judge Donald Passenger’s Bailiff and the individual who got the court underway; Cori VanderVeen, Probation Officer for the 61st District Court; Katie O’Keefe, Program Coordination and Project Assistant, Heartside Neighborhood Collaboration Project; and Gary Secor, Administrator, 61st District Court.
LEGAL NEWS PHOTO BY CYNTHIA PRICE
By Cynthia Price
Legal News
The new Community Outreach Court at the 61st District Court is part of the growing number of “problem-solving” courts which offer a twofold advantage: they help members of the general public resolve issues that may negatively impact their lives, and they improve the efficiency of both the court system and jail system by reducing repeat visits and time spent on each case.
The new Community Outreach Court (COC), presided over by Judge Donald Passenger and started in January of this year, is a community collaboration, wherein advocates from Dégagé Ministries, Mel Trotter Ministries, and Heartside Ministry “walk alongside” — as Dégagé Executive Director Marge Palmerlee puts it — indigent and underserved people as the court determines and resolves outstanding non-violent misdemeanors and civil infractions.
The two-hour court is held every other month at Mel Trotter Ministries; the location may reduce some participants’ anxiety levels.
The COC?has accepted 11 participants, with four pending, and one individual has graduated. Court personnel have conducted over one hundred record checks.
Those who have, for example, bench warrants for not showing up in court, tickets they have not been able to pay for, or minor infractions such as having alcohol in a city park must sit down with the advocate and write an action plan for addressing the problem. The plan may entail solutions to specific issues, such as setting up a payment plan for unpaid fines, or more general actions such as seeking housing or attending substance abuse programs.
When Judge Passenger sees the individual and his or her advocate at the COC, he is able to resolve the cases on the spot. After the participant completes the plan, the case is closed.
Community partners stress that it is not a “free pass,” and people must commit to taking control of their problems.
Gary Secor, 61st District Court Administrator, says, “The problem we’ve had is that revolving door, with the minor offenses adding up, but this allows the participants to pay a penalty, or maybe get credit for time served, and then put it behind them.”
It was observing that very problem that led Judge Passenger’s Bailiff, Heather Pelletier, to propose the court in the first place. “I was sitting in court witnessing the same people again and again, getting a couple days jail time, and it just occurred to me, there has got to be a better way. We’re obviously not serving them. So I started doing some research, looking at the demographics of people that come through the court, reading national resources.”
Pelletier says that the first program to be called a “homeless court” started in San Diego under a public defender named Steven Binder. Binder wrote the 2002 report of the American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Homeless and Poverty, one of the pieces which influenced Pelletier.
The ABA website’s information on such courts says about the San Diego program, “The Homeless Court was created in response to a survey where one in five homeless veterans requested help with the criminal justice system.” Kent County collaborators emphasize that their clients often feel intimidated or confused by going to the courts.
Pelletier, whose Criminal Justice degree from South University included an emphasis on community programming, found out that Washtenaw County has a similar court, “so then I invited people to come down to the Ann Arbor Court to see how theirs works,” she says.
Many of the current Grand Rapids partners visited the city’s Street Outreach Court and talked with District Court Judge Elizabeth Hines and others involved.
One advantage of the specialty court approach is enabling a broader look at the root causes of those minor crimes. As Secor says, “If the offense is specifically related to medical or psychological or drug issues, you can address that and help them improve.”
“Or it may even mean getting them housing, working with the multiple services in the area,” adds Katie O’Keefe, Coordinator of the Heartside Neighborhood Collaboration Project (HNCP), which is a broader effort to invite stakeholder groups in the area to “craft win-win situations” to serve people in the area. “My role is working with Heather and the others to bring all those stakeholders together,” O’Keefe says.
HNCP, which operates out of Bethlehem Church on Commerce, has been around since 2010.
Probation Officer Corrinne “Cori” VanderVeen, who is the point of
contact for the program, adds, “We want to emphasize that this is not a court program, it’s a collaborative
program.”
Other partners include attorneys who can assist on a pro bono basis, spearheaded by the Community Legal Services of West Michigan?(CLSWM). Such volunteer lawyers as Michelle Lupanoff of Lupanoff and Kramer and CLSWM Executive Director Dustie Deville offer their legal expertise; both Lupanoff and Pelletier are on the CLSWM board.
Cooley students are available to assist those attorneys. According to Cooley’s Assistant Director of the Center for Ethics, Service, and Professionalism, Karen Rowlader, “Dustie coordinates volunteer attorneys for the COC. Cooley offers student assistance to those attorneys taking pro bono cases and/or advising the individuals/clients of COC. The student program at Cooley is Pro Bono Junior Associates and is available to any attorney that would like assistance with pro bono work.”
Not only does the COC reduce the costs of putting people in jail and decrease the demands on law enforcement officers’ time, it operates without requiring additional funding, according to Secor. Most of the agencies and court personnel do it as part of their existing jobs, with all three of the ministries able to assign current staff advocates to the new court.
It does put a bit of strain on VanderVeen, the point of contact for the program. “We’re volunteering all of Cori’s time,” Secor says, “but it does save us time in the long run.”
VanderVeen herself is very supportive of the program. “I had a client who was leaving for Battle Creek, to live there. He had outstanding costs with the court, but his advocate was able to confirm he’d already done community service to offset that. So he was able to feel good about leaving for a new place.”
O’Keefe added, “One woman who came in for a record check was really worried about it. She told us she would hide when she saw the police. But after talking with Cori, she found out she had no warrants or outstanding charges at all. She walked out a free woman, without this baggage that
didn’t need to be there. That’s a real success story.”
“People think we get our thrills putting people in jail. We don’t,” says Judge Passenger. “We consider that failure. It’s our goal that interactions with the court will help people become more whole and productive members of society.”
Advocates who know parties interested in entering the program should email cori.vanderveen@grcourt.org.
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