Criminal Justice Reform: What’s Working? What’s Not? What Don’t We Know?

The John Jay College of Criminal Justice/City University of New York serves as the academic home to lots of smart people–both brain smart and street smart. I have just returned from a two-day gathering examining the problems and promises of the criminal justice system. In my January 27 posting, I promised a follow-up. Here is the first installment.

Readers of this blog know that my reporting focuses on a dark corner of the criminal justice system–the causes of and solutions to wrongful convictions. By attending the John Jay College symposium, I chose to leave behind the dark corner for a bit to think about other shortcomings of the criminal justice system, including prisons that are overcrowded and rarely rehabilitative; counterproductive treatment of juveniles, sometimes dooming them to a life of crime/punishment; unwise treatment of mentally ill offenders, who thus never improve and never become ; new kinds of courts; and that stubborn, ever-present racial bias.

The opening speaker forced me to think as deeply as any speaker I can recall. Despite his background inside law enforcement–a background that often leads to status-quo programs–Bernard Melekian shattered my stereotypes.

Call Melekian part of the Barack Obama administration, if you like. He serves as director of COPS–Community Office of Policing Services within the U.S. Justice Department. Outwardly, he seems an unlikely cog in the White House new era.  Melekian comes from a cops background, and I don’t mean the acronym of his current federal office. He worked his way up in the Santa Monica Police Department to chief. He has also served overseas in Operation Desert Storm as part of a Coast Guard Reserve unit called to wage war.

Unlike so many other federal bureaucrats, Melekian understands that governing is not just about numbers–it is about perceptions and realities of citizens in their neighborhoods and downtowns. Whether the “official” crime rate is up or down, the numbers carry little meaning if citizens feel scared in their own cities of residence. And way too many of them are scared, Melekian believes.

I’ll explain more about the unusual perceptions –unusual in a positive way–of Bernard Melekian in my next posting.