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An online poll conducted by the San Francisco Chronicle in October 2007 indicated 90 percent of readers thought Mayor Gavin Newsom’s police initiative to marshal homeless loiterers (and quality-of-life offenders) away from downtown tourist areas was “a great idea.”

Keeping this in mind, how can San Francisco “clean up” the Tenderloin for businesses, prosperity and quality-of-life? Newsom offers a
solution: Community courts.

“The current system is a complete failure,” Newsom says. “So we’re going to organize the community in a collaborative way to turn people’s lives around.”

To clarify: The phrase “community court” refers to a system first tried in 1993 by the Center For Court Innovation (CCI) — a New York-based criminal justice think tank devoted to court reform. Their experiment began with Manhattan’s Midtown Community Court. There, according to Julius Lang, director of technical assistance at CCI, the focus was on “low-level crime,” with a goal of “helping stakeholders convene.” He says the Midtown Community Court was created to clean up Times Square by “making justice visible and speeding up sentencing.” And from all indications, it worked. Times Square transformed, he says, from a crime-ridden problem area to what it is today — a place where MTV can broadcast outdoors with minimal crime concerns.

Since then, more than 30 cities including Austin, Philadelphia, Harlem and Vancouver have adopted CCI-type community courts. Will it work in San Francisco?

I ask various folks in the Tenderloin — at parks, in front of hotels, methadone clinics,assumed brothels, Glide Memorial Church and some of the other 100-plus nonprofit organizations lodged into the area. But I get the most coherent on-street response from a man named Willie, who’s sitting on Ellis Street near Market Street. He says he lives under “the bridge,” but I’m not sure which one he means, and I don’t ask because it’s none of my business. He says he won’t talk to me unless I give him $5. I give him $1, and he thanks me.  I explain what’s going on: San Francisco is well on its way — in March 2008, according to rumors from Mayor Newsom’s office — to placing one judge in charge of prosecuting low-level crimes like simple drug use and public defecation. It will be called the Collaborative Criminal Justice Center, or CCJC. The goal, I tell him, is to prosecute misdemeanors quickly, so people in need can get help as soon as possible — whether it’s GED classes, job training, homeless shelters, drug treatment or, if someone keeps getting arrested over and over again, jail time and fines. I use the same wording Julius Lang used: “Community courts use sentencing as a gateway to treatment.”

He asks: “Isn’t that what they already do?”

I tell him no. In San Francisco’s current system, when people get caught and cited for doing something minimally dangerous but obviously illegal, they’re either told to go to traffic court in 45 days (for infractions like vandalism or public defecation) or to the Hall of Justice (for more serious misdemeanors like petty theft, public intoxication and prostitution). And because it’s almost impossible to get convicted for public urination in traffic court, and the Hall of Justice is overrun with misdemeanor offences, it’s hard to prosecute anyone unless they stick out — because of recidivism, for example.

He asks if those are the only options for prosecution. Again, I say no. The District Attorney’s Office organized a similar community court in the late ’90s to deal with quality-of-life crimes. But that court has no teeth — it’s run by volunteers who lack real sentencing power; it’s mostly used as a way to encourage people into treatment, and it’s rarely used.

When I say “treatment” again, he perks up.  “You know [that’s] all political and nothing else,” he says. “If they really cared, they’d close every one’a those programs.” Willie believes the nonprofits only keep the homeless sedate and needy; he says they encourage “programmers” — people who cycle in and out of the system, never making progress. The Tenderloin, if not mainly known for its drugs and its grit, is known for its nonprofits. “You need to be motivated to get off the street,” he says. “[Nonprofits] don’t help anyone.”

Jeoflin Roh, a panelist for the soon-defunct South of Market Street (SOMA) community court, agrees: “Nonprofits profligate off the sufferings of the poor, and feed off the trough of taxpayers,” he says. But Roh, skeptical as he may be, is on the mayor’s side. “[Newsom] didn’t identify a problem. It was pointed out to him; he borrowed the resolution, brought it back here without any communication with the communities he then proposed to drop it into. We’re again doing cleanup here in SF after the messes the mayor makes. But, properly modified, it’s an idea that we in the city can make work ... and, once again, our Teflon Mayor will look squeaky clean.”

The mayor’s staff quickly responds. “Listen,” says Julian Potter, Mayor Newsom’s deputy chief of staff, “I’ve been trying to arrange this court for a year, but it’s been in discussion for a long time. So last January, I went to the police department and said I want to know where crime present itself the most. And overwhelmingly it was in the Tenderloin. So that’s where we’re going to test this out, with the community as our guide.”

Dinal Hilliard, a Tenderloin Safety Network community organizer with the International Institute of San Francisco, is also skeptical: “I think the community is definitely tired of ‘low-level’ drug crime, and they’re not necessarily complaining about quality-of-life issues.” She pauses to think. “So that’s the strength of the court, I think. The weakness is that there’s not much community input. One judge presiding over every crime in the district? It just doesn’t seem to make sense. And it doesn’t seem like the motive is concern. It just seems like politics.”

This article appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of Next American City magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW!