Legal News

City Council Gets Vote on City's Criminal Justice Stakeholder Group

By Brian Harris

By Amaris Elliott-Engel
Of the Legal Staff

Executive and judicial branch members of the group that bring leaders in the city's criminal justice system together to coordinate policy voted unanimously to add a voting City Council representative to the Criminal Justice Advisory Board.

The CJAB was created just about a year ago after Mayor Michael Nutter took office.

Anthony Radwanski, a spokesman for City Council President Anna Verna, said Verna must appoint a City Council member to sit on the CJAB and no decision has been made yet about which City Council member will sit on the CJAB.

"Because Council provides funding for the criminal justice system, we think it's appropriate for Council has a seat on the board," Radwanski said.

CJABs have been encouraged across the state by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency to coordinate policymaking. Counties that have CJABs are able to qualify for criminal justice pass-through funding from the federal government that otherwise would not be available. Common Pleas President Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillison co-chair the CJAB. The CJAB is coordinating work on police overtime, prison overcrowding and a mental health court.

During the monthly CJAB meeting Tuesday, City Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. presented about his interest in the expansion of community courts in Philadelphia based upon a community court in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. A CJAB subcommittee is being formed to look at expanding community courts in the city. Jones and Gillison traveled to visit the Red Hook court.

District Attorney Lynne Abraham, however, warned that there was never the political will in the past to expand the community court in Philadelphia Municipal Court that covers Center City and a little beyond.

Full post as published by The Legal Intelligencer Blog on June 25, 2009 (boomark / email).