This article describes the changing role of the juvenile court from the perspective of an urban juvenile court judge. The author's experiences as the administrative judge for Baltimore City's juvenile court address typical current juvenile court dilemmas such as lack of funding, physical space that is inadequate for the needs of the court and those it serves, and limited dispositional options f...

Executive Summary This report presents the results of a research project comparing defendant perceptions of fairness in the Red Hook Community Justice Center (Red Hook) and a traditional centralized criminal court. Nearly 400 defendants, who were seen at either Red Hook or the traditional court in summer 2005, took part in a survey comparing their perceptions of the treatment they received. The...

Factors distinguishing clients who complete drug court treatment from those who do not complete drug court have been documented, but differences between urban and rural drug court participants have not been examined. The present study focuses on examining mental health, drug use, criminal activity, and education/employment as factors that are associated with treatment retention, which is measur...

This study compares the use of stigmatizing and reintegrative shame - as specified in Braithwaite's Crime, shame and reintegration (1989) - across traditional criminal court and mental health court settings. Items from the Global Observational Ratings Instrument were used to gather data on 87 traditional court cases and 91 mental health court cases, presided over by five different judges. The o...

'The law imposes the duty of care: but the standard of care is a matter of medical judgment'. So says Lord Scarman, outlining the hitherto accepted 'Bolam' standard, in his recent speech in the House of Lords decision of Sidaway v Bethlem Royal Hospital, reflecting earlier judicial dicta suggesting that it is for the medical profession rather than the courts to determine whether or not a medica...