The Future of Community Justice
Adriaan Lanni∗
In recent years, a series of crime control practices known collectively as
community justice have reintroduced rehabilitation and discretion to control
certain minor crimes. This parallel system for approaching minor crime has
ºourished, even as the mainstream criminal system faces a crisis of legitimacy.
This Article examines whether we can apply aspects of the community
justice movement to improve the processing of serious crime in the mainstream
criminal system. It assesses current community justice practices—community
prosecution, community courts, sentencing circles, and citizen reparative
boards—and ªnds that they have structural and procedural defects that
should bar their use for serious crime. However, the chief innovation of the
community justice movement—localized, popular decision-making—would
alleviate many of the problems facing the criminal justice system. The Article
argues that it may be possible to implement the goals of community justice
while avoiding the defects of the current reform initiatives by restructuring
the grand jury procedure and permitting local communities to sentence
offenders.