Courting J
the ones
who need it
osh Beals says he doesn’t remem-
ber getting the citations that brought
him to Eugene’s Community Court
— because he was, as he describes
it, “on a vodka spree.” What he does
remember is waking up in a field,
with all his belongings stolen, and
a fractured skull. That, he says, was his turning point.
Ten months after the incident, as he stood for the
second time before a judge, a group of lawyers and a
collection of other defendants, he hoped it would be the
last time he found himself on the wrong side of the law.
Beals has been through the paces of the court system
several times before. He’s even been in this particu-
lar courtroom, an otherwise nondescript room on the
ground floor of the Eugene Public Library.
Reoffending was never part of his plan, but alcohol-
ism and chronic homelessness kept him on a path that
eventually led him to a court hearing ― a path that he
now says he’s ready to leave behind.
“My life sucks a hell of a lot less than it did. So if
you want your life to suck less, too, you should try it,”
he told the other participants in the room.
Beals is one of a growing number of people —
most of them homeless — cited for nonviolent minor
crimes in Eugene, some for the fifth or fiftieth or even
the hundredth time. Rather than spending a few days in
the Lane County Jail and going back out to the streets,
however, some defendants are opting to enter the Eu-
gene Community Court program. It’s an initiative of
Eugene’s Municipal Court, which typically handles
these types of violations.
Eugene city and court officials decided to use this
program a few years ago to support frequent offenders
with their underlying needs rather than punishing them
repeatedly. According to the court’s most recent report
at the end of July, it had produced 40 “graduates” who,
like Beals, have completed their assigned community
service and worked with local service providers to deal
with contributing factors to their violations.
“What we look for is, where are the people who
want to make a change?” says Wayne Allen, the pre-
siding judge and one of the core team members who
launched the initiative in September 2016. “We want to
integrate as opposed to exclude people.”
The court takes a two-pronged approach to changing
the way the misdemeanor trial process typically works.
First, participants agree to enter a guilty plea in order to
get connected with resources, such as housing or mental
health services. Then, instead of jail time, they perform
community service, usually in the area where they were
cited.
“In your traditional court process you never try to
address the underlying issues,” Municipal Court Ad-
ministrator Cheryl Stone says. “People might have road
crew or community service or serve some jail time, but
nobody ever says you’re going to get some treatment or
you’re going to give back to the community in a differ-
ent way.”
COMMUNITY COURT
SEEKS TO
SUPPORT RATHER
THAN SENTENCE
B Y K AY L E E TO R N AY A N D B R I T TA N Y
N O R TO N . A D D I T I O N A L R E P O R T I N G B Y
S A M F E LTO N A N D N ATA L I A R I C C A R D I
IDENTIFYING THE PATH TO EFFECTIVENESS
COMMUNITY COURT'S
PRESIDING JUDGE,
WAYNE ALLEN
PHOTO: TODD COOPER
10
A ugust 24, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
Stone and Allen began shaping their idea for a com-
munity court in Eugene in 2013. They shared a mutual
desire to find a way to deal with Eugene’s overwhelm-
ing amount of low-level, “quality of life” crime down-
town.
They started by getting community feedback with
help from the Center for Court Innovation, a national
organization based in Manhattan that would later help
fund the Eugene court. The city circulated a survey ask-
ing how community members perceived safety in a few
areas of town.
According to the results, almost half of respondents
indicated that they felt the area around the downtown
bus station was “unsafe” or “somewhat unsafe.”
Stone used the 900 or so responses to determine the
geographic boundaries for eligibility to participate in
Community Court. The boundaries included the Lane
Transit District bus station, the Eugene Public Library,
Lane Community College downtown campus and even-