7 Habits of Highly Effective Public Servants

I was lucky to be asked this year to serve on the selection committee for the Sloan Public Service Awards, which are given out to six New York City employees (out of more than 300,000 workers) each year. As Mary McCormick, the president of the Fund, explains, "people take public service for granted." The awards are a way of drawing public attention to exemplary performance by the men and women who teach our children, clean our streets, create our parks, and perform all of the other tasks that keep our city moving forward each day. While there is an element of pain to being on the selection committee (choosing among worthy candidates can be very difficult), there is mostly a great deal of pleasure in being able to honor unsung heroes.

Today, the Fund for the City of New York organized a bus trip to present the six winners with their awards (including a $10,000 check) at their place of work. It is a wonderful way to experience some of the greatness and diversity of New York City. The sites varied from the high-tech command center for the Office of Emergency Management to a gritty bus depot in East New York. The winners were a varied lot too, coming from the fields of science, education, health care, historic preservation, and transportation.

While each Sloan Award recipient is of course unique, it was possible to discern some common traits among the group. I'm not sure any of this rises above the level of cliche, but these were things that I thought the winners had in common:

1. All of the winners communicated a palpable love for New York City.
2. Jefrick Dean, a bus operator who was profiled by Sam Roberts in the New York Times yesterday, talked about the difference between doing one's job whole-heartedly and half-heartedly. All of the winners seemed wholly committed to their work and unafraid of hard work.
3. Donna Lena Gordon, director of palliative care at Coney Island Hospital emphasized her belief in life-long learning, something that was exhibited by all of the other winners as well.
4. All of the winners displayed a remarkable degree of graciousness and humility, taking pains to deflect attention, credit others for their success and acknowledge those who had helped them along the way.
5. The quality of empathy and the ability to listen came up repeatedly in the remarks that others made about the winners.
6. Clare Bauman, a teacher at the High School of Telecommunications Arts & Technology, hailed her principal, Phil Weinberg, for his use of language, talking about how he uses words (including an annual letter of gratitude) to motivate students and create a sense of community at the school. Jefrick Dean is also clearly a master communicator, able to defuse tension on his routes and to minister to his fellow bus drivers back at the depot.
7. Finally, all of the winners seemed driven by their own internal standard of excellence -- their motivation clearly did not come from a desire for public acclaim or at the urging of their supervisors.

So there you have it: seven habits of highly effective public servants. Kudos to the winners and to the Fund for the City of New York for organizing a remarkable program.

Thinking About Crime and Justice

Stateline.org has a good piece entitled "New York courts revisit juvenile justice" that looks at New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman's efforts to rethink how the courts handle cases involving 16 and 17 year old defendants. The article focuses on the new diversion options being offered at our Bronx Community Solutions project.

Speaking of rethinking conventional wisdom, today marks the 20th anniversary of The New Press, which published Good Courts: The Case for Problem-Solving Justice, the book that John Feinblatt and I co-wrote back in 2005. In addition to Good Courts, The New Press has published an array of provocative books about criminal justice by writers I like, including such authors as Marc Mauer, David Cole, David Troutt, David Anderson, and Alex Papachristou. I encourage you to check out their backlist and maybe order a book or two to celebrate their anniversary.

Notes from England

I spent last week in London checking up on our office there. We continue to deepen our understanding of the local culture, broaden our pool of allies and friends, and strengthen our track record of delivering quality product. Among other things, on this trip Aubrey and I met with the leadership of the Labor Party, checked out our new office space at the Barrow Cadbury Trust, met with all three of our core foundation supporters, advised a woman creating a new charity to advocate for judicial change in the UK, reviewed the progress that a team of researchers have made evaluating drug courts in England, and attended a 10th anniversary event for our partners at the think tank Policy Exchange. Aubrey and Anton then left me in London and went to Bristol where they participated in a national probation conference.

Much of whatever free time I had on this trip was devoted to Charles Dickens. My wife, who is working on a Dickens-related book, came over to join me for the weekend and we checked out Dickens exhibits at the National Portrait Gallery, the Dickens Museum and other venues.

Conversation with David Onek

David Onek is someone I know from growing up in Washington D.C. Through sheer coincidence, he has also found himself in the business of trying to change the criminal justice system. He has worked both in the non-profit sector and in government, most notably helping to run the criminal justice system in San Francisco under former Mayor Gavin Newsom. He recently ran an underdog race for district attorney in San Francisco, ultimately finishing second. Onek is now at Berkeley Law School where, among other things, he hosts a great podcast series. He was kind enough to invite me to chat earlier this week. Click here to listen to the conversation, which touches on community courts, procedural justice, and the lessons that Aubrey Fox and I learned during our research for Trial and Error in Criminal Justice Reform: Learning from Failure. To see other conversations from Onek's podcast series, click here.

James Q. Wilson, RIP

Two pieces of sad news to report this week: first is the death of James Q. Wilson, co-author, with George Kelling, of "Broken Windows," the seminal Atlantic magazine article that transformed law enforcement both here in the U.S. and abroad. I never met Wilson, but I have been fortunate to spend some time with Kelling. As an institution, the Center for Court Innovation owes them both a debt: the broken windows theory is one of the ideas that animated our community courts.

Unfortunately, Wilson's was not the only death to touch the Center recently. A week ago, Michael Rothenberg, the executive director of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, passed away. Michael, whose career included a stint at the Vera Institute of Justice working on jury issues, was a fellow traveler in the world of justice reform. He will be missed.

Catching Up On My Reading

Last week was basically a wash for me at work as my whole family struggled with the flu. The only good part was that I got to catch up on my reading. Among other things, I spent some time with the work of Frank Zimring, author of The City That Became Safe. I visited Tom Tyler and Kevin Burke's new website devoted to procedural justice. And just for fun I also read this provocative essay by William Deresiewicz on the disadvantages of an elite education.

State of the Judiciary

I spent today in Albany attending New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman's annual state of the judiciary address. These events always feel a bit like reunions to me. It is a good reminder of how our work intersects with so many different people and parts of the state. In his remarks, Lippman highlighted seven priorities for the year ahead, including one that the Center for Court Innovation has been deeply involved in: reforming the way that courts handle criminal cases involving 16 and 17 year olds.

Juvenile Justice Reform

Al Siegel and I have a short piece in the New York Law Journal today under the headline "Time Is Ripe for Reforms in Juvenile Justice." Here's an excerpt:

Numerous studies have documented that community-based programs are demonstrably cheaper and more effective than incarceration, but these programs aren't free. Which raises an important question: in a time of fiscal uncertainty, will government be willing to put its money where its mouth is? Is it possible to generate the political will necessary to allocate scarce resources to providing delinquent young people with the structure and support they need to get back on track?

Unfortunately, there is evidence that the answer may be no. The current budget being negotiated in Albany eliminates the Community Reinvestment Program, which provides $4 million each year to support community-based alternatives for young people charged with delinquency.

These programs, which include one that our agency runs in Queens, are helping hundreds of vulnerable New Yorkers receive desperately-needed mental health care, drug treatment and other services.

In many ways, the stars are aligned for significant juvenile justice reform in New York—it is not every day that the mayor, the governor, and the chief judge are all in agreement. But experience has taught us a crucial lesson when it comes to reforming complex government systems. While it is important to have buy-in at the top from key government decision makers, real change can only happen at the ground level. This is not the time to consider scaling back our commitment to community-based services for troubled youth.

Hank Pirowski, RIP

Earlier today, I received the sad news that Hank Pirowski had passed away after a long illness. Hank was a pioneering figure in New York State. He was an early believer in drug court and played a key role in bringing a number of different problem-solving courts to Buffalo. My favorite project of his was Buffalo's C.O.U.R.T.S program, which helped to inspire our own Bronx Community Solutions.

I wasn't particularly close to Hank -- all told, I probably only spent a few hours in his company. But I think I was one of many who admired him from afar for his creativity and his industry, to say nothing of his quirky sense of humor. My favorite moment with Hank was a lunch we had together a few years back during a visit I made to Buffalo. After a tour of C.O.U.R.T.S, he took me to a local lunch place and graciously shared stories of his brief experience as a player at the Washington Redskins training camp. He will be missed.

CEO Wins Innovations Award

Congratulations to Mayor Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and the Center for Economic Opportunity for winning the Innovations in American Government Award from Harvard University. The Center for Court Innovation was fortunate to win this award back in 1998 and it made a big difference, providing us with a sense of credibility, heft, and exposure that it might have taken us years to establish through normal means.