Burke Fitzpatrick administers the Office

of Justice Programs in South Carolina’s Department of Public Safety, which distributes federal justice

dollars to programs in the state. In this interview, he explains why he thinks problem-solving courts have been a

good investment and what he looks for in a funding application.

The

following is a transcript of the interview.

ROBERT V.

WOLF: For anyone trying to start a new program, funding is crucial. The big question is, how do you

attract dollars to your initiative? I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation,

and I turned to Burke Fitzpatrick for an answer to that question.

Mr. Fitzpatrick is the Administrator

for the Office of Justice Programs in the South Carolina Department of Public Safety, and his team oversees the distribution

of federal justice dollars in his state. Mr. Fitzpatrick participated in a panel on funding at Community Justice

2012: the International Conference of Community Courts. I caught up with him afterward to talk about why he thinks

South Carolina’s problem-solving courts have been a good investment and to get a sense of what he looks for

in a funding application.

Thank you very much, Burke, for taking the time to talk to me.

BURKE FITZPATRICK: Pleasure to be here.

WOLF:

Why are you interested in community courts, given your capacity as overseer of federal justice dollars distributed

in South Carolina?

FITZPATRICK: Let me first give you a little

context. My office does distribute and manage much of the federal law enforcement funds that come from the Department

of Justice, as well as victim of crimes money and juvenile justice grant funds, and we’ve been doing that for

a very long time.

And in South Carolina we don’t have a very distinguished record as far

as our rankings in violent crime and property crime in general. In the last decade, we’ve been ranked number

one per capita in violent crime in the country. And we’re not in that ranking right now, we’ve slipped

to number two, thankfully, and maybe we’re down to five; we’re heading in the right direction. But for all those

years and before, my office put a lot of money into law enforcement to fight violent crime, with a number of initiatives,

multijurisdictional narcotics task forces, all kinds of things. But what we didn’t address—and I think this

was an oversight, which we are now trying to correct—what we didn’t address is the piece on the courts. Because

you can arrest a lot of people, either for minor crimes or major crimes—and major crimes are probably going to do

prison time, but the minor crimes, which affect the quality of life and lead, I think, to violent crime numbers in

the state—actually if you ignore those folks then you’re not solving the problem.

So we

now think that putting some resources into the specialized court, such as community courts, such as domestic violence

courts, such as mental health courts and other types of specialized courts is a wise investment because we’re

going to break that revolving door that—we’re going to break that chain where the offenders who start out as

low-level offenders—although it’s very, very serious, the people they impact—these low-level offenders, we can reintegrate

them into the community, get them sober, and stable, and employed, and have sufficient supervision, perhaps, for

a period of time where they’re a contributing member of the community and not, maybe, someone who’s going

to graduate to a more and more serious crime.

So in a nutshell, we’ve been putting a lot

of money into the law enforcement side and neglecting, to a great extent, the community corrections or community

court side. And now I think it’s time to balance that out. And interestingly, it comes at a time when federal

grant funds are diminishing, so it’s going to be even more difficult to do that. I think law enforcement in

our state and many states have sort of been used to taking advantage, rightfully so, of the justice system’s grants

and the Byrne Funds, and other funds. What they need to see—and I think many, many of our law enforcement officers

do—but they don’t want to be locking up the same people again and again either. And they don’t want their

communities to suffer the same problems over and over again that these courts might be able to solve. So we’ve

got good track records with some of our domestic violence courts. We’ve got a good track record for our mental

health courts— don’t have enough of them, they don’t impact enough people, and they’re not a perfect solution,

but they’re headed in the right direction.

WOLF: So you have

had experience with these kinds of problem-solving courts, and you’re saying that your experience has been positive?

FITZPATRICK: They have been positive. We have funded, out of my

office, domestic violence courts and mental health courts. They’ve all been successful, they’ve got very,

very talented people, judiciary and staff support, and all kinds of community resources behind them, but I question

whether we’re going to ever get to a point where we can have enough of them to make sort of a tidal change in

the kind of the crime rates we’re talking about. But certainly it’s the right thing to do for the judiciary

and it’s the right thing to do for the criminal justice system.

WOLF:

What factors are you weighing? What are you looking for in an applicant who is coming to you and saying, “You know,

we have a great idea. We want to start this kind of court or this kind of program”?

FITZPATRICK:

It’s an interesting question because for a grant administrator, it’s always a question as to where you

put your resources, and in my office we’ve taken the philosophy that we will reach out to everybody, make them

aware of these possibilities, and make them aware of the grant solicitation resources out there. But we’re not

wise enough to get on the community level and decide if that’s a good place or the next county’s a good

place, or the next city’s a good place. So we let them come to us. We let those proposals come to our office

because they’ve already shown the initiative and the interest, and they’ve talked amongst themselves and

got buy-in, probably, from law enforcement and courts and probation, parole and pardon services, and the alcohol

and drug abuse folks on the local level before they send us the grant application. Then we’ll look at it and

maybe give it some guidance on budget and structure and evaluation, and make sure they have measurable objectives

and good performance indicators. And then it’s our job to take that application and put it against all the others,

because we get millions of more dollars worth of requests than we can fulfill, and say that’s the project we

need to fund at the expense of others that aren’t gonna get funded.

We’ve been successful

in that because I think the council and board that we report to see the big picture the same way we do, in that if

we just concentrate on that one part of the criminal justice system, we’re just not going to be successful.

WOLF: And have you found that there is some resistance in some

parts within, perhaps, law enforcement or the judiciary to some of these alternative approaches, or are people welcoming

these ideas with open arms at this point?

FITZPATRICK: Let me speak

candidly here. When drug courts first were initiated around the country and I think also in South Carolina, the title

“drug court,” to the general public, meant that you had a special court set up to crack down on drug offenders. And

that was okay because that’s really not what the court was supposed to be about; it was supposed to break that

link of continued criminality and continued recidivism. So we didn’t get too much criticism from the public

because they thought this was a tougher, tougher measure, and I think that as people began to understand what the

drug court was about and saw its successes, they said “hey, this isn’t a bad idea. This is a good idea.”

Mental health courts, I think the community adopted that idea right away. I think the private sector, the communities,

the retailers, they knew that these panhandlers and folks were making, you know, are minor thieves, and people who

were scrawling graffiti or peeing and urinating all over the front of their businesses, they know they’re crazy.

I mean, that’s not a politically correct word, but yeah, they are, and they need special help. And they immediately

endorsed mental health courts, I think.

Domestic violence courts, that’s a very specialized

crime, and we need to work with those offenders so it doesn’t escalate, and people seemed to adopt that pretty

well, as well.

WOLF: And so given, as you referred to, the reduction

in federal dollars, where does that leave states and communities in terms of strategies or the options open to them?

FITZPATRICK: Well there’s ways to initiate community courts

with very little initial funding input. Traditionally it’s been done through grants because most communities

and municipalities just don’t have unprogrammed dollars just sitting around on the shelf saying, “Gosh, what

a great idea. Let’s start a court.”

So they come to maybe a state administrative agency

like mine and say, “I’d like a grant if you have grant money, but after two or three years, or four years, we’ll

stand on our own two feet.” And that’s the model we use in South Carolina.

The first year

is getting it all together and getting organized and getting that client/defendant population in place. The second

year is really hitting your stride and working out all the kinks and getting some good data. And the third year,

the third year is critical because you’re going back to your county council, back to your city council, or whomever

you can find, and saying, “Listen, these grant funds are going to be withdrawn. We have demonstrated success. Here

are our numbers.” And if that community really understands what that community court is about, if they’ve been

in the court and actually seen it and realize “Okay, there’s real people here acting compassionately and fairly,

but firmly,” that community’s going to say, “We understand that the community is safer, saving valuable tax

dollars, we’ve got to continue it.”

WOLF: Great, well, you

know, I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.

FITZPATRICK:

Well thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be invited to the conference. Great job.

WOLF: Thank you. I’ve been speaking with Burke Fitzpatrick, who’s the administrator of the

Office of Justice Programs of the South Carolina Department of Public Safety. I am Rob Wolf, Director of Communications

at the Center for Court Innovation. To hear more podcasts, you can visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org.