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Feature TYLA Affiliate

Dallas Association of Young Lawyers, Aid to the Homeless
By:  Chris Hodge, Attorney, Carrington Coleman

More than ten years ago, DAYL’s Aid to the Homeless Committee began collaborating with the Dallas Municipal Courts, the Dallas City Attorney’s office, and the Stewpot, a resource center for homeless and at-risk individuals in Dallas, to conduct a Community Court Project. This program allows homeless participants with certain kinds of misdemeanors to work off their sentence (from a guilty or no contest plea) on a Saturday by doing supervised community service. This is a win-win situation for the court system and the homeless: the Municipal Courts process misdemeanors that would otherwise clog up the system and the homeless participate in community service rather than face paying a fine that they cannot afford—and the entire process is completed in one day. The program has been incredibly successful and now requires very little outside coordination.

In 2007, the Aid to the Homeless Committee and the Stewpot began partnering with the Dallas County Justice of the Peace Courts to tackle a more difficult problem: citations issued by Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) police, including fare evasion, a Class C misdemeanor. Such citations are not eligible for disposition in the Community Court program because the citations are processed by the Justice of the Peace Courts, not the Municpal Courts. The problem is made more complex because these citations may be issued and assigned to courts in any of the Justice of the Peace precincts throughout Dallas County.

In May 2007, the Aid to the Homeless Committee received the support of two Justices of the Peace and their clerks, who gave up a Saturday morning to conduct DAYL’s first annual DART community court, also in partnership with the Stewpot. The judges adjudicated DART citations on behalf of several Justices of the Peace, and the homeless individuals were able to perform community service in the same manner as the Community Court program.

Every year since then, the annual DART Community Court has been a phenomenal success, thanks in no small part to the enthusiastic support of the Justices of the Peace and their staff, as well as the support of the Stewpot in hosting the event and promoting it to the population it serves. DAYL members volunteer to coordinate with the Justices of the Peace involved, retrieve the many case files from the various Justice of the Peace precincts, and help staff the event. This year’s fifth annual DART Community Court will be held in August.

The Aid to the Homeless Committee was fortunate to be awarded a grant from the Baron and Blue Foundation in 2010, part of which went toward producing a short video describing the workings of the DART Community Court. The video is available for use by young lawyer associations or other organizations interested in implementing similar programs in their own cities or towns, and will soon be available on the DAYL website, at www.dayl.com/videos/communitycourt. If you would like to be mailed a copy of the video, or for more information on the DART Community Court Project or DAYL’s Aid to the Homeless Committee, please email committee chair Jennie Bauman at jbauman@ccsb.com.