Community Court Placement Worker
![Great Beginnings support the Downtown Community Court Great Beginnings support the Downtown Community Court](/images/cov/feature/Great-Beginnings-community-court.jpg)
Downtown Community Court (DCC) is a program that gives offenders an opportunity to make direct amends for the offences they have committed in the Downtown East Side.
Great Beginnings provided funding for a Community Court Supervisor for the first year of DCC’s operations.
Community Court Supervisor
This individual was critical as a liaison between the Courts and community groups and carried out the following duties:
- Provide education regarding the exact nature of community service
- Help develop potential roles and responsibilities ofCommunity Courtclients and ensure guidelines are understood
- Transport clients to service placements
- Facilitate introduction of DCC clients to work placement supervisors
- Ensure guidelines understood
- Interview assessing potential clients for appropriate placement
Offenders giving back to the Community
Work is ordered by the court as a condition of an individual’s sentence or through a program called Alternative Measures — a program used to divert offenders from the court system. The offender is assigned a specified amount of community service hours that must be completed within a specified time.
The work performed is meaningful and benefits the community and contributes to the reintegration of the offender into the community in a positive way. The offender learns to model good social skills and behaviour.
The expedient nature of the DCC proceedings allows for an association between crime and sentence in that offenders can perform community service within 24 hours of their arrest.