‘Invest in Your Participants’: Deborah Barrows of Community Partners in Action

On any given day, the Hartford Community Court sentences 35 to 40 people to perform community restitution as part of their sentences. Deborah Barrows has helped create the court’s robust community service program by harnessing relationships developed during her long career, including 28 years with the Hartford Police Department. In this New Thinking podcast, which was recorded at Community Justice 2016, Barrows discusses how to build community partnerships, the importance of treating program participants with respect, and how she helped launch “Footwear with Care,” an initiative that provides free shoes to participants in need. Deborah Barrows, program manager of Community Partners in Action, talks about strategies for building community partnerships during a panel on community service at Community Justice 2016. DEBORAH BARROWS: You want real community service? Invest in your participants, listen to them, value them. People don’t want to be there but I thank you for coming. What? Thank you so much for coming. I appreciate you being here. ROB WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation and I am in Chicago at Community Justice 2016, where there are over 400 people from dozens of states, 6 countries, I think over 100 jurisdictions, who are here to learn and talk about different aspects of community justice and court reform. Right now I’m speaking with one of the invited speakers and also an attendee at the conference, Deborah Barrows, who is the program manager of Community Partners in Action, which is an organization that’s been contracted by Hartford Community Court to provide the community service which is an essential component of the Hartford Community Court and of many community courts. So, Deborah, I wanted to start off asking you maybe you could actually explain Community Partners in Action? What is your relationship to the court as a community based organization? BARROWS: Thank you, and thank you so much for this opportunity. It’s exciting to be here. This is wonderful. I’ve learned so very much. Community Partners in Action as a non-profit agency has been around over 100 years and we work with individuals that have been involved in a criminal justice system to help them get re-integrated into the community and doing so, under that umbrella, there are re-entry services. There is a program that deals with women that have been incarcerated and help get them back into the society. There’s a component of basic need, so there’s a lot of different programs under that umbrella. WOLF: Your particular role there is to work with the court and provide kinds of community restitution or community service projects that defendants are sentenced to? BARROWS: That is correct. Once an individual, it has been determined that an individual will serve community service, that is where we take over and I oversee the community service component. I have a staff of 7 individuals, 5 of which are in the field as supervisors, and we take our participants out on a daily basis. WOLF: Well, so tell me about some of the work you do because you guys put out a newsletter and the descriptions of the kinds of community service you do, the range of it, the number of different things that you do is kind of unusual. You’ve really been successful in terms of being creative with your community service. I know you, in addition to a community garden, you’re involved in some environmental restoration projects along the river. You work with a Jewish cemetery to help them maintain the cemetery. A lot of interesting things, so maybe you could explain and give some examples of the kind of community service you’re doing, and maybe offer some insight into how you’ve developed such a robust program? BARROWS: I think what I need to step back at is for 28 years I wore a hat with law enforcement, with the City of Hartford police department, so I was a police officer operating a police cruiser and I managed to have some supervisory roles. It became very evident then that we needed to do things differently. We needed to develop partnerships and collaborations with all of the different entities, all of the different organizations within the community. So, when I was fortunate enough to be offered this position as program manager of community service, my predecessor was gone so I had no one to really show me the ropes. So, I reflected back on those partnerships and back on those collaborations, and thought, my goodness, what a great idea to reach out to those individuals and say, “Hey, remember me. Here I am. I now have individuals who I want to have become re-energized and re-invested in the community. I still have my police associations, my clergy and all the different agencies, so let’s develop this collaboration and really do what we can to make Hartford the beautiful place that we want it to be.” I attend community meetings. I stay involved in the community. We have neighborhood revitalization zone meetings. In doing so, I’m going to individuals, I’m saying, “Listen. On any given day I have between 35 and 40 people who are mandated to give back, so let’s really make this work.” I find myself meeting with individuals, representatives, from the Jewish cemetery who say, “Hey. We need help.” Absolutely. I find myself meeting with Riverfront Recapture. We have presence along the river. We have presence in many of Hartford’s beautiful parks. WOLF: So, what kind of- give some examples of what it is the defendants are then doing in this scenario? BARROWS: We are doing at Ebony Horse Women which is a therapeutic equestrian center. We are working with horses. It’s also an educational component of course. We’re doing some gardening. We are working along the riverfront and just cleaning the river, getting it ready for the Dragon Races and cleaning out the trails, doing some gardening there. We have a presence in the parks. We were just cleaning out the playgrounds and making it beautiful. Of course we have a presence on the streets. So, just these collaborations and for me, it’s being able to say, “Listen. I don’t have all the answers and until we come together and have this conversation about how all of us can fit in, how all of us contribute and value the people that are involved, that’s when we make the real difference.” WOLF: Have you had resistance when you approach someone and say, “Oh, I’ve got some defendants here. They can help.” Are some people, “Well, I don’t know. Is that safe?” I mean, I imagine people in addition to the union issue, I imagine there’s a whole range of questions or concerns that might come up depending on the kind of work you’re talking about. BARROWS: Absolutely it is, and we sit down and work though that. I think dialogue and communication is key, and letting people know what we bring to the table. We are here to do this. This is what we’re offering. Ultimately, everyone wants people to get reconnected. This is part of their community also. They may be offenders. They may be drug dealers. They may be prostitutes but for people they deserve the right to be valued, to be respected and they are part of our community. WOLF: I imagine, as you said, it’s educational in some context. Some of the defendants perhaps have never- BARROWS: Oh my goodness, yes. WOLF: Interacted with a horse before, or been aware that the river is an environmental concern and that it’s polluted or there’s trash along the river and that it makes a difference to clean it up. BARROWS: Hartford is such a rich, rich, diverse city in its history, so each time our participants go out to these sites, there is an individual to sit and talk with them about the meaningfulness of their work, and validating them as people so when they go up to the riverfront there’s someone to talk about the river and its connection. When you go to the Jewish cemetery there’s someone to talk about the richness in the cemetery. It’s one of the oldest, most beautiful cemeteries around. Just getting that education, a lot of people have not gone anywhere other than their little front door, so they really don’t know. Being able to do some of these things under this non-profit organization that’s helped people get back into society is just amazing.   WOLF: It sounds like your experience, formally as a police officer and at the police department, gives you a unique perspective. I mean, you spoke of the relationships that you’d already had in the community and the ideas that you’d already developed in your career as a police officer. I imagine that gives you a different kind of stature or credibility. When you’re approaching people they feel, well she’s not putting us in danger. I mean, she’s someone who’s very knowledgeable about the law and justice, and accountability. BARROWS: As a police officer or as an in any field, you’re only as good as your listening. If you’re an active listener and you can really tune into what people’s needs are and what the community’s needs are, then that can just enha...