Each time he was convicted, Brown took plea agreements that led to short stints in the local jail or prison. He’d eventually be released, and sooner rather than later, he’d find himself arrested and jailed all over again for yet another drug crime or theft. Usually, he stole to pay his drug habit.

Until last year, Brown was caught in the revolving door of the criminal justice system, and there was one obvious reason why he had been stuck there for so long: He was addicted to heroin, and he couldn’t find an escape route. Meanwhile, the criminal justice system had never considered how his drug addiction might have motivated his crimes.

Brown could have remained in that seemingly unending cycle, except that last October, Brown encountered the Midtown Community Court in Manhattan, the first "problem-solving justice" community court in the country, and a model to dozens of courts across the country and around the globe, including San Francisco’s Community Justice Center, which is expected to begin a trial run this fall before becoming fully operational next year.

Brown came in contact with the Midtown Community Court as a result of his latest arrest for jumping the turnstile at the subway. Brown was headed to a doctor’s appointment to treat the hepatitis C that he had contracted through a contaminated heroin needle. He didn’t have any money. When he arrived at the subway station, Brown thought a moment about his options, and he decided he had no choice but to hop the subway gate. A police officer spotted him doing it, and he was arrested and charged with two misdemeanors. Because he’d been arrested in Midtown, he was sent to the Midtown Community Court.

There, a judge scrutinized his rap sheet and, after asking Brown a few questions, he offered Brown a plea agreement of two days of community service — sweeping the stairs at the Union Square subway stop — and one day of counseling, instead of jail time or a fine. Brown agreed to it, and at the counseling session, Brown, who had never held down a job before, said he frequently sold drugs because he didn’t know how to find a legitimate job, especially since he had such a long criminal history.

The community court counselor suggested that Brown try out Times Square Ink, a voluntary career program located in the Midtown Community Courthouse and sponsored by the courts. For the next five months, Brown showed up every day for job training. Noting his diligence, the court-run career program gave Brown a volunteer part-time maintenance job. These days, he is vying for full-time sanitation and maintenance work with New York City.

Most important, his efforts have impressed the local family court, which recently returned full custody of his 11-year-old daughter to him. She had been living in foster care since 2001. "All the times I’d been in jail, no one ever offered me a program," he marvels. "I’d just go to jail. This court was totally different. They didn’t treat me like a criminal. It was actually kinda strange."

Brown is clearly a community court success story — a shining example of what can happen when the court system abandons the routine processing of criminal defendants, and begins to explore the human and social context behind an individual’s violation of the law.

Though not all criminal defendants who appear before a community court will result in an ending as neat and happy as Brown’s, it’s still a story worth considering as San Francisco prepares to open the Community Justice Center, whose jurisdiction will include the Tenderloin, Civic Center, South of Market and Union Square.

Brown’s story represents the ideal way that a community court could operate: A court considers the complicated and nuanced back story of each criminal defendant, provides services that can help prevent the defendant from getting entangled in the criminal justice system again, while also imposing appropriate consequences for violating the law.

If it is the goal and the desire of San Franciscans to reform and humanize the criminal courts, then the Community Justice Center plan is a reasonable, and perhaps positive, step.

In fact, community courts emerge out of what has been called a "quiet revolution" of the criminal court system: the move to "problem-solving justice." Problem-solving justice is a relatively new — and I would argue progressive — philosophy toward disrupting business-as-usual and revolving-door justice at the criminal courthouse.

Though community courts have emerged as a popular and practical method for integrating problem-solving justice approaches, there is no single way to do it. Other examples include community policing and drug courts. But what these efforts have in common is an openness to include the voice of the community in the court process, a willingness to look at a defendant as something more than the perpetrator of a crime, and a desire to look to root causes and rehabilitation, rather than resorting to straight punishment.

Problem-solving justice efforts are also borne — and rightly — from a dialogue between various stakeholders, including the local community (the Midtown Community Court, for example, utilizes a community advisory board to help it set priorities and craft new programs).

In San Francisco, after much discussion between the mayor’s office and advocacy groups, it was decided that the new court would focus on misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, mostly drug crimes but also car break-ins, shoplifting and writing bad checks — but not infractions such as public urination and public drunkenness.

This approach answered community concerns that some might be criminalized for simply being poor.

In moving ahead, the city has answered yes to these important questions: Do San Franciscans want to embrace a different approach to how the criminal courts interact with defendants? Do they want to give judges a wider array of options besides jail? Do they prefer a court system that humanizes defendants?

In communities across the country, community courts have been championed by individuals, elected officials, and legal professionals from every space along the political and legal spectrum. It is a hopeful sign for San Francisco now that it has given the green light to a criminal court that is more humanizing and community-minded than the current revolving-door system.