A joint-jurisdiction court in El Dorado County continues to break the school-to-prison cycle for Native American youth. Using restorative justice practices to provide children and parents with achievable goals, the court helps to improve youths’ self-confidence, results in positive life choices, and gives children and families a true connection to tribal history and culture.

Creation of Joint-Jurisdictional Court
The joint-jurisdictional Family Wellness Court in El Dorado County was established in 2015 by former Presiding Judge Suzanne Kingsbury (Ret.) of the Superior Court of El Dorado County and former Chief Judge Christine Williams of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians Tribal Court. Currently presided over by Judge Gary Slossberg and Chief Judge Victorio Shaw, the judges hear a wide range of cases, including juvenile, child welfare, domestic violence, and criminal.

How the Joint-Jurisdictional Court Works
The Family Wellness Court allows for justice system-involved tribal youth and their families to take part in culturally responsive and court-supervised alternative practices than usually seen in a more traditional court. These alternative practices are also known as collaborative justice or problem-solving courts, which combine judicial supervision with rehabilitation services that are rigorously monitored and focused on recovery to reduce recidivism and improve offender outcomes. By sharing information and resources and coordinating their actions on these alternative approaches, the state and tribal courts can better address the legal issues faced by tribal youth.

This joint-jurisdictional model in El Dorado County was the first of its kind in California and was inspired by the Cass County and Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Wellness Court in Minnesota, which was established as the first joint-jurisdiction court in the nation in 2006. Former California Chief Justice Ronald George then established California’s Tribal Court-State Court Forum in 2010, modeled after other federal/state/tribal forums around the nation. The Judicial Council then created a Tribal/State Programs unit to support the work of the forum, including expanding the use of the Wellness Court model.

With the help of Jennifer Walter, who served as lead counsel to the Tribal Court-State Court Forum from 2010 to 2017, Judge Kingsbury and Judge Williams received a planning grant in 2015 from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to form its own Family Wellness Court in El Dorado County.

Judge Kingsbury, Judge Williams (now the Chief Judge of the Wilton Rancheria Tribal Court), and Ms. Walter (now in private practice) reflected on why they started their wellness court, the benefits it brings to their communities, and the impacts of the Family Wellness Court movement in California and nationwide.

What are the benefits of a joint-jurisdiction court?
Jenny Walter: The need is that you have two different jurisdictions addressing the same problem with the same family and because there’s generally a directive of resources on the tribal and county sides, it just makes sense to maximize and leverage the services. The other piece that’s really critical is when the state hears a case from tribal members, they will benefit so much from having a tribal court judge and tribal service providers in order to meet the needs of those families. If you can bring them together, you’ll change the outcomes. 

The tribal judges know these families. They’re not going to get snowed by what a state court judge might get snowed by. They’re going to be able to hold folks accountable in a very different way than a state court judge can. 

And then there’s these beautiful relationships that get formed with the judges and service providers when they can solve a problem they both share by coming together.

What were some of the issues tribal youth were facing in schools?
Judge Suzanne Kingsbury (Ret.): When kids got to the more traditional schools in the county, they very much felt like they were fish out of water. Older kids had tribal tattoos and were identified by school resource officers as being gang members or otherwise involved in criminal activity, but the tribal tattoos had significance in terms of customs and traditions of the tribe. So the kids felt marginalized and as they got older. They got foisted off to charter or continuation schools partially because of the absences and because they felt uncomfortable. We wanted to work with the school system to make sure these kids felt comfortable in mainstream schools.

Judge Christine Williams: A lot of the youth were being cited for different infractions on campus and the schools are not in reservation boundaries. Sometimes the tribal court was not hearing about these issues until later in the process and we felt that [the Wellness Court] was a way to communicate and problem-solve better around these cases.

Walter: At Shingle Springs and in El Dorado County, a lot of young people were becoming truant and sent to classrooms and areas where they weren’t getting their needs met, so they had no impetus or motivation to come to school. The school attendance board didn’t know what kind of accountability to have in place with the children and their parents, and there was a lot of animosity among the tribal members and families against the schools and yet everyone wanted to solve the problem. 

Why is a wraparound approach important in the Family Wellness Court?
Judge Kingsbury: If you take a child that’s in a dysfunctional family and you put that child in a situation where he or she learns skills and then just put them back in the same dysfunctional situation, it’s no wonder when that child doesn’t succeed. However, when you work with the whole family -- and really roll up your sleeves as opposed to just checking boxes on a reunification plan -- it reaps dividends and the families emerge stronger and better able to navigate their lives without the intervention of the court system and I think that’s ultimately the goal.

What were some of the early successes of the Family Wellness Court?
Judge Kingsbury: I think that our greatest successes were getting youth to the point where they could matriculate and/or graduate; developing a shared vision (at the state court and tribal court level) for the children and families involved in the joint jurisdiction courts instead of working at cross purposes; partnering with the local schools to assist them in better meeting the needs of tribal youth and their families; tackling generational truancy; and strengthening families in the tribal community.

The participants were committed to change. Even if they didn’t fully complete the program, they still accomplished our goals of having them graduate from high school, getting to a point where they no longer had to be justice-involved, getting them to matriculate from one school to another, and getting them enough credits to graduate.

We also developed some lasting changes within the educational system that made everyone a lot more aware of the differences that tribal students brought to the table and hopefully got them to deal with them with more sensitivity.

Judge Williams: Besides better outcomes, the unexpected success was the relationship between the county justice system and the tribal justice system and how it grew. The whole county including the reservation area became a better and safer place for everyone who came into that geographic area for the joint-jurisdiction project. We were able to see better coordination with county services that overlapped with tribal services like probation and most certainly the court. Together our outcomes for native people, non-native people, tribal members, casino patrons, and everyone who came into the area were better coordinated.

There were a lot of stereotypes there for both sides, so there was a lot of mistrust when we first started but a lot of that got broken down and communication just improved. We saw a change in the way everyone felt about each other and things got better, safer, and more cooperative.

What did you learn from each other and others from presiding over the Family Wellness Court?
Judge Kingsbury: Many of us came from a background where it wasn’t really understood how significant historical trauma is and how much it pervades every aspect of tribal people’s lives. To learn how to make trauma-informed decisions and work at peeling away the layers takes some time and it may require a timeframe that is somewhat different from the same timeframe that we have in the state court system. It was easy to deal with delinquency because those cases don’t have timeframes associated with them, however once we got into all the other cases, those cases were driven by the statutory timeframes unless the involved people were willing to waive time.

We figured out novel ways to solve problems. The tribal and county social workers were very creative and came up with really solid ideas on how to navigate a particular family’s problem. We found to really trust their views and vision on what they were doing. [Me and Judge Williams’] spidey sense may have gone in a different direction. We got assurance from the social workers that participants were doing well and to give them some faith.

Judge Williams: Public Law 280, which is the jurisdictional law that covers the division between the federal, state, and tribal governments in California, can be a gift if you learn how to utilize concurrent jurisdiction. That was the biggest takeaway for me, and that potentially any tribe in any county can attempt to coordinate their share of jurisdiction under Public Law 280. At the time, El Dorado County and the Shingle Springs Miwok Band of Indians had a difficult history, as most counties and most tribes do. El Dorado County is really close to the epicenter of the Gold Rush which was a devastating time for native people, yet I found all the judges on the bench in El Dorado County were really open to the concepts around the Family Wellness Court. I learned that sharing jurisdiction can be done anywhere, with the right people in place.

I didn’t know what to expect from the judges in El Dorado County. There was no native representation on the bench and no one necessarily reflecting back on my community, but I found the most willing, caring, and capable partners in the county and it’s really a credit to how esteemed our bench is across the state. It’s difficult work we [judges] do and tribes are working the same way to improve their situation the way counties are.

What should state and tribal entities know about starting a joint-jurisdiction court?
Judge Williams: I’m going to steal from my partner in anti-crime Judge Kingsbury: You can plan forever, but at some point, you just have to start. We had a two-year planning grant that was so incredibly helpful for us and got to put together strategic plans, host meetings and talk about what we wanted to see and who would be the key players. But at some point, you just have to start hearing a case and pull in people in person.

Don’t wait forever for all the circumstances to be perfect – ever. They won’t ever be perfect so your goal is to make things better incrementally and anything you can do to partner between a tribe and a county is already going to be better. It doesn’t have to be a big joint-jurisdiction project. Start by diverting a case or diverting a sentence on one case. Create a youth sentencing circle that the tribe and the county can both use.

Look at the strengths you already have and start there. We were successful because we already had a working relationship. El Dorado already had several wellness courts for veterans and mental health and were not new to the concept of alternative justice. For the tribe, they already had social services, after-school programs, tutors, and cultural programming for youth, so it already made sense to pair those things and start with a Family Wellness Court. 

Don’t overwhelm yourself with a model that worked for someone else. Make a model that works for you and look at your strengths and build on those rather than on a deficit, needs-based model.

Have an open mind about who your partners are going to be. Don’t come in with preexisting notions with what to expect. It’s hard to do with lots of past trauma between tribes and counties. Try to acknowledge that and embrace the past, but move forward through it to trust each other and try something new. 

Walter: When you’re creating a court like this, you end up with a lot of divisive and hard conversations that do take place but it’s through those conversations that you begin to build relationships and begin to see a problem not just from your own or their own lens but from a shared lens. Then that shared problem leads to a shared solution and better problem-solving. 

Really take the time to develop those relationships, and bring in somebody who is on the outside to help facilitate conversations. In other parts of the country, joint-jurisdiction courts fail because they didn’t bring in a neutral facilitator to help make sure things can get addressed in the right timing so relationships can flourish and don’t walk the other way. 

Focus on what your common problem is and try not to get side-tracked. Don’t be afraid to shoot for the moon – it's really about reimagining a court system.