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| Judge Devin Robinson |
The judge's bench is low to the ground so he won't loom above defendants. The Brooklyn courtroom shares a building with youth after-school initiatives, a GED program, and a community healing and wellness team consisting of social workers and case managers who offer counseling, help with housing issues and treatment referrals.
Red Hook is a community court, which means it seeks to engage the neighborhoods it serves and address the root cause of a crime rather than just punish a defendant. It opened about 26 years ago and serves South Brooklyn, handling both criminal cases and disputes involving residents of a large public housing complex nearby.
As the court's only judge, Judge Robinson presides over thousands of misdemeanor cases each year from a problem-solving perspective, seeking to address the root causes of a crime by getting defendants drug treatment, anger management counseling, GED classes and even meditation.
"For most of the low-level offenses that we encounter, punishment in the form of fines or incarceration — these more traditional forms of consequences for criminal conduct — I find them to be less effective than trying to figure out what is going on with people's lives and seeing what you can do to help them," he said. "Simply put, if someone is hungry enough that they decide that they need to steal food in order to survive, they are not going to be less hungry or feel more a part of society if you punish them."
On this month's episode of Approach The Bench, a Law360 podcast hosted by feature reporter Cara Bayles, Judge Robinson discussed the ways community court differs from traditional criminal justice models, how a courthouse can build a sense of community, and his transition from being a civil litigator to a criminal court judge.
Judge Robinson worked for more than a dozen years in private practice, handling commercial litigation, mostly contract disputes. He was elected as a New York City civil court judge in 2022. Once he was elected, he was assigned to criminal court, and ended up mostly doing arraignments. He said it was an "unexpected blessing," because he ended up working as a substitute judge at Red Hook when its then-sitting judge, Judge Sharen Hudson, was out.
"I would come here, and I would slowly fall in love with this place and all that it is, all that it is trying to do. And so when I got the opportunity to come here instead of going back to civil court, it did take me all of a few seconds to make that decision," he said. "There truly was no contest. Everyone here, every single day, is trying their best to help their neighbors in a direct and perhaps even life-changing way. And there are few, if any, better callings."
Every month, Approach The Bench features an interview with a sitting judge about the work of judging and the issues the judiciary faces. Each episode offers a peek inside the chambers and personalities of some of the country's leading jurists.
More information about the show can be found here. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And if you like the show, please leave a written review! It helps others find us more easily.