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Each year for her course in “Legal Aspects of Government Finance,” Clinical Professor of Law Cynthia Baker chooses an ongoing public project to use as a case study. In 2020, that project was the new $626 million Community Justice Campus taking shape on a former industrial site in Indianapolis.

To Baker (left, on a tour of the site), two things stood out: the new, innovative approach to criminal justice and the fact that four IU McKinney alumni are actively working to bring the project to fruition:

• Tim Moriarty, ’11, Special Counsel to Mayor Joe Hogsett
• Paul Babcock, ’15, former Director of the Office of Public Health and Safety, now interim CEO of Health & Hospital Corp. of Marion County.
• Andrew Mallon, ’01, former Corporation Counsel of the City and current Executive Director of the Capital Improvement Board of Marion County
• A. Scott Chinn, ’94, Partner, Faegre Drinker, lead outside counsel for the Community Justice Campus project and Counsel to the Mayor’s Task Force on Criminal Justice Reform

Construction broke ground for the 140-acre Community Justice Campus in 2018 at the site of the former Citizens Energy coke plant along Southeastern Avenue in Indianapolis. The campus is expected to transform the Twin Aire neighborhood and revitalize the old industrial site.

“Mayor Hogsett made criminal justice reform a priority from day one of his administration,” Chinn said. “The Community Justice Campus is the physical place though which those reforms that so many in our community are contributing to will occur. And in hindsight, the criminal justice reform plans the Mayor and his government and community partners developed are even more important since public safety reform issues are appropriately being added to the community conversation.”

City leaders expect the first phase—with nine buildings, including the assessment center, the adult detention center, the courthouse and the sheriff’s office, plus other professional buildings for departments related to or working closely with the criminal justice system—to be finished in 2022.

But a $10 million Assessment and Intervention Center, which will serve individuals suffering from mental health and addiction problems, is slated to open a few months ahead of schedule, sometime this fall. The treatment center will be operated by the Health & Hospital Corporation of Marion County and is the first of its kind in the state, and probably the nation, according to Babcock.

Low-level, non-violent offenders struggling with addiction or mental illness will be sent to the new center—rather than to jail—as will some individuals who haven’t been arrested. The goal is to keep people out of jail, reduce recidivism and jail overcrowding and address some causes of crime. Instead, the focus will be on short-term detoxification, behavioral health treatment, access to social services, referrals to long-term-treatment programs and direct connections to wraparound care.

“The Assessment and Intervention Center represents a new mindset regarding criminal justice,” Babcock said. “It was designed specifically to connect people to mental health and treatment resources to keep people out of jail. It is a true justice-oriented approach.”

Babcock said his law degree, combined with an IU master’s degree in public health, might have provided a different way of looking at the challenges facing the public health and safety issues in Indianapolis, and, ultimately, in how a new approach could be more beneficial.

“Law school, for me, was really the intersection of politics and policy,” Babcock said. “What I learned was that good policy is what makes good politics, as well as how to effectively participate in these types of projects that really have, at the foundation, a sense of public health and justice for the public good.”

Babcock took Professor Baker’s class during his law school days, he added. What did he learn? “Everything I learned in that class, I needed for this project,” he said. “The Community Justice Campus shows how IU McKinney lawyers are making a difference in the fabric of our community, in a really meaningful way."