The above-titled article posted on the GovTech website discussed some recent research of interest to courts.
“Researchers created an algorithm that predicts risks of biased, overly punitive sentencing. The tool performs with similar accuracy — and similar limits — to risk assessment algorithms already used to influence pretrial and parole decisions, authors say.
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| https://bit.ly/3LkoBKz |
A report on the results of “The Court Appearance Project” in North Carolina was released recently.
“The Court Appearance Project launched in August of 2021 to support local North Carolina criminal justice system leaders committed to examining the scale and impact of missed court appearances in their communities and devising policy solutions to address them. New Hanover, Orange, and Robeson Counties were selected from a diverse pool of applicants, based on the collective commitment of local practitioners and their ideas and momentum for improving policies. Teams were comprised of stakeholders from across the justice system, including the senior resident superior court judge; chief district court judge; representatives from the offices of the district attorney, public defender, clerk, and sheriff; and others.
With technical assistance support from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Government Criminal Justice Innovation Lab,3 the teams met over several months to review findings from the court and jail data, evaluate the available research, and examples of innovation, and develop consensus local solutions. Relying on their combined expertise and the findings from the data, each county team crafted policy solutions that they believed would deliver a high impact in their courts and communities.3 To contact project staff, please reach out to Jessica Smith, Director of the Criminal Justice Innovation Lab, at smithj@sog.unc.edu, and Terry Schuster, Manager of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project, at tschuster@pewtrust.org.
In brief, here are some findings from the project:
It is worthwhile to read the entire report to learn about the impact of nonappearance on the public and the justice system and the project's recommendations (including the use of text reminders). It is available in full as a PDF download at:
In this month’s collection of notes we have news about an online forms creation website, punishment for abuse of social media by posting a judge's personal information, ideas for "engineering gatherings", New Mexico finishing their statewide E-filing implementation project, the new NCSC's Courthouse Retrospective report, CCJ/COSCA support for remote and virtual hearings, and a cool new data tool.
A couple of weeks ago I shared some of “my problems with pending case statistics”. Before that, I posted another note regarding an alternative for analyzing criminal justice data. I generally try not to complain about things without having a solution in mind. In this article, I will share the idea of using text analytics to work with a court’s largest data source, case documents, and reports.
One of my more strongly held observations from working with court data is the statistical perceptions of case backlogs, or “pending cases” as they are generally used are simply wrong. I think that this is because they often do not really describe the court’s caseload situation. I explain...
We have been saving a lot (and I mean “a lot) of interesting items to share in recent weeks. We have news about court data analytics in California, an academic paper questioning the use of arrest data in policy development, a new justice index ranking report for USA courts, a report on Fines and Fees policies, the application of microeconomics for policy development, the NIEM JSON Specification, Version 5.0 release candidate 2, Ohio Court News on sealed records, England and Wales reports on the results of their divorce online system, applying the PDF A-4 standard for permanent digital records, and an excellent Tiny Chat.
Last month, the Arnold Ventures group released a report titled “We Need Criminal Justice Data That Doesn’t Exist. Here’s How the Biden Administration Can FixIt.”
This is a subject near and dear to me as I have been working on much of this for a long time. I agree
with many parts of the report. However,
I was disappointed to see that the full report missed many standards and frameworks that have been
previously built?
More below...
My friend Bob Ambrogi asked for comment during last Friday’s Legaltech Week Journalists’ Roundtable (an excellent discussion every week about our court customers). The discussion turned briefly to Jason Tashea's proposal via the DayOneProject.org initiative titled “Digitizing State Courts, Expanding Access to Justice”. The following is my partial reply to the question asked.
I applaud Mr. Tashea for thinking about the problem. But I think there is a lot more to consider and there are additional options? I explain…
Everyone can easily foresee the surge of in-person court cases that are coming later in 2021. Many courts have put case processing on hold. And assuming that the vaccination program will be successful in the first half of the year, what can courts do to address the case backlog and new matters that will come? I have some ideas that I will share below.
Please also note that my colleagues and friends of the
NCSC have created a tremendous resource around courts and the pandemic at https://www.ncsc.org/newsroom/public-health-emergency
Click on the Statewide Plans to Resume
Court Operations link (you may have to scroll across the red navigation bar to
find it).
One “unicorn” (a mythical goal) in Court Technology has been that Case Management Systems will have the ability to create comparative case statistics between court systems. Policymakers love that idea so they can compare and punish/reward, but also perhaps better understand policy differences. The announcement that got me thinking about this is the recent NIEM 5.0 announcement that included as part of their update preparation for the future addition of GISM (Generic Statistical Information Model).
Also, understand that the ideal statistical comparison system doesn’t stop between courts, it extends to the full criminal and civil court systems. That brings us to discuss the new announcements and what they might mean for our future unicorn hunting.
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| Irish Beef Stew |
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| Microsoft Surface Hub 2 |
