Showing posts with label Analytics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Analytics. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Criminal Justice Algorithm Predicts Risk of Biased Sentencing

 

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.


Tuesday, May 17, 2022

North Carolina Publishes the Results of their Court Appearance Project

 

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:

  • Geography has an impact on court appearance rates
  • Traffic misdemeanors accounted for 82% of all nonappearances
  • Driving while license revoked is the #1 offense for nonappearance
  • Younger people have higher rates of nonappearance
  • There are racial differences in both cases served and nonappearance rates
  • Case length has an impact on nonappearance

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:

https://cjil.sog.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/19452/2022/04/NC-Court-Appearance-Project-Report-4-22-22.pdf


Thursday, August 5, 2021

This and That in Court Technology, August 2021

 


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.


Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Text Analytics, Court Stats, and Privacy

 


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.



Friday, June 18, 2021

Why I Hate "Pending Case" Statistics?

 


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...

 


Friday, May 28, 2021

This and That in Court Tech – May 2021

 

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.



Thursday, May 13, 2021

“Fixing” Criminal Justice Data and My Alternative Approach

 

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...


Wednesday, February 24, 2021

A Court Public Data Access Proposal – Yes, but…

 

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…

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Some Ideas for Handling the Upcoming Covid-19 Case Surge

 


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).

 

Friday, September 4, 2020

Comparative Statistical Model Standards

 

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.

Thursday, February 20, 2020

This and That in Court Technology – February 2020


Irish Beef Stew


Just like the winter Irish beef stew shown in the picture to the right, we have a mix of great projects/ingredients to share this month.  They include serious security warning for Microsoft Windows, new AI decision reader from ROSS Intelligence, Lex Machina AI expanding into state courts, the PACER fees federal appeals hearing, Alaska Emailing jury summons, and automation program news from England & Wales and a new automation budget commitment for Ireland.


Friday, March 29, 2019

What Went Wrong? - A New Court Metric?


Many years and many, many pounds ago I was a competitive distance runner.  I always thought this was good training for work with courts because one can practice for years and only maybe achieve a good result.  I still generally follow training ideas and athletics (running) as a sport.  One of those coach/writers is the excellently named Greg McMillan who writes a blog at https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/

Last week he posted an article on how an athlete should analyze a poor performance by creating a “what went wrong log” which has a simple spreadsheet structure.  Taking this general concept, I very much like the idea of studying “what went wrong” for the courts.  Let me explain.


Friday, November 30, 2018

This and That in Court Technology – November 2018


Microsoft Surface Hub 2


With the “sold out” eCourts 2018 conference upon us, it is time to share news about the Best Legal Apps for 2018, the LegalXML Electronic Court Filing standards, the timing for Public Access to Civil Court Filings, another Judicial analytics tool, using GitHub for law text markup and access, and as you can see in the picture, a new Microsoft Surface Hub system.


Saturday, June 16, 2018

Deleting Court Data




Recently I shared my opinion on a conference call that court IT systems (CMS/EDMS/E-filing) should not allow deletion of any data.  I explain below.




Friday, July 7, 2017

Loomis vs. Wisconsin Cert Denied



The Supreme Court of the United States denied cert in a case asking to expose the risk algorithm used by Northpointe's COMPAS system.


Saturday, July 1, 2017

Event Time





In the CCMS series we wrote about events and tasks.  In that article, we mentioned event weights that reflects the amount of work that was expended on that event.  But there is another way that we can augment the event record.  We explain.


Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Machine Intelligence Analyses Judges


I have predicted for a very long time that the “market research” that started with consumers in the 90’s with the advent of the Internet would be coming to the courts. LexisNexis made it official this week in their press release “LexisNexis Integrates Lex Machina Legal Analytics into Lexis Advance Online Legal Information Solution”

What does this mean?  I will begin the discussion below.