Making Court Check-In Better

 

Photo by mohamed hassan from PxHere

 

Many of us have had the experience of checking in for flights or for hotel rooms.  These experiences have changed quite a bit in recent years moving from in-person to your mobile.  Looking ahead, what ideas might courts use from these systems?

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

This and That in Court Tech– April 2022

 

 

Tiny Chat fun is one subject this month

This month’s compilation includes concerns about court order forgery, the IJIS symposium, a court on-demand training program, Tiny Chat on post-pandemic planning, Microsoft autopatch is coming, and the JTC seminar on cyber security, using two-way messaging to reduce FTA’s, and service expansion by Judicial Innovations.

 

Court Tech News and Notes for February 2022

 

Slow and steady wins the court tech race

This post includes news about court text messaging in Colorado, a TurboCourt anniversary, nine justice reform programs to review, some free court subject public service announcements, a study on remote hearings costs and benefits, and innovations from the HiiL Demo Day 2022.

This and That in Court Technology - October 2021

 

Fall leaves via https://bit.ly/3vPp959

In this months post, we share news and notes from Tiny Chat on Text Messaging, a very nice online forms website from Washington state, news regarding a new US federal judiciary vulnerability policy, news of good work being done by the District Court in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, practical information on PDF file formats from the US Library of Congress, and a last-minute call for participation in the annual Trends in State Courts report.

Reminders Work!

 

Irving Texas work “in recent years to improve its municipal court’s Failure to Appear (FTA) rate shows what is possible when cities invest in foundational data practices and use data-driven evaluations to test and fine-tune new approaches.”

The article posted in Medium.com WhatWorksCity subsite explains why Irving focused on this problem.

April 2021 Court Tech Notes

 

We share some news and notes in this week’s CTB post.  We note a speech-to-text AI demo video, text reminders, an event on transitioning your workforce back to the courthouse,  yet another article on "Zoom courts", an NCSC Tiny Chat regarding court cell phone policy, and the NCSC website on pandemic response webinars that were recorded in 2020.

 

This and That in Court Technology, October 2020

 

Lots of news this time on court tech.  We note news about the E-Courts Conference agenda, a scientific study of reminder systems impact on court appearances, Rocketlawyer using Utah’s Regulatory Sandbox project to test innovations, why Alexa shouldn’t be installed on your court’s internal computer network, JAVS management software suite announcement,  a company that specializes in work from home setups, ransomware at Tyler Technologies, and an amazing number of Tiny Chats produced by our NCSC colleagues. 

 

Using Tech to Stop FTA's and Adjournments

 

With the success of web and audio hearings during the Covid-19 pandemic, courts have proven that absent/remote persons can be made available by mobile or computer.  It is time now to make this standard practice.

Tech Tip - Scheduling E-Mail Reminders

 

We have noted the increasing adoption of text reminders to case parties by the courts before.  In this short “tech tip” post we will consider how we can add an automatic reminder via e-mail and even set up an online shared scheduling system?  

Legislatures Considering Text Notification Statutes

Our fellow NCSC blog, Gavel to Gavel, posted an interesting article today regarding legislatures in Colorado, Tennessee, and Massachusetts to require... yes, require courts to be able to send reminders to court participants. 

Three state legislatures consider programs to require courts notify defendants by text of upcoming court hearings

Bills in three states have been filed in the last month to require state courts (in particular the various administrative offices of the courts) to develop text reminder system.

This and That in Court Tech – January 2020

https://pixabay.com/

Court technology news this month includes the Florida court’s E-Notify system, automatic transcription news, US Federal Courts PACER, and observations on how to make access to justice (A2J) work, and digital documentation using AI.

Improving-Child-Support-Enforcement Outcomes with ODR in Michigan

https://www.miottawa.org/aboutottawa.htm

Our NCSC KIS group recently posted one of our "Trends" articles by Kevin Bowling and Jannell Challa of the Michigan 20th Circuit Court along with NCSC colleague, Di Graski on how ODR facilitated communications to improve child support outcomes for the participants and the court (PDF).  Please read more about this significant achievement below:

A Barrel Full of Court Tech News

It is spring flower season and so we share an analogous bounty of court tech in the following post.  Included are news about CTC registration, more reminder systems benefits, New Mexico's new open legal online access system, China court blockchain, and AI projects, Amal and George Clooney's TrialWatch app, Kansas Supreme Court's E-Filing rules review, and paper savings in the England and Wales courts.