NCSC Hybrid Hearings Improvement Grant Initiative Announced

 

 This one-year project will provide state and local courts an opportunity to learn from and improve upon pandemic-era best practices and to create permanent changes to their hearing practices. Grants will be awarded to 10 to 20 jurisdictions to support the cost of technology equipment and installation of the equipment in at least one courtroom in the jurisdiction, integration with existing systems (when appropriate) and technical assistance to support preliminary operation of the equipment. Additionally, NCSC staff will evaluate the utility of the technology and impact on hearing participants.

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?

Court Forms Online Plus Toolkit

Courts everywhere should check out the Court Forms Online MassAccess project that was created and maintained by the Document Assembly Line Project at the Suffolk Law’s Legal Innovation and Technology Lab in cooperation with the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission’s COVID-19 task force.  But before we go further… the code tool sets are available online for free!  More…   

A Virtual Court Counter and More in East Lansing Michigan

 

 Image use rights from PXhere.com
https://bit.ly/3lF5uAx

Our favorite fans of film noir, NCSC Tiny Chatters DanielHirsch and Zach Zarnow brought to our attention the virtual court counter, in the Michigan District Court 54B.

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

Registration for eCourts 2022 Opens

 

As we have been sifting through session proposals and ideas for how to make a great conference, we realized the conference theme is obvious: We have all been living The Great Shift.

The Great Shift has so many facets:

Automating Plain Language

 

From Microsoft Stock Images

Over two decades ago our NCSC Jury Studies pioneer, Tom Munsterman, ran the WordPerfect word processor language level test against some jury instructions.  He told me it reported that the reading level needed to understand the instructions were university graduate school.  So, when an article identifying “ways that lawyers could make their written documents easier for the average person to read” was posted by MIT, I thought it was time to revisit the subject?

Webinar: What are we learning about remote hearings?

 

Thursday, April 14th, 2022 03:00 pm - 04:30 pm

Join five leading NCSC experts for a 60-minute briefing that will distill recent NCSC research on remote hearings. Panelists will draw on new studies—from analyzing judicial time in Texas to considerations in child welfare cases to judicially led diversion programs—to summarize critical “aha!” moments about remote proceedings. The speakers will draw together what NCSC is learning about where remote proceedings make sense, where challenges may exist and what lessons can be drawn from the research to date.

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.

 

Apple Launches the First Smartphone Driver’s License/ID with Arizona

 

 

  

Apple launches the first smartphone driver’s license/ID with Arizona

Additional states to follow, including Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio, and the territory of Puerto Rico