Author: Michelle Lana

The National Consortium on Racial & Ethnic Fairness in the Courts (NCREFC) will hold its annual conference June 10-13, 2015, in Buffalo, New York. This year, SJI Board member and Chief Judge of the State of New York, Jonathan Lippman, will receive one of their highest honors. Recognized for his long career and a lasting commitment to leading efforts that work to identify and eliminate racial and ethnic bias in the courts of New York, Chief Judge Lippman will accept the award for his ongoing work with the Franklin H. Williams Judicial Commission. The Franklin H. Williams Judicial Commission was established in June 1991 to educate and advise decision makers in the New York Court System on issues impacting both litigants and employees of color; and to implement recommendations developed to address these issues. Presentation of the award will take place Friday, June 12th, by retired Associate Judge Samuel Green, of the New York Appellate Division, Fourth Department. Throughout their time on the bench and before, both became well-acquainted with each other and share a mutual respect. Also honored at the event will be Gail Prudenti, Chief Administrative Judge of the State of New York. The NCREFC is committed to encouraging examination, sharing the collective knowledge, and providing technical assistance to the courts, to ensure racial and ethnic fairness.

The SJI Board of Directors will be meeting on Monday, June 29, 2015 at 1:00 PM. The meeting will be held at the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine in Portland, Maine. The purpose of this meeting is to consider grant applications for the 3rd quarter of FY 2015, and other business. All portions of this meeting are open to the public.

With support from SJI (SJI-10-N-004), the Wisconsin Justice Initiative, comprised of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Director of State Courts, and the Planning and Policy Advisory Committee (PPAC), recently released findings and recommendations from an assessment conducted by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) on three promising alternatives to incarceration. The report includes a thorough analysis of current initiatives in several counties including, the risk-and-needs pilot project, Assess, Inform, and Measure (AIM); problem-solving courts; and criminal justice collaborating committees. It also details best practices for each of these initiatives and how the Initiative has leveraged local support for breaking with traditional processes to improve the justice system and outcomes for offenders. These improvements are marked by common measurements of success, including increased public safety, reduced recidivism, and reduced costs associated with incarceration.

The partners of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative requested SJI assistance in December 2009. The final report, Effective Justice Strategies in Wisconsin/A Report of Findings and Recommendations, was two years in the making. NCSC visited 15 counties across the state and also surveyed numerous justice system stakeholders to assess the value of a range of strategies developed in Wisconsin to improve public safety. The report provides recommendations on developing a statewide strategy and plan of action for expansion to other counties throughout Wisconsin.

SJI established human trafficking as a Priority Investment Area in FY 2013. This led to the creation of the Human Trafficking and the State Courts Collaborative, consisting of the Center for Public Policy Studies (CPPS); Center for Court Innovation (CCI); National Judicial College (NJC); National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ), Legal Momentum; and the National Council of Family and Juvenile Court Judges (NCJFCJ). The HT Collaborative has been engaged in numerous activities to enhance state court capacity to address the challenge of cases involving human trafficking. State court and/or trial court technical assistance efforts have either been completed or are ongoing in Arizona, California, Georgia, Guam, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Texas, Delaware, Oregon, and North Dakota. Collectively, these efforts, which are tailored to the needs of each court, have involved a great range of services including assessment, planning, program development and implementation, training, and work process improvement.

Educational sessions on a range of topics – such as the forms and dynamics of human trafficking, labor trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation of children, trauma-informed services, and specialty courts and dockets – have been provided by the HT Collaborative for state court systems, trial courts, and justice partners located in Mississippi, Hawaii, Florida, New York, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Delaware, California, and Arizona. Moreover, additional sessions have been conducted for court associations, including the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA), the National Association for Court Management (NACM), and NAWJ.

The resource development and publication work of the HT Collaborative has focused on publishing, in cooperation with NACM, hard-copy and electronic versions of an eleven chapter Guide to Addressing Human Trafficking in the State Courts. In addition, the HT Collaborative has completed a series of nine information cards that provide four page summaries of topics examined in greater depth in the HT Guide.

Recently, in an effort led by HT Collaborative member NAWJ, the group completed a Trafficking in Persons – Modern Day Slavery program manual that will be released in April 2015. Finally, the HT Collaborative also publishes a Human Trafficking in the News summary every two weeks.

Over the next year, the HT Collaborative will continue to provide technical assistance, resource development, training, and networking services to state and local courts. In addition, the HT Collaborative will:

• support the National Summit on Human Trafficking and the State Courts hosted by the New York Unified Court System in October 2015;
• address the challenges of increasing gang involvement in labor and sex trafficking;
• continue assessing the intersection between labor and sex trafficking;
• determine how labor-trafficking involved cases might end up in the state courts;
• implement trauma-informed approaches to addressing human trafficking; and
• develop state court approaches for working with non-U.S. citizen trafficking victims, such as unaccompanied immigrant minors, as well as U.S. citizen victims.

In FY 2008, SJI awarded a grant to the AOC to develop training programs for Court Security Officers (CSOs), and create a core group of CSOs to deliver the training to their colleagues (SJI-08-T-147). The AOC has trained more than 1,600 CSOs under the curricula developed with funding from that grant. Based on that success, the AOC requested and received a second grant to develop and deliver online curricula that will ensure interactive delivery and efficient provision of training to more CSOs across the state. The online training is now available nationally to all courts.

Arkansas Court Security Officer Training (SJI-14-E-014) is a highly interactive course featuring virtual simulations of active shooter events, role-playing and scenario-based interactive assessments allowing users to immediately put knowledge into action. Because courthouses must be accessible and in centralized locations, they are vulnerable to acts of random violence. Courts must have proper court security procedures, technology, personnel, and architectural features, to not only protect the safety of the people and property within and around the courts, but also the integrity of the judicial process. While there is no one solution to issues concerning court security, proper planning must involve collaboration with law enforcement offices, emergency agencies, and governing bodies. This course provides the learner with many new skills including: how to respond to an active shooter; best practices in court security; judicial threat management; and body language as a communication tool. The course if available for free, with unlimited access, through the National Center for State Courts/Institute for Court Management.

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) recently published the results from its comprehensive public opinion survey of 1,000 registered voters. The survey was conducted by telephone November 12 – 16, 2014.

Key findings of the survey include:

• Courts remain the most trusted branch of government;
• Court users express confidence in fairness of proceedings, but have doubts about customer service and job performance;
• There is a strong demand for greater availability of online services; and,
• The public worries that politics undermines the impartiality of the court system

A summary of poll results provided by the firm, GBA Strategies, and the presentation are available for viewing.

The Massachusetts Judiciary continues to coordinate resources to broaden access to civil justice for all litigants. Programs and services are focused on self-represented litigants, individuals with limited or no English proficiency, and individuals with mental or physical disabilities.

In FY 2013, the Massachusetts Trial Court created the Access to Justice Initiative to enhance access for the public and court staff. With support from SJI (SJI-12-T-132), the Boston Municipal, District, and Housing Courts introduced small claims forms translated into the seven most widely-used languages. In addition, a self-help video project created complementary small claims videos in those languages.

With additional SJI assistance (SJI-13-T-084), the Massachusetts Administrative Office of the Trial Court (AOTC) has been preparing to implement a technical assistance pilot project that will help to establish a model language access courthouse at the Worcester Trial Court. The project, now in its implementation phase, aims to address several key areas of concern for all trial courts throughout the state, including:

• Delivery of justice to limited English proficient (LEP) individuals;
• Standardization of flexible service plans for trial courts to serve LEP and self-represented litigants; and,
• Replicable standards, policies, and protocols for language access in the courts.

Much of the past year has been focused on developing a cohesive LEP Advisory Committee, consisting of key justice stakeholders, to oversee the project.

Implementation of this initiative aligns with the Judiciary’s strategic plan regarding access to justice through improving the coordination of resources set forth in the FY 2013 Annual Report on the State of the Massachusetts Court System.

Completion of the work later this year will help to establish a model language access courthouse at the Worcester Trial Court, and make resources available to other state courts that can be adapted to their own collaborative language access projects.

The Center for Public Policy Studies (CPPS) and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) recently released an information card that focuses on federal Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), which provides unaccompanied immigrant children, defined as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) in federal immigration law, with a temporary right to remain in the U.S. and apply for permanent resident status. In cases where the UAC wants to apply to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) for SIJS, the juvenile must supply USCIS with a state juvenile court order with certain findings. This information card also provides details on the types of findings required, and the types of cases where these juveniles will most likely end up in state courts.

FY 2014 proved to be an eventful year for Arkansas Supreme Court Chief Justice James Hannah, who serves as the SJI Board Chairman. He became President of the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and Chair of the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) Board, and was recently inducted into the Warren E. Burger Society. As CCJ President and NCSC Chair, Hannah will work with colleagues to identify and develop both judicial and practitioner responses to challenges facing the state court community. He will also represent both groups at national events throughout the 2014-15 year. Membership in the Warren E. Burger Society is granted to “volunteers who have demonstrated an exemplary commitment to improving the administration of justice through extraordinary contributions of service or support to the National Center for State Courts.” Hannah was presented with this honor in November, along with former SJI Board member Judge Sophia Hall. He joins fellow SJI Board Secretary, Senior Circuit Court Judge Gayle Nachtigal who was admitted in 2009.

The Board met on December 8, 2014, at the Judicial Council of California, to make decisions on quarterly grant applications and awarded a total of 16 grants. One (1) Strategic Initiatives Grant was awarded to the New York Unified Court System (UCS) to host a National Summit on Human Trafficking and the State Courts. The UCS, in partnership with the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ), Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA), the SJI-funded Human Trafficking and the State Courts Collaborative, and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) will hold a one-and-a-half day summit to examine the issue of human trafficking (both labor and sex) and identify best practices from existing court programs and the work of the Collaborative. Collaborative members will be present to assist state participants in developing action plans, or improving existing plans. The Summit will be designed based on the same model used for the very successful National Summit on Language Access and the Courts (SJI-12-P-015). Four participants from each state, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories will be invited, including the chief justice, state court administrator, a judge designated by the chief justice with knowledge or interest in human trafficking, and a fourth person designated by the chief justice who has taken a leadership role in responding to human trafficking (e.g., attorney general, advocate/service provider, prosecutor, or defense attorney). It is anticipated that approximately 250 attendees will participate in the summit. The summit will include keynote speakers, panels, and break-out session for the state teams. The Collaborative will facilitate summit activities, as well as provide onsite guidance and technical assistance for teams as they begin establishing the framework for their action plans.

Three (3) Project Grants were approved: support to the National Association for Court Management (NACM) for educational programming focused on all of SJI’s Priority Investment Areas; the NCSC for a next generation case management systems standards project; and the NCSC to support CCJ in national pandemic planning and emergency response. Eight (8) Technical Assistance (TA) Grants were approved, including: a human trafficking project for the Guam Judiciary; strategic planning projects for the Coconino County, Arizona, Courts, 43rd Judicial District Court of Common Pleas, Pennsylvania, and the King County, Washington, Superior Court; the Montana Supreme Court for a juvenile probation workload study; the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for a jury management project; caseflow and calendaring improvement for the 2nd Judicial District of Minnesota; and a probation statistical data collection project for the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts.

Four (4) Curriculum Adaptation & Training (CAT) Grants were approved, including: online ethics training for the Illinois AOC; assistance to the Connecticut Judiciary for a training program on serving citizens with hidden disabilities; judicial faculty development for the Minnesota Judicial Branch; and a records management training program for the Judicial Council of Georgia. The next grant application deadline is February 1, 2015.