What works with youth involved in the juvenile justice system? This is a question that has research pointing to some clear answers. Wrap-around services, a focus on youth skill development, and a well-coordinated case plan are all keys to helping youth successfully exit the justice system and become better citizens of their communities.
But even though we have a lot of research pointing to what works, it can sometimes be challenging to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Demonstration sites serve as a test laboratory to understand how research can inform practice. The Enhanced Juvenile Justice Guidelines (EJJG) project of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) currently has six jurisdictions that are serving this critical role. These sites are:
Cobb County, Georgia
Davidson County, Tennessee
Hamilton County, Ohio
Lane County, Oregon
Paw Paw County, Michigan
Washington County, Maryland
These juvenile courts are working to incorporate research into their practice on topics ranging from using screening and assessment instruments to match youth to services; improving stakeholder collaborations; increasing school/justice communication to interrupt school pathways to the justice system; and using data to reduce disproportionality. As these courts undertake these important system reforms, the NCJFCJ provides them with training and technical assistance. In addition, NCJFCJ uses the lessons learned to create new tools, resources, and trainings so that other courts across the country can learn from the important work of the demonstration sites.
For more information about the EJJG project please contact Jessica Pearce at jpearce@ncjfcj.org.
Judges in family courts handle the complex dynamics of familial conflicts, particularly in cases involving high parental conflict. Parenting education is essential, serving as a vital tool to ensure children’s well-being during parental separations and promote smoother family transitions.
“The Families in Transition (FIT) Parenting Course,” a 1.5-hour online program designed to complement existing parenting education programs, was created in 2023. This course forms part of a broader case management strategy to assist families in high conflict.
“Exposure to parental conflict poses a serious health risk to children and addressing those issues drain resources if the courts.”
-Judge Bruce R. Cohen, the former presiding judge of the family court division of the Maricopa County Superior Court in Arizona
The FIT program, which was conceived by Judge Cohen, recognizes that in many circumstances, parental conflict is a behavioral issue that for many families is resolvable through programs like FIT. When successful, FIT can free up resources for cases where parental conflict and dysfunction is a byproduct of underlying mental health or domestic violence issues, which need additional support.
A March 2024 study by Arizona State University confirmed FIT’s effectiveness in significantly reducing conflict behaviors. Since its introduction in Arizona in January 2024, nearly 300 referrals have been made to FIT, with about 200 certificates being filed with the court.
Future plans include expanding national access to the program so that FIT can be offered at no cost to parties. Plans include offering FIT in Spanish, and other languages.
The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) is hosting a national “watch party” in mid-May 2024 to convene courts interested in implementing FIT.
The Good Neighbor Emergency Assistance (GNEA) and the Iowa Judicial Branch have partnered to support The Housing Navigator Program. The Navigator at GNEA assists their clients in finding sustainable forms of housing assistance in Story County, Iowa, with the aim of preventing homelessness. They work with clients holistically to determine which programs offered by the state they may qualify for, and then offer help to apply for those programs. The navigator has helped individuals apply for SNAP, CIRHA, LIHEAP, Social Security, and Medicaid, as well as rent and utility assistance through Story County General Housing Assistance. The navigator also serves as a clearinghouse for information about job opportunities in the area, as well as other programs that they can direct clients to and offer help. They also work with various collaborations in Story County to ensure that GNEA is represented in landlord roundtables, as well as hunger, housing and transportation workgroups.
A large portion of the navigator’s time is spent in administering the Emergency Rent and Utility Assistance Program at GNEA. Much of that job involves liaising with the Story County General Assistance Program who performs a consolidated intake, working with clients on ensuring that their applications are complete, and connecting with landlords and utility companies to ensure that they are aware that assistance will be applied to the client’s account. This helps ensures that a client will not face late fees or be evicted, while during the application for assistance process.
The focus of the Navigator position expanded from dispute mediation to a more general homelessness prevention program. This has allowed agencies in the area to continue to work with landlords to resolve larger issues and to ensure that individuals themselves are not made homeless and can stay in their homes while assistance is being applied to their account. The program is valued by both the tenants and the landlords. Clients often do not get charged late fees (making it harder to pay back rent) and landlords do not have to go through the expense of evicting tenants that may eventually be able to pay rent on their own, and then re-renting the property.
The Navigator Program has accessed $219,395 in rent and utility assistance, and has spent more than 275 hours with clients helping them fill out forms, apply for more sustainable housing, food assistance and social security and Medicare. The navigator’s work has affected 575 households, which includes 590 children, 796 working age adults and 47 senior citizens. Their work has ensured that people remain in their homes, keep their utilities turned on, and get into programs that help them begin to take the steps toward more security in their lives. The Housing Navigator has been essential in upholding GNEA’s mission of homelessness prevention.
The Judicial Innovation Fellowship (JIF) is an initiative incubated at the Justice Lab at Georgetown Law Center’s Institute for Technology Law and Policy. The JIF is a year-long fellowship for technologists, designers, and user testers to transform justice across state, local, territorial, and tribal courts. It is an exciting new opportunity for technologists, product people, and designers to use their talents for justice. Partnering with state, local, territorial, and tribal courts, fellows will have the opportunity to work inside courts to improve how people access justice. Courts gain a unique opportunity to improve operations and equity by receiving a Judicial Innovation Fellow.
The Hamilton County General Sessions Court Judicial Innovation Fellowship and Kansas Judicial Branch Judicial Innovation Fellowship SRL e-filing Initiative projects are the featured SJI Grantee Spotlight for March 2024.
In February, the Judicial Innovation Fellowship presented at the Legal Services Corporation’s Innovations in Technology Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was an opportunity for forward thinking justice advocates to learn about the program and how JIF Fellows improve court technology and culture.
For example, Kat Albrecht, who works with the Hamilton County General Sessions Court in Tennessee, spoke about how shadowing different court staff helped her uncover persistent issues in the court’s data system. In an early discovery, she learned that criminal dockets printed in a hard-to-read font size, which caused headaches for clerks, judges, and litigants. Kat’s discovery has been relayed to other departments in county government, who are looking at potential long-term solutions to improve data operations within the criminal justice system.
On panel, they also were joined by Verenice Ramirez and her court partner, Jonathan Mark of the Utah State Courts’ Self-Help Center. Jonathan explained that Verenice, who is a designer, provides an otherwise missing point of view at the court. Having her on staff helped his team adopt project management software and new processes, like using Kanban boards to track project progress. This is something the department had wanted to do for some time, and having Verenice in the office lowered the learning curve, making adoption attainable. Similarly, they heard from Emily Lippolis that her work with the Kansas Courts has helped teach court partners about website design, which assists them in making more informed decisions when developing online portals for court patrons.
“Our fellows are not only bringing much needed design and data expertise to courts, they are winning over the hearts and minds of our court partners, which is a key element for the sustainability of their particular projects and for the success of JIF in the long term.”
Tanina Rostain, Georgetown Law Professor and JIF Co-Founder and Faculty Director
In all three instances, the fellows demonstrated that their impact extends beyond their individual projects to how their partner courts operate.
With information flowing in both directions during the conference, the fellows were also able to connect with fellow travelers from other states and learn more about the access to justice gap and justice technology. Collectively, the panel and the trip were a great success.
Now back in their respective courts, the fellows are starting the second half of their fellowship. In the coming months, they will synthesize recommendations for feedback and refinement.
Through this initiative, NCSC has provided technical assistance to courts in the form of trainings, customized guides and checklists, summaries of the literature on specific topics, connections to pretrial experts, and other forms of assistance. These engagements have focused on topics like pretrial assessment for release planning, electronic monitoring, pretrial staff safety and wellness, court date notifications, establishing pretrial services programs, and performance monitoring.
NCSC also developed the Pretrial Justice Center for Courts (PJCC), an online resource for judicial leaders and practitioners to explore a variety of pretrial justice topics. The PJCC is dedicated to helping courts plan for and develop their pretrial systems with practical resources. In addition to being a repository of information on the latest research, the website contains examples of pretrial reform efforts initiated across the country, short briefs outlining key pretrial justice topics, and tools for jurisdictions looking to implement new, evidence-based pretrial policies. For example, users can download a pretrial justice planning guide and tool to estimate the costs of implementing pretrial services to prepare for policy and practice changes in their jurisdiction.
The PJCC was recently updated with new resources and to improve the user interface. A pretrial justice reform activities data visualization was added to allow users to quickly identify – by topic area, year, and state – examples of legislative changes initiated or enacted between 2018 and 2022. By March of this year, the website will be updated with additional resources, including the results of a 2022 – 2023 survey on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on pretrial policy implementation. Tell us what additional resources would be helpful to advance pretrial justice in your court.
Most states do not have specialized family court judges, let alone judges dedicated to delinquency cases. Even in states that do have a family court structure, juvenile justice often gets short shrift compared to child welfare in terms of court attention, resources, and improvement efforts. In addition, most states do not provide juvenile court judges with the training, decision-making tools, data, and support systems necessary to make decisions consistently aligned with research and best practice that is specific to juvenile cases.
Many communities across the country are experiencing increasing concern and divisiveness on responses to juvenile crime and related juvenile justice reforms. Juvenile court judges are increasingly required to determine how best to balance community safety, public sentiment, media scrutiny, and political pressure with a commitment to research-based approaches and data-driven decision-making on juvenile crimes and punishments. States and the field, now more than ever, need to ensure that juvenile court judges are supported in making these difficult decisions and provided the tools and support commensurate with their outsized authority and responsibilities.
The Juvenile Court Transformation Initiative advances the recommendations outlined in the report at both the state and national levels by: 1) providing intensive technical assistance for three states to strengthen juvenile court policy and practice, in alignment with research on what works to improve public and youth outcomes; and 2) creating an unprecedented juvenile justice court training institute to serve as a resource for judges who handle delinquency cases.
“Earlier this year in September, I was honored to be a part of the faculty for the first-of-its-kind judicial training institute on Juvenile Justice held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Funded through a partnership with the State Justice Institute, the institute was a four-day training event and was designed and implemented through a partnership of the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ).
“The importance of this juvenile justice training institute is due to the limited, if any, judicial education, or training received by the multitude of judges who decide the hundreds of thousands of cases involving children who are involved in the courts across the nation involving juvenile delinquency matters. There is a limited number of guidelines or recommended practices to help guide judicial decision making. Indeed, some judges do not have any mandatory judicial education and limited mentoring before deciding these types of matters that involve children and public safety. A well-educated judiciary is vital to the safety of our communities and in the best interest of our children involved in our juvenile and family courts across the nation.”
Judge Carr, NCJFCJ President
“The Courting Judicial Excellence Juvenile Training Institute addressed fundamental aspects of juvenile justice practice including adolescent brain development, the use of science and research and its application to juvenile court practice. Particularly its application to critical decision-making points including intake, diversion, adjudication, detention, waiver, case management and placement decisions. Further, the training provided juvenile justice judges with the information necessary to request and use forensic evaluations for children in juvenile court including the importance of screening and assessment and the role of Risk, Need and Responsivity at key decision points. The Institute addressed effective, and ineffective practices, that improve outcomes for children at risk and improve public safety. The Institute also included the importance of judicial leadership in using data to drive services, interventions, and outcomes as well as the need to promote racial equity. The success of the Juvenile Justice Institute confirmed the need to further develop the capacity of judges to support, divert and redirect youth to appropriate and fair justice options while maintaining public safety.”
Judge Carr, NCJFCJ President
“Support from CSG and NCJFCJ has brought a heightened focus to juvenile justice issues throughout Montana’s state court system. I’ve benefited from their knowledge, skill and expertise throughout the course of our project. Their work has sparked a number of pivotal conversations among judges, juvenile probation officers, court administrators, prosecutors and defense attorneys. I believe this project will benefit our state’s youth court system for many years to come.”
John W. Parker, District Court Judge
“I loved everything about the training. All of it was informative. If I had to choose a favorite part, it would probably be the adolescent brain development session, the impact of detention and GPS and the tour/discussion with the youth.”
Training Institute Participant
“I really enjoyed hearing from the other judges from around the US and the world regarding what has worked and what has not worked in their courtroom. I enjoyed learning how to have a new perspective in juvenile justice.”
The Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC) is applying the technical and business definitions of the National Open Data Standards (NODS) to resolve enduring, and common, obstacles to collecting good civil and family court data. Developed by the Conference of State Court Administrators and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), NODS is intended to facilitate sharing and integration of court data by specifying (1) logical business standards that define the variables to be included in court datasets; and (2) technical standards that will define the data structure, variable formats, and values.
Nationally, many states struggle to coordinate multiple system vendors in place of a statewide case management system. State trial courts retrieve court metrics from mismatched, local systems that are differently programmed, managed, and updated and, as a result, deliver different data results. For example, Pennsylvania’s statewide civil and family court data are compiled from data reported out of nineteen different local systems (see the sample screen below).
This is not uncommon. But communicating data standards to multiple vendors can quickly become a garbled exchange as variable local practices, state and national data specifications, and vendor protocols shape the availability, accuracy, and reliability of court data.
What if states could skip “middleman” conversations and directly apply NODS language to source data? Pennsylvania has partnered with one of its largest vendors to find out. The Administrative Office’s Research and IT staff negotiated access to the vendor system’s source data, built an extraction tool and began creating NODS data products with its own personnel and software resources. The source data feeds AOPC statistical reports and data dashboards that display a sharper picture of civil and family caseloads for local court personnel and state judicial leadership. Thru this pilot, Pennsylvania has found that:
Translating source data into a NODS framework provides a uniform schematic applicable to multiple vendors;
Direct access to the source data obviates any need to translate vendor programming language or other interpretive guesswork;
At their source, data errors are fully visible for correction, and shared insights help the vendor improve its product;
Vendors who participate have a competitive benefit to offer clients, specifically state-supported, no cost data products; and,
Data access and updates are not dependent on vendor schedules and pricing.
Regardless of any system view, the NODS output (pictured above) is a uniform data portal for all judicial leadership, policymakers, funders, and data users to retrieve information, monitor caseloads and make comparisons critical to efficient case and court management.
The Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School and LaGratta Consulting LLC are conducting a randomized control trial examining the effects of in-person versus remote hearings for self-represented family law litigants in the 3rd Judicial District Court of Utah (Salt Lake County). The project intends to examine case outcomes and litigant experience in both contexts. All four commissioners hearing family law matters agreed to participate in this innovative effort.
The research team sorted cases randomly between in-person and remote contexts. As litigants left each court appearance, they were asked to answer a few questions about their experience via an iPad kiosk at the back of the courtroom or a follow-up email, with approximately 20 percent of litigants responding so far.
Early data trends suggest matters proceeded similarly regardless of medium, with little effect on time to disposition or appearance rates. The exception was in litigants’ ratings of perceived fairness, which was significantly lower in remote proceedings. Given the documented connection between perceptions of fairness and voluntary compliance, public trust, and system legitimacy, remote proceedings may come at a steep cost without targeted mitigation strategies to narrow this gap.
Data collection is still underway, with final results and corresponding policy and practice recommendations expected in 2024. Download a mid-project brief here or contact Emily LaGratta (Emily@lagratta.com) and Renee Danser (rdanser@law.harvard.edu) with questions or comments.
In 2020, the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) was awarded a State Justice Institute (SJI) Technical Assistance grant to retain the services of Catalis by Court Innovations, Inc. (Catalis) to assist the AOC with developing and implementing an online platform to resolve medical debt disputes in Hamilton County, TN, before a lawsuit is filed. The goal is to establish similar programs in other areas of the state. The ultimate goal is to establish a statewide platform for multiple types of debt collection.
The goal of the Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) medical debt pilot is to create an easy-to-understand application using technology, legal assistance, mediation and judicial resources to provide a model for pre-court filing resolution services. Such services would minimize burdens on the courts and enhance access to justice for the state’s citizens in a manner that is asynchronous and available 24/7. If successful, the pilot can serve as a desirable tool for claim resolution across the state in many areas of legal claims in addition to medical debt.
The platform was launched Fall 2020. Phase 1 of the pilot was completed December 31, 2021. Erlanger Health System sent 238 email ODR invites to individuals. Of those 238 people who had previously been unresponsive to Erlanger, 66 of them engaged Erlanger as a direct result of that ODR email invitation, resulting in an overall response rate of 28%. Currently, 300 cases have been uploaded to the platform. The Steering Committee’s goal for phase 2 is to present an update to the Tennessee General Sessions Court Winter Conference, January 2024. The update will include the case data generated from the new report form as well as a call for new hospitals and courts to join the pilot.
Rural communities face unique challenges that impact their ability to deliver fair and equitable justice. Despite these challenges, rural communities rely on their many strengths to address the needs of their residents. In 2021, the National Center for State Courts, in partnership with Rulo Strategies, launched the Rural Justice Collaborative (RJC) to showcase the strengths of rural communities and highlight the cross-sector collaboration that is a hallmark of rural justice systems. These strengths include strong professional networks, deep ties to the communities they serve, resiliency, and ingenuity. A cross-sector Advisory Council composed of rural judges and stakeholders in the justice, public safety, child welfare, public health, and behavioral health systems guide the work of the RJC. The current Advisory Council is composed of ten rural judges and nine rural justice stakeholders representing diverse disciplines.
The RJC Innovation Sites are the foundation of the RJC’s peer-to-peer training and technical assistance program designed to build rural justice systems’ capacity. RJC Innovation sites showcase work in rural communities that enhances rural justice systems and celebrates the people who make these efforts possible. Through a rolling nomination process, the RJC’s Advisory Council has selected 18 rural innovation sites to date. Rural communities can access the resources and information needed to replicate components of these initiatives through case studies, webinars, and podcasts hosted on RJC’s Online Resource Center.
The RJC Digest is also an important source for information about resources and training opportunities. Subscribe to the RJC Digesthere. For more information, contact Michelle Cern (mcern@ncsc.org).
