Archive for the ‘Court Staff’ Tag
An evaluation report published last week concluded that the Red Hook Community Justice Center located in Brooklyn, New York, reduces recidivism and crime in the geographic area it serves. The evaluators conclude that a key factor is the public’s view of the court—and its judges—as legitimate:
“[B]ased on the available evidence, it appears that the Justice Center’s impact on crime and recidivism results primarily from the Justice Center’s ability to project its legitimacy to offenders and the local residential community rather than from strategies of deterrence or intervention.” (Lee et al, 2013, p. 164.)
This finding is consistent with a growing body of research showing that problem-solving courts are perceived by offenders as more procedurally fair than regular courts, and it is this difference that explains why offenders in adult drug courts fare better in terms of compliance with court orders and in recidivism.
This comprehensive evaluation of a community court offers a new dimension to our understanding of the role of the courts in securing voluntary compliance with the law. Ethnographic and other components of the evaluation demonstrate the extent to which the Justice Center is regarded as a truly local institution that shares the values of local residents. Recent procedural fairness research on policing in England and Wales emphasizes the importance of a “moral alignment” existing between the criminal-justice system and the public as a pathway to legitimacy and compliance. The study found evidence that the public’s perception that they have shared moral values with the police promotes voluntary compliance with the law, and that this perception complements the separate shared norm that there is a perceived obligation to obey police-officer commands, which is itself fostered through procedural-fairness principles. Thus, the public perception of shared moral values with those in authority complements the effect of authorities making decisions in what is perceived as a procedural fair manner.
Those combined forces—shared moral values and procedural fairness—seem to be at work in the Red Hook Community Justice Center. Before discussing that, though, some background is in order.
The Red Hook Community Justice Center opened in 2000 to serve the physically and socially isolated neighborhood of Red Hook. Planning for the Justice Center began at a time when the area was regarded as one of the crime-infested and run-down areas in New York City. The neighborhood is dominated by one of the largest public housing developments in the country. As part of the recent evaluation project, a team of urban ethnographers from John Jay College carried out extensive observations in the area served by the Justice Center. They also surveyed local residents and offenders. Other members of the research team interviewed key individuals from local organizations, such as the tenants’ association. The findings about procedural fairness stem mainly from evidence collected in that manner.
The following aspects of the Justice Center contributed to building legitimacy in the eyes of the local community.
Jurisdiction: The Justice Center is a multijurisdictional court, with the assigned judge hearing criminal misdemeanors, housing cases, and juvenile-delinquency cases. Inclusion of the landlord-tenant cases allows the Justice Center to make a difference in one of the core concerns of local residents: the quality of their housing and their relationship to the New York Housing Association. Through the housing court, the Justice Center made an immediate contribution to residents’ quality of life and provided them with a counterweight to the policies and actions of the New York City Housing Authority.
Community Engagement: The Justice Center and its staff became key participants in local initiatives—for example, leading efforts to reclaim a nearby park from drug dealers; sponsoring a baseball league and establishing other programs aimed at local youth; and making the resources in the Justice Center available to all residents.
The Judge: One judge has presided over the Justice Center since it opened. His courtroom interaction with offenders and their families exemplifies procedural-fairness principles. In the Center’s early days, the judge made a lasting impression by his willingness to personally look at the conditions in public housing units at dispute in a case. He is highly visible in the neighborhood not just by regularly attending the meetings of local groups but also walking through the neighborhood.
The Courthouse Culture: Staff located at the Justice Center are expected to follow norms for interacting with visitors to the courthouse, whether they come as defendants or otherwise, that reinforce a sense of procedural fairness.
The evaluation included a formal test of the degree to which the observed reduction in recidivism rates could be attributed to either deterrence through more certain and meaningful punishment or intervention by providing treatment programs. Neither explanation received support. The evidence, although indirect, points solidly to the legitimacy the Justice Center has accumulated by demonstrating that it shares community values and practices procedural fairness in its decision making.
The findings of the evaluation are available in A Community Court Grows in Brooklyn: A Comprehensive Evaluation of the Red Hook Community Justice Center. Both the full report and an executive summary are posted.
David Rottman
Two of the most influential organizations of American state-court leaders have adopted a resolution urging greater implementation of procedural-fairness principles throughout the court system.
Meeting jointly in Burlington, Vermont, the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) adopted a resolution challenging state supreme courts and state-court administrators to consider employing several strategies designed to promote procedural fairness. Among the recommendations are:
· Measuring litigant satisfaction in the area of fairness using a tool such as the “access and fairness” measure that is part of the National Center for State Courts’ CourTools program.
· Encouraging the integration of research on procedural fairness and effective decision-making processes into judicial-education programs.
· Identifying opportunities for judges to get honest feedback and mentoring.
· Practicing procedural-fairness principles in the treatment of court personnel.
· Championing procedural-fairness principles in messages to the public, the media, and other branches of government.
· Holding judges and court staff accountable for operating courts in a manner consistent with procedural-fairness principles—treating everyone with respect, allowing the opportunity to be heard, and providing adequate explanations of court orders.
The resolution noted several specific resources developed to help courts in addressing procedural fairness—including this website! Among the other resources specifically mentioned were two American Judges Association white papers: Procedural Fairness: A Key Ingredient in Public Satisfaction (2007) and Minding the Court: Enhancing the Decision-Making Process (2012).
The resolution was jointly adopted by the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators on July 31, 2013.
Wanted: Guest Blog Entries Regarding State Procedural-Fairness Activities! On a related note, we want to stay on top of activities to promote procedural fairness. Last month, we were pleased to present a guest blog entry from Alaska Chief Justice Dana Fabe, who wrote about the new “Pledge of Fairness” that was posted earlier this year in every Alaska courthouse. If there have been recent activities in your state that others might find of interest, please check out the process for submitting a guest blog post here at the Procedural Fairness Blog. We hope to hear from you soon.
Guest Blogger: Ingo Keilitz
The principles of procedural justice and fairness — giving voice to litigants and other “clients” of courts, basing decisions on established rules rather than personal opinion, providing respectful treatment, and establishing trust — do not just apply to fair and just treatment of members of the public who appear in court, but also to the way judges engage with each other.
This commonality came to mind as I watched a video of an Open Society Foundation-sponsored talk by Albie Sachs, the former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, an activist and a leading campaigner in the fight against apartheid. In the video, Sachs discusses his 2011 book, The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law, written as his term on the Constitutional Court was ending.
Sachs was appointed to the Constitutional Court of South Africa by President Nelson Mandela. He conveys with intimate candor what it was like to be a judge in the unique circumstances of post-apartheid South Africa, how his extraordinary life influenced his approach to the cases before him, and how, in this “alchemy of life and law,” the intangible qualities of passion and concern for protecting human dignity are required for law to work in the service of justice in a democracy.
Sachs speaks in the video about what makes an effective judge in terms of the “three Cs”- civility, courage, and collegiality. Civility, he says, is not just good manners. It is respecting people with whom you differ, perhaps very sharply. It provides a framework in which one can discuss and debate without rancor. Civility is critical on the bench among the judges themselves and between a judge and counsel and witnesses. Judges, he emphasizes, owe a clear duty to citizens to maintain a framework of civility in the court.
Sachs goes on to speak passionately about the quality of courage, which means following one’s conscience and having the integrity and conviction to speak the truth as one sees it, even when it’s inconvenient, even when it is embarrassing and unpopular, and especially with people one likes and respects. Going along simply to get along, he might say, suggests a lack of courage.
His third “C” is collegiality, the capacity and willingness to engage with one’s colleagues in a rational way toward common ground, without divisiveness and without ill will.
As I listened to the video, I thought Sachs was defining procedural justice and fairness within the internal sphere of the court. Though Sachs’ focus is on civility, courage, and collegiality among judges, it seems that the same qualities are required of judges to achieve procedural justice for litigants and other “clients” of the court.
Judges in a democratic society owe a duty to do justice, and appear to do justice, for all populations, including people employed by the courts. Simply said, judges, as well as court managers and other court staff, must practice among themselves what they preach to others. (This, incidentally, is the thrust behind the National Center for State Courts’ CourTools Measure 9 for trial courts and Measure 7 for appellate courts; see Who Has More Innovative Ideas Than You Do? Your Employees, Made2Measure, September 5, 2010; See also, In Praise of Employee Satisfaction, Made2Measure, November 22, 2006; Friendships in the Workplace Good for Court Performance, Made2Measure, August 14, 2006.)
The traditional concern of judges and a core goal of courts emphasized in legal education is to provide people with a forum in which they can get justice as it is defined by the framework of the law. Judges pursue this goal through the correct application of law to the facts of a particular legal dispute. A second goal, one that Tom Tyler associates with the tenets of procedural justice, is “to handle people’s problems in ways that lead them to accept and be willing to abide by the decisions made by the courts.” The goal requires courts to maintain public trust and confidence, which Tyler says is “the key to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system.” He acknowledges that procedural justice applies not only to litigants but to other people who work in the court system.
In the Open Society Foundation’s video, Sachs discusses an admirable modus operandi of the justices who sat with him on the South African Constitutional Court. When a majority had solidified around an opinion, all the members of the Court rallied around the prevailing opinion and actually helped strengthen it, even if they disagreed with its conclusions. Rather than framing their disagreements in terms of winning or losing, their shared goal of maintaining the Court’s legitimacy and enhancing public trust and confidence in the Court remained tantamount.
This to me is civility, courage and collegiality at its best. And it is at the essence of procedural justice. The manner in which disputes are handled, no matter in which part of the judicial process it is applied and with whom, affects procedural justice.
Ingo Keilitz is a principal court researcher at the National Center for State Courts.
There is ample material about procedural fairness on ProceduralFairness.org for judges and court administrators to start the process of making themselves and their courts more effective. The question is where to begin that process. There are two levels on which procedural fairness principles can be implemented in order to begin improving court outcomes and public satisfaction.
Most immediately, the individual judge can become more adept at demonstrating the criteria of procedural fairness during their interactions with litigants, lawyers, witnesses and others. Relevant tools on ProceduralFairness.org include descriptions of programs that videotape judges while on the bench to provide them feedback to use for self-improvement, as well as video and print resources that can be used to create judicial education courses on procedural fairness. The “Resources” tab includes “tips for judges” that can serve as a check-list to guide their behavior. Similarly, individual court administrators can become more effective by embracing procedural fairness principles in their interactions with subordinates.
Second, an entire trial court or court division can revise its policies and procedures in ways that seem likely to promote behaviors that are perceived as procedurally fair. These changes can be subtle but still highly effective.
Whether the target for change is the individual judge or an entire court, a possible starting point is to reflect on how knowledge of procedural fairness can help you make sense of successes in the past. Here are two examples of hindsight, brought on by learning about procedural fairness. Both examples come from a series of conversations with presiding trial court judges initiated to learn their reaction to a comprehensive judicial branch-wide program promoting procedural fairness principles.
In the first example, the presiding judge of a medium-size court (circa 30 judges) was already a believer in the program. When she became presiding judge, she was alarmed by the pile on her desk of phone message slips and letters, all containing complaints from small claims litigants that they had not had their day in court. When she asked her assistant about the pile, she learned that that such communications were constantly flowing in. Along with several other judges and her court administrator, the presiding judge went through the complaints. They began to notice a pattern – many of the litigants felt that their case had not been adequately considered. The judges identified as the problem their court’s practice of not giving small claims case decisions from the bench as contributing to this sentiment. Instead of giving the decisions from the bench, the court sent litigants form letters, some weeks after their trial, with the equivalent of “won” or “lost” checked off. A change to the letter remedied the problem. The judges identified five or so main reasons that a small claims litigant might end up on the losing side. With the relevant sentences inserted in each letter, the flow of complaints dwindled and then virtually ceased. The new, reasoned approach communicated that the decisions had been reached through a fair process. For the judges, learning about procedural fairness theory made sense of the success of their revised approach to small claims court.
Another “home grown” example of procedural fairness is a practice that surfaced in conversation with the presiding judge of another medium-sized trial court in the same state. Her court has adopted the practice of formally swearing in all new staff as court employees. The presiding judge personally administers the oath, with other judges and court staff as an audience. For this judge, hearing about procedural fairness made sense of the apparent benefits the court has gained from the inclusive, respectful manner in which it treats its employees.
In sum, a look to past experience may be a useful starting point for those considering the potential value of taking a procedural fairness approach to personal improvement or court reform. Ask yourself what has worked and what has not worked, and think if the lens of procedural fairness offers insights into how to do a better job.
David Rottman
Procedural Fairness For Courts and Judges 