Enhancing criminal caseflow management in rural communities

Project background

North Dakota has a long history of efforts to reduce and avoid delay using a systems-based approach to caseflow management. This approach involves addressing the entire set of actions that a court takes to schedule, monitor, and control the progress of criminal cases to ensure that timely justice is achieved. The systems-based approach has proven successful, as data shows that the timeliest courts in North Dakota are among the most timely in the country. However, in the post-COVID environment, there remained considerable variation across North Dakota districts in the use of caseflow management "best practices" to ensure timely case processing.

Understanding practices, data, and causes for delay

Working with four districts serving 25 of the state's 53 counties, we looked closely at each judicial district's case management practices and analyzed administrative data to measure key dimensions of case processing time to identify drivers of delay and appropriate responses for bringing processing time back in line with expectations. We conducted focus groups with judges, court leaders and staff, prosecutors, and defense counsel from the four participating districts and discussed several key topics to build on the existing strengths of the docket management systems. 

Topics included:

• Addressing more complex court processes and external factors, like coordination with the state hospital (for competency evaluations), crime lab, and indigent defense office
• Identifying possible sources of delay in more serious, violent cases
• Understanding the impact of bench warrants, nonappearance, and pretrial services implementation on timely case processing

Drawing on these multiple sources of information, several process improvement efforts were introduced: 

• Develop new judicial orders and a checklist for competency evaluations in consultation with an expert presenter and work group convenings
• Improve communication and coordination with the state lab
• Give presentations to districts on methods to improve caseflow management and achieve more fair and timely case processing
• Address failures to appear and reduce the use of bench warrants
• Update the case management dashboards available to attorneys, clerks, judges, and court administration
• Collaborate with the state office of indigent defense for improved data collection on attorney assignments

Looking ahead

Through a combination of data analysis and consultation with the North Dakota State Court Administrator's Office, our study revealed the need for providing in-depth examples of effective docket management best practices from more timely districts to support increased adoption and improvements statewide. To achieve success, systems need to consider these central factors for success: leadership, goals, data to monitor and manage the caseload, communication, involvement of court staff, and defined case management procedures and expectations.

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