Colorado Technical University Case Backlog and Delay Policy Proposal

User Generated

Xnl4

Law

Colorado Technical University

Description

Key Assignment Draft

The objective of this assignment is to enable you to demonstrate your ability to develop a court management policy proposal that addresses the key factors that should be considered to ensure that legal requirements and best practices in management are observed. You will craft a policy proposal designed to address problems of case backlog and excessive delay in calendaring of hearings that have resulted from the growing workload in state courts. You will select the U.S. state court system of your choosing as opposed to a hypothetical or generic state court in an effort to make this deliverable more realistic and to enable the use of information for your research that may be available through actual court administration offices (e.g., via their Web sites or publicly available research reports).

The environment in which this policy proposal is being generated is one characterized by several realities:

  • State budgets for managing necessary services are shrinking.
  • The political environment is somewhat unstable because of lack of consensus on how to address various types of social problems, including crime.
  • Property-related crime is on the rise, including collateral offenses against persons.
  • Court systems are so overwhelmed that there is growing public perception that public access to timely dispute resolution has become severely constrained.
  • Correctional facilities are over-crowded, and problems of recidivism have accelerated.
  • Plea bargaining and out-of court settlement of cases has increased in part as a way to side-step lengthy and expensive court trials.
  • Certain alternative dispute resolution programs have been operating successfully in many circumstances and jurisdictions.

You will produce a policy proposal from the perspective that you are a senior policy analyst employed by a state’s Administrative Office of the Courts. In this role as a senior policy analyst, you have been assigned to draft a proposal for the court administrator recommending viable options based on the legislature’s interests and objectives. The background information that you have been given by your employer is that the Judicial Committee of the State Legislature is very interested in a policy proposal that weighs options for new programs and/or approaches to dispute resolution designed to satisfy the legislature’s stated objectives to do the following:

  • Reduce case backlog
  • Shorten the average time for court hearings to be calendared and for decisions to be rendered
  • Avoid the expense of expanding the number of court houses, judges, and associated court staff and/or detention facilities and associated staff
  • Minimize the need for funding of new programs
  • Consider the viability of “community burden-sharing” through partnerships with private (where private includes both profit and nonprofit) organizations and resources

In addition, the judicial committee has specified that it would like to look at a policy proposal that focuses on dispute resolution options related to juvenile offenders that address the legislature’s objectives as a “pilot test” of new approaches to managing court-related services in the existing environment. Thus, the court administrator has asked that the policy proposal be narrowly focused on the juvenile justice division of the state court system.

The policy proposal should exclude considerations of whether any proposed new programs or expansions of existing programs meet existing statutory requirements. For purposes of this project, you are to assume that once the proposal is presented to the Judicial Committee of the State Legislature, that committee will charge the Office of Legislative General Counsel to determine what, if any, statutory changes would be necessary.

Questions the proposal would need to address include the following:

  • Would it cost the state less to implement a victim offender mediation (VOM) program for juvenile offenders than it would to expand the courts and corrections staff and facility infrastructure?
  • Would it take the state less time to implement a program such as this than it would to expand the courts and corrections staff and facility infrastructure?
  • To what extent could a VOM program reduce court case backlog and thereby shorten the average time between arrest and case disposition?
  • What is the “track record” of one or more comparable VOM program(s)?
  • What are the social benefits and social costs of a VOM program for juvenile offenders both to the offenders themselves and to the larger community?
  • Are there particular types of cases that are appropriate, as opposed to others that the legislature might want to exclude?
  • What are the major challenges that will be faced by the Administrative Office of the Courts in implementing this proposed policy in terms of the following:
    • Program development
    • Training and credentialing of mediators
    • “Selling” it to potentially supportive community resources that could become partners with the state in this effort
    • Case flow and records management
    • Security issues related to cases being mediated outside of court facilities

User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Hi buddy, here is the answer for this..contact me in case of anything..😎

Running head: POLICY PROPOSAL

1

Policy Proposal
Name
School Affiliation
Date

POLICY PROPOSAL

2

Policy Proposal
The humanitarian law and justice recognize access to justice as one of the fundamental
rights to be enjoyed by all individuals regardless of their racial, ethnic, religious, and economic
affiliations. The judicial system is mandated with the responsibility of ensuring that persons
access equal justice characterized by fairness. The access to equal justice, according to Eekelaar
(2018) entails effective dispute resolutions, timely resolution of cases, and the right for the
accused and the accuser to be heard. Article 47 of the EU charter of fundamental human rights
provides that all persons are entitled to a fair and timely hearing of their cases (McCloskey,
2018). The United States Constitution also dictates that individuals are entitled to equal access to
justice which is characterized by a fair and timely hearing of cases in which they are accused.
Even though the different judicial systems provide access to justice, the courts that are mandated
with ensuring this are faced with challenges, the most notable one being case backlog. This paper
aims at suggesting a policy that will help in reducing the number of cases in courts with a
significant focus on the Juvenile Justice Division in the United States judicial system.
Juvenile Justice System
The Juvenile Justice System is one of the branches of the United States court system. The
division handles cases related to persons recognized as children under the constitution. The
claims are handled through correctional involvement aimed at rehabilitating as well as being
taken to courts for determination and conviction. However, the courts have carried the burden
since most of the plaintiffs prefer their cases being handled by the courts. This is due to the
perception that they will be accorded a fair hearing. In the last few years, the number of cases in
juvenile courts has steadily increased. In 2014, the Unites States Juvenile courts had close to one
million cases; the highest number of cases since its inception in the 1970s (Garry, 2018). It is

POLICY PROPOSAL

3

argued that the increase in the number of cases may be due to the rise in reported incidents
related to deliquescent behaviors among the young population.
The increasing accumulation of cases in the juvenile division has been attributed to
several factors. The judicial system’s lack of enough court personnel to timely handle the cases is
one of them. According to Bielen et al. (2018), the ratio of a magistrate and the cases handled in
the United States as of 2015 was 1:37(Garry, 2018). The high rate means that the judges and
magist...


Anonymous
Really helped me to better understand my coursework. Super recommended.

Studypool
4.7
Trustpilot
4.5
Sitejabber
4.4

Similar Content

Related Tags