Case Docketing And Case Management – Enhanced Juvenile Justice Guidelines

Effective case management starts as soon as the written allegation of a law violation is presented to the juvenile justice court. Effective case management does not end until the final juvenile justice court order has been complied with and the case terminated. Examination of the following issues and processes will assist a juvenile justice court to determine whether its existing docketing and case management systems are effective:

The length of time between the filing of an affidavit and each subsequent process step, including diversion, initial hearing, adjudication, disposition, and post-disposition review;
The number of continuances granted, reasons for granting continuances, and length of continuances;
The length of time between when parties are told the hearing will begin and the actual start of the court hearing;
The availability and preparation of counsel from the first hearing to the last; and, whether unavailability of or lack of preparation by counsel makes continuances necessary;
The length of time between the diversion decision or disposition order and the date services begin;
Whether there are processes to ensure the prompt identification of problems, and the prompt return of cases to court if some aspect of the court’s orders is not being fulfilled in a timely fashion; and,
Whether judges, intake, case management staff, prosecutors, counsel for youth, and probation officers have reasonable case-loads that permit effective, timely responses.

Effective case docketing and case management systems follow three important principles of timeliness. The first two principles are: 1) All hearings should be held as close to the alleged law violation as possible; and, 2) If the youth is adjudicated on the offense, the juvenile justice court’s response is swift, and needed services are readily available. These principles are easily measured with properly designed management information systems.

The third principle of effective case docketing and case management systems is to respect and efficiently use the time of court staff, prosecutors, counsel for youth, victims, witnesses, youth, youth’s family, probation, and service providers. There are four areas in which this commitment is most evident:

Whether processes are designed to eliminate duplication, delay, and wasted resources;
Whether juvenile justice court hearings start at the scheduled time;
Whether juvenile justice court dates are credible with continuances kept to a minimum; and
Whether sufficient time is allocated to each hearing so that it can be completed during the allocated time, including trials that are completed on consecutive days.

The design of juvenile justice court case management processes is critical to ensure that resources are used efficiently and that caseloads and workloads are manageable. Examples of practices that impede efficient use of resources include:

Overloading the system by failing to manage the volume of formal cases and not diverting less serious cases from the formal system. This results in an unnecessarily large number of cases that must be handled in the formal system.
Not screening petitions for legal sufficiency. This results in using unnecessary resources to schedule and hold hearings.
Using multiple petitions with single counts instead of using multiple counts within a single petition. This results in unnecessary paper handling.
Issuing multiple warrants (writs) or multiple probation violations simultaneously. This results in unnecessary paper handling.
Failing to consolidate all pending charges when a hearing is set. This results in unnecessary hearings.
Requiring probation staff to spend significant amounts of time in juvenile justice court hearings in circumstances where they can convey all necessary information in writing and their presence is not really necessary. This results in a reduction of time available to deliver services to probationers.
De novo systems (where cases are tried before a judicial officer who is not a judge) can result in a case being tried on two separate occasions if aggrieved parties request a completely new trial before a judge. This process can result in great time and expense to the court, parties, witnesses, and many others.

Resources are wasted and individuals feel disrespected when parties must routinely wait extensive periods beyond their scheduled court time or when cases are continued multiple times without explanation or resolution. Cases should be docketed for a certain time, and waiting time past the docketed time should be measured and monitored. When the next juvenile justice court hearing date is set at the end of each hearing, with all parties present and with the needs of parties taken into account, parties should be held to the selected court date except for emergencies. Data on continuances, including the reason for the continuance and the days between continuances, should be regularly monitored.

Some of the practices that juvenile justice courts have implemented in order to docket and manage cases and resources effectively include:

Prosecutors screen every affidavit for legal sufficiency. This eliminates citizens filing improper or insufficient charges when police have declined to file charges. Citizens quickly learn that their charges will be screened out by the prosecutor’s office for lack of sufficiency, and they stop filing charges when police have determined charges to be inappropriate or unnecessary. Juvenile justice courts can ensure citizens are not inappropriately being denied access to the juvenile justice court by monitoring citizen complaints of denied access to determine if policy adjustments need to be made.
Collaboration among the juvenile justice court, police, prosecutors, and community services provides a broad range of informal programs available to successfully divert all but the most serious charges.
Juvenile justice courts work closely with the police, prosecutor, and detention administration so that police know the offenses that will not be handled formally and the offenses that will not result in detention. This enables police to create their own diversionary resources for charges that will not be handled formally and prevents police from wasting time arresting youth and bringing them to detention when the youth will not be detained. As a result of these practices, the number of formal filings and the detention population significantly decrease. This frees both time and monetary resources for police, prosecutors, and the juvenile justice court and allows dollars to be reallocated to fund diversion services and alternatives to secure detention.
One petition with multiple counts is used as opposed to multiple individual petitions for related incidents. This significantly decreases the amount of paperwork flowing through the system and reduces instances of multiple concurrent warrants. When one petition with multiple counts is used, it is important to track both petitions and counts per petition in the management information system.
As soon as the police complete an investigation and decide to file an affidavit without a request to detain the youth, the police officer assigns the initial juvenile justice court date using a pre-determined system provided and approved by the juvenile justice court. The police officer gives the parent and youth written notice of the court date. This system reduces the amount of time between when the charge is filed and the first court date, and eliminates court resources used for setting initial hearings and handling service of the summons.
Two public defenders and two prosecutors are assigned to each juvenile justice courtroom. While one case is being heard, final preparation and negotiations are occurring on the next case. This practice eliminates unnecessary continuances because counsel is not available, enhances the flow of cases, and allows for time-specific case calendaring. This practice is possible for two reasons: 1) Cases are assigned to judges and hearing officers by geographic area, resulting in the same judge, prosecutor, and public defender always handling the youth’s case; and 2) There are a comparatively low number of cases requiring formal juvenile justice court resources because the front door is managed so that only the more serious cases are handled formally. Overall, fewer judicial officers, prosecutors, and public defenders are required.
In systems with de novo hearings, implementing a pretrial conference system requires parties to come together for a settlement conference. If a case results in a settlement agreement, the parties present the proposed settlement to the judicial officer on the same day as the settlement conference. If the parties cannot reach an agreed settlement, the petition is scheduled for a trial before a juvenile justice court judge for a date and time-specific hearing with an appropriate number of hours allotted on consecutive days, if required. This system eliminates the possibility of a juvenile justice court trial before a judicial officer and a repeat of the trial before the judge.
Courtrooms have direct access to the juvenile justice court’s management information systems, which can select the next juvenile justice court hearing date given certain parameters. The system generates waiver forms and the written juvenile justice court findings and orders for immediate distribution to parties. The written findings and orders serve as notification of the next hearing date and time, preventing the need for additional hearing notification. Increasingly these systems also have the capacity to send electronic notifications via text message or email to the parties involved.
Probation officers have assigned days in juvenile justice court (i.e., scheduled one day a week) so that they can spend more time in the field and plan their time more efficiently.
Management information systems, directly accessible by the juvenile justice court judge, convey probation reports and recommendations to the judge. This system releases the probation officer from needing to be in the courtroom unless there is a specific reason requiring the probation officer’s presence (e.g., the recommendation is placement or parties or key participants disagree with the probation recommendation).
When a youth is adjudicated, and the judge believes that the disposition will not be removal of the youth from the home, instead of referring the case to probation for investigation and continuing the case for disposition, the juvenile justice court judge refers the case to the probation department without setting a separate disposition hearing. The probation department has a structured process using validated screening tools and structured guidelines that determine the probation response. The probation plan is forwarded to the judge to determine whether post-disposition review is needed. Because judges and judicial officers helped design the system and are confident that the system will result in good decisions, they do not feel it necessary to have another hearing to approve probation’s recommendation. In a jurisdiction with a population of 500,000, this practice has eliminated the need for 900 additional juvenile justice court hearings per year.

Finally, juvenile justice courts cannot have effective docketing and case management systems if they do not have sufficient judicial resources to manage the juvenile justice court’s caseload. Extensive work has occurred in the juvenile neglect and abuse court to determine how to measure performance and how to measure the amount of judicial resources that a court needs to handle its cases within recommended timelines. Similar work has also occurred in the juvenile justice court. By identifying the number and type of cases that come before the juvenile justice court annually, determining the number of types of hearings needed (e.g., detention hearings, initial hearings, trials, etc.), identifying average lengths of time required for and between hearings, and applying other systemic factors, the amount of docket time needed by a juvenile justice court to manage its caseload can be determined.