“This new guidance enables courts to confidently take some initial steps in experimenting with AI technologies to understand their potential moving forward,” said Shay Cleary, an NCSC Court Consulting Services managing director and AI RRT staff lead. “This guidance puts courts in the right direction.”
The AI RRT is a joint project of NCSC, the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ), and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA).
Visit theAI RRT resource center to read the interim guidance and for current information and resources for both state and federal courts.
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.
Upcoming #Webinar! Bureau of Justice Assistance Funding Opportunities for Courts. On Thursday, April 4th, 2024, at 03:00 PM EST, learn about the upcoming Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) funding opportunities that are available to state and local courts for fiscal year (FY) 2024. Among the presenters, is State Justice Institute‘s very own, Michelle White.
Presenters will detail the primary initiatives that BJA will fund and describe eligibility requirements, estimated funding amounts and application resources.
In a newly released report, Hybrid Hearings Improvement Initiative, NCSC, shares examples of how courts expanded pre-pandemic virtual and hybrid proceedings or quickly adopted new technology and practices to accommodate new ways of doing business. The report notes that courts are now using remote and hybrid hearings throughout all 50 states in differing degrees for both civil and criminal case types. By definition, a hybrid hearing is one in which at least one participant is attending from the courtroom using the room’s audio/video infrastructure and at least one participant is attending remotely either via videoconferencing platform or phone, using audio, video, or both.
“The Hybrid Hearings Improvement Initiative was a natural extension of NCSC’s work during the pandemic,” said Lindsay Hafford, NCSC project director and principal court management consultant. “Connecting technology partners directly with courts provided an invaluable exchange for all participants as they worked toward the common goal of system improvement.”
The initiative reached courts in 28 states, two territories, and one tribal jurisdiction. The five technology partners — Cisco, Logitech, Speech 2 Data, televic, and Zoom for Government — supported the project with hardware, software, funding, and training.
The report features examples from 14 courts that demonstrate how funding; technology; facilities; staffing; and processes, procedures, and policies are all key to hybrid hearings’ success. Additionally, NCSC offers related resources, strategies, best practices, and guidance for successful virtual and hybrid hearings.
The SJI Board of Directors will be meeting on Monday, April 8, 2024, at 1:00 PM PT. The purpose of this meeting is to consider grant applications for the 2nd quarter of FY 2024, and other business.
ADDRESS: Nevada Supreme Court Law Library, 201 South Carson Street, Room 107, Carson City, Nevada.
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.
The Gault Center has just released their newest resource, The National Youth Defense System Standards. The System Standards provide a metric to assess a state’s compliance with constitutional mandates that safeguard the rights of young people in the juvenile legal system, with a particular focus on the right to counsel. The System Standards call on states to invest in well-resourced youth defense delivery systems to comply with their constitutional obligations to provide every single youth facing liberty deprivations with a qualified and zealous attorney. For more information about state responsibilities, please take a look at Cause of Action: Fulfilling the Promises of Gault.
Establishing robust youth defense systems ensures that youth defenders have the right resources to fulfill the constitutional promise of counsel and in so doing, fight for a transformed system under a collective vision of freeing all youth from systemic injustices.
The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) is pleased to announce new Gavel to Gavel resource, which tracks state-by-state legislative activity with potential impact on state courts. In 2024, they are focusing primarily on monitoring proposed legislation related to judicial selection and to cyber and physical security of state courts. An “other” category collects other notable proposed legislation beyond these two focus categories. To read the full article and to access, please visit: Gavel to Gavel | NCSC.
