The SJI Board of Directors will be meeting on Monday, April 17, 2023 at 10:00 AM ET. The purpose of this meeting is to consider grant applications for the 2nd quarter of FY 2023, and other business.
ADDRESS: SJI Headquarters, 12700 Fair Lakes Circle, Suite 340, Fairfax, Virginia.
During the past two years, Neighborhood Preservation, Inc. worked with the City of Memphis and Shelby County to launch the local Emergency Rental Assistance program, a $90 million program with a strong eviction prevention and legal services component. The SJI grant supported the development of court data tools to identify ERA applicants facing upcoming court eviction and pair them with legal representation. The court data allowed ERA attorneys to prioritize assistance and representation for tenants by their upcoming court dates. In total, ERA attorneys used the SJI-funded tools to make possible legal representation for 13,000 tenants who received more than $50 million in rental assistance. The grant also supported a robust court watch program to chart outcomes of proceedings across 4,000 eviction cases to gain a deeper understanding of the eviction process in Shelby County.
Currently, NPI is working to systemize the court data tools created. Our goal is to develop open-source data tools that can be accessible to other legal services providers and interested stakeholders such as community activists, judges, and tenants. Legal service providers in particular will be able to use our tool to search for case information in bulk and triage cases by the date of upcoming hearings. NPI has joined a national network of 35 non-profit organizations supported by the National Low Income Housing Coalition to advocate for reforms to improve Emergency Rental Assistance programs across the country, and in doing so, NPI has engaged opportunities to share our tools and help other municipalities develop similar tools to identify demographics and cause for eviction filings in areas of concentrated evictions.
Eviction data dashboard, to be online and tracking court outcomes beginning this summer:
Preview of report on court watch outcomes, estimated to be available and online this summer, and featured at Memphis’s local Evicted exhibit:
Eviction legal help featured in NPR: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1031899066/cdc-eviction-ban-moratorium-emergency-rental-assistance-memphis
Register now! As part of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) Redesigning Legal Speaker Series, on March 21st, 2023, at 1:00PM EST, IAALS and its partners will examine the various legal service providers beyond lawyers who help people with their legal problems and discuss why it will take this entire ecosystem to fully tackle the access to justice crisis. Allied legal professional programs are spreading across the country. Register here.
Research shows rural Americans are more likely than urban residents to be jailed, to overdose, and lack access to substance use treatment, mental health care, and public health services. That’s why it’s so important to identify innovative solutions to address justice inequality in rural communities. The Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center, in partnership with the National Center for State Courts, and Rulo Strategies, LLC, authored the Rural Justice Innovations publication to highlight the inaugural group of nineteen Rural Justice Innovation sites selected by the Rural Justice Collaborative (RJC). The innovation sites profiled in this report represent the best of the best. These locations have proven rural justice programs that increase access to justice, improve family outcomes, and reduce reoffending rates. Most importantly, these programs are replicable in other rural communities that face similar challenges in ensuring equitable justice.
The RJC, a group of the country’s most innovative rural justice system leaders, is working to identify best practices that rural communities can replicate. By forming a group of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, treatment providers, and more, the RJC pioneers a new model centered on rural leaders developing solutions to rural problems not by focusing on what a barrier in their communities, but on what is working. The RJC is supported with funding from the State Justice Institute.
Access the publication here: https://www.sji.gov/wp-content/uploads/Rural-Justice-Innovations.pdf
The Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) is pleased to release a set of audiobooks from the Child Victims and Witnesses Support Materials series for young survivors of human trafficking.
Originally released as graphic novels in January 2022, these three audiobooks were created by national experts and young trafficking survivors—who also served as the voice actors—to support youth who are victims or witnesses in cases of human trafficking.
Listen to the audiobooks here: Audiobooks Available to Help Young Survivors of Human Trafficking | Office for Victims of Crime (ojp.gov)
Pew Charitable Trusts has just released a new article on equitable processes for handling debt collection cases. As levels of consumer debt continue to rise and state civil courts attempt to implement new technologies enacted during the pandemic, court leaders and administrators have a historic opportunity to address the growing need to change how they handle debt collection lawsuits.
To read the full article from Pew, please visit: State Leaders Seek More Equitable Processes for Handling Debt Collection Cases | The Pew Charitable Trusts (pewtrusts.org)
To improve guardianship case management, the National Center for State Courts is leading two SJI-funded projects to help guide courts through guardianship monitoring.
Developing a Judicial Response Protocol to Address Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation in Guardianship Cases features an interactive tool designed to help judges respond to allegations of harm to individuals subject to guardianship. Because most judges hear guardianship complaints infrequently, this tool helps judges consider their options while providing additional information and links to helpful resources along the way. The tool can be customized for individual states.
Working with partners from the National Guardianship Network, including the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging (ABA-COLA) and the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN), NCSC’s Guardianship and Technology project will create technology standards for guardianship monitoring. Partners will host focus groups and conduct interviews with subject-matter experts and individuals affected by guardianship to identify needs and requirements. Once complete, the standards will encourage vendors to provide software systems that allow courts to effectively and efficiently monitor guardianships through online report filing and review.
This project builds upon the Conservatorship Accountability Project which resulted in a report: Adult Guardianship monitoring: A national survey of court practices and guidance on data collection in guardianship cases: Guardianship/Conservatorship Monitoring – Recommended Data Elements.
“There are very few cases in the judicial system that span the lifetime of these guardianship and conservatorship cases. It is critical that these monitoring systems be in play and that you constantly review files. If you catch something quickly, there may be a chance to step in and protect the individual.”
Judge Michael Long, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Michigan
For more information, contact Diane Robinson, National Center for State Courts, drobinson@ncsc.org
What data can help the public and court community better understand how state courts are organized and structured? Is there confusion about funding or jurisdictional reach? Or maybe the misunderstandings stem from operational considerations?
The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) is kicking off a new, three-year Census of State Courts project.
Funded by a $584,762 grant award from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the census will build on NCSC’s State Court Organization data to provide a comprehensive list of U.S. courts that includes detailed information about staffing, operations, and jurisdictional reach.
NCSC will partner with the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) and National Association for Court Management (NACM) to identify priorities for data collection that will enhance knowledge about state courts around the country. Data collected from the courts will be verified, cleaned, and analyzed before census results are made available to the public.
For more information, please visit: State Court Organization (ncsc.org)
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. Having a dedicated fellow to focus on access-to-justice projects frees up staff time and resources and provides a new perspective to help solve problems faced by the court and the public. Projects will leverage skills in backend architecture, front-end design, product development, and user testing. All of which will change the justice system to be more transparent, efficient, and equitable. To learn more, check out the website and sign up for the information session on February 28. Applications open the same day. The Justice Lab is preparing to pick its first cohort of fellows, who will start in September 2023. The Justice Lab will release webinars for courts and potential fellows to learn more about the program and ask questions. To read more about the program, read the Roadmap.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) is seeking applications to respond to illicit substance use and misuse to reduce overdose deaths, promote public safety, and support access to treatment and recovery services in the criminal justice system. Awards will be made in two categories for the following amounts:
Applications from State Administering Agencies (SAA) responsible for directing criminal justice planning, the State Alcohol and Substance Use Agency, or other state agencies appropriate for the scope of the project; in addition, they must apply for funding on behalf of at least six localities, tribal entities, or areas within the state and assist with implementing projects at those sites.: up to $7,000,000
Period of performance start date: October 1, 2023
Period of performance duration: 36 months
Grants.gov Deadline: March 21, 2023, 8:59 p.m., ET
Application JustGrants Deadline: March 28, 2023, 8:59 p.m., ET
In FY 2023, applications must be submitted in a two-step process:
Step 1: Applicants will submit an SF-424 and an SF-LLL in Grants.gov at https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/register.html.
Step 2: Applicants will submit the full application, including attachments, in JustGrants at JustGrants.usdoj.gov. To be considered timely, the full application must be submitted to JustGrants by the JustGrants application deadline. Visit https://bja.ojp.gov/funding/opportunities/o-bja-2023-171527 for solicitation information, eligibility details, and application guidelines.
