Court Reform

Do you have no idea how your local court operates? Do you know what kinds of cases your prosecutor is or is not bringing to court? Do you have a sense of how defendants are being treated? As of now, there is no reporting system in place to evaluate the performance and outcomes of legal professionals in a court system as there are for teachers in a schools or surgeons in hospitals. Without raw data, citizens and communities are not, at present, equipped with the tools to monitor their courts. And legal professionals will not be compelled to improve their performance.

The next step need to be the launching of pilot projects in collaboration with law schools, public policy think tanks, criminal justice institutions, and communities to measure state criminal trial court performance across the United States. Pilot data and validated metrics will ultimately serve as the foundation for legislated state run programs. While the leading scholars may disagree on what exactly should be measured, virtually all concur that courts are the least studied public institution in America.

“Ordinary Injustice often seems like an unfortunate collection of facts until an underlying pattern is revealed.”