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The Academy of Architecture for Justice (AAJ) promotes and fosters the exchange of information and knowledge between members, professional organizations, and the public for high-quality planning, design, and delivery of justice architecture.

Hightlights from the AAJ Session "One Mission - Justice with Dignity and Speed - A Strategic Plan in Implementation Mode"

By Yuen-Yung J. Li posted 11-07-2014 12:32 PM

  

CAPITAL INVESTMENTS TO DATE:

$2 billion since 1980; another $2+ billion is needed. Current path is unsustainable! In this strategic planning effort, Massachusetts had the unique opportunity looking into ways to make the court system more efficient and cost effective. Much of the success was made possible with the effort of the court looking inward themselves. The new position – Court Administrator – was added to the legislature. The Court Administrator plays the critical role in working with the court, so that the report would be something that is politically viable, something that can be approved by the legislature. When the strategic planning started 2 years ago, every member within the court system was invited into the process, and ultimately a 23-people committee with people from all levels within the Court System was formed. Based on the studies on the existing facilities and court users, the committee would distribute the draft reports for the court’s approval. Negotiation was done on the items that the Judges do not agree on. This is a shift of the paradigm where the Judges are the ones making the final decisions.

Courts Capital Master Plan Road Map: Look at 100+ facilitates and new practices within 10-month time period and to formulate a plan for the next 20 years.

STAKE HOLDER ENGAGEMENT:

As discussed above, people from all levels within the court system were invited into the process from the beginning. In the process of revising the design guideline, 6 stake-holder group meetings have been conducted.

ACCESS TO JUSTICE:

Access to justice has been the major emphasis for the last 7-8 years. At the heart of the argument, is access based on distance? In addition to the geographic distribution of different court facilities, wayfinding within each facility is just as important, and that would be taken into the consideration on what to keep, what not to keep, what to be replaced, and when to move the operation, etc. Understanding the community is also very important! Sometimes people from the court system are very tightly knitted into the community, and cases like these should not be overlooked. Access has been enhanced by technology through online services. Video conferencing trials from remote locations have been done in Utah with some success. Federal Courts are also exploring in this area.

EVIDENCE AND METRICS:

Evidence-based data employed to study the cost per case for all courthouses as a mean to evaluate which ones are more efficient. The study on caseload per courthouse offers opportunities for consolidation. There should be a balance between the getting the courts centralized vs distributed. Some smaller courthouses having less than 10,000 caseload may only be opened half of the week. While the smaller courthouses are in convenient locations, the trade-off is that there are just not enough services that can be provided in smaller courthouse. Centralized means longer drives to get to the courthouse, but they can have full services. In these evidence-based studies, scattered plot was done with number of filings against the urgency of the building. Other charts are demonstrating how many people would benefit from moving the courthouse, and how many would not. The user data break down helps the committee in making decisions.

COURTHOUSE EXPERIENCE:

A lot of historic courthouses make the strategic planning process even more challenging. The legacy buildings often do not work well as the 21st-century courthouses due to the modern security and technological requirements. However, these building cannot be torn down, and to some degree we want to stay in them. At this point, there has not been a solution yet. Question to be asked was – can those buildings even be saved? Should they be saved? Perhaps the buildings can be given back to the local community.

SUSTAINABLE PLAN:

Some strategies include: Shared Staffing, Improve Facility Coalitions, Fewer but larger Courthouses, Staggered Scheduling, Effective Remote Processes to Reduce Space Demands, Fewer Courtrooms, and More Meeting Rooms for Alternate Dispute Resolution.

For staggered scheduling, the hours of usage of courtrooms were studied with the goal in reducing the number of courtrooms. There could be a courtroom scheduler. The challenge here is that judges typically expect their own dedicated courtrooms.

Sustainability here is not in green-building sense, but in financial sense.

The presentation was led by the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM) of Massachusetts, the Court Administrator, and RicciGreene Associates as the consultant. Thank you all for your effort in making the court system more sustainable!


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