Harvesting Court Data Points to Grow Transparency

Traditional imagery of a court system centers around the majestic columns of a courthouse building or the engrained wood of a judge’s gavel, while in nature, it’s the vibrant petals of a blooming flower or lush green of a field that hold one’s attention. But in both cases, these components are only the surface, supported by sturdy roots of a system below. For courts, data is the hidden layer nourishing everything above it, strengthening the case management system and empowering staff to drive transparency, accountability, and efficiency.

“Technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate,” said Stevie Poole, product manager for Tyler Technologies’ Justice Insights application. “Things that were almost impossible to do five years ago are very possible today.”

Beyond supporting a court system, today’s analytics platforms allow data to be shared across jurisdictions and departments — including corrections, probation, and pretrial — breaking down silos to allow courts and other justice partners to gain valuable insights, make data-driven decisions together, and communicate results more effectively. Read on to discover four key advancements in justice analytics technology helping to connect justice partners, capture key metrics to evaluate successes and areas of opportunity, and strategically deploy resources to create efficiencies across the justice ecosystem.

Data Helps Manage E-Filing Growth

Learn how other courts unlock the power of data to increase efficiencies and track metrics.

WEEDING THROUGH DATA CHALLENGES

Courts have historically faced challenges in accessing and connecting within the broader justice system. “The jails can tell you the number of inmates. Probation can count clients. Courts can count cases. But until you create the data connections, you can't see the full picture. Each department within the justice system operates with its own technology and collects specific data,” noted Poole. Therefore, data is frequently buried within separate systems, making extraction a costly and time-consuming process. However, having the right tools in place can bring this crucial data to the surface, transforming it from static to dynamic data that empowers justice agencies to increase transparency both within and across departments.

BLOSSOMING WITH ANALYTICS OPPORTUNITY

Innovative justice systems are leveraging data-driven programs across four key areas, including court analytics, e-filing analytics, probation analytics, and pretrial analytics. Modern court and e-file analytics dashboards can compile various metrics for courts to deploy resources to create new efficiencies. Functionality for these analytics systems include organizing and filtering tiles of metrics to identify trends and visualize performance. If a court is connected through a statewide analytics application, then administrators have the ability to compare their own jurisdiction’s data against similar-sized court’s data to establish benchmarks and standards. Additionally, court managers are empowered to make more efficient operational decisions, such as analyzing rejection reasons based on specific case types or return rates by clerks within modern e-filing analytics technology.

On the corrections side, probation and pretrial analytics software can track performance and outcome metrics, providing data that can be used to help judges and decision-makers assess the effectiveness of their decisions and measure the success of a supervision program.

Performance metrics can display the overall performance of the pretrial department and are a quantitative characterization of performance in mission-critical areas like assessing defendant risk and addressing defendant compliance to court-ordered conditions. Meanwhile, outcome metrics can measure the success of the individual participating in the probation or pretrial program and indicate how well the agency is achieving its stated mission.

“Innovative pretrial and probation applications leverage the National Institute of Corrections metrics to help organizations determine whether or not pretrial practices are keeping the public safe while reducing the number of people incarcerated while awaiting trial,” said Poole. “Just like court analytics, these metrics are the core, but they’re not the only data elements available.”

ILLINOIS COURTS PAVING THE PATH

While individual analytics programs are each powerful on their own, innovative organizations, like the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts (AOIC), saw even more value in taking a holistic approach. After the Illinois Legislature passed the SAFE-T Act (Safety, Accountability, Fairness, and Equity-Today Act) — which includes legislation that eliminates cash bail and strives to limit the number of people held in jail awaiting trial, the AOIC developed a robust data program to track and analyze the results of the act. The solution architecture enables different departments, including those using various technology vendors and systems, to push specific data points into a central repository. The result is an automated data reporting process that delivers valuable insights.

“Keep in mind, Illinois is not a unified state,” said Poole. “This isn’t just different departments pushing in data … it’s also different technology vendors — in this case, 21 different vendors, connected to a single, secure data repository.”

The benefits of this dynamic approach include proactive decision-making, automated reporting replacing manual compilation, and providing local jurisdictions with access to real-time data. While the data program is not yet fully live, the data will be updated regularly to automatically let individual stakeholders, employees, and program administrators know whether new laws and processes are effective and what issues might need to be addressed. The centralized data repository allows access to state level policy analysis and access at the local level for performance management and day-to-day operational use. Illinois is also harnessing an open data solution to curate public data pages to foster accountability and reduce the burden on public information officers to respond to the many open records requests about general court statistics.

CONNECTED AT THE ROOT

The justice system flourishes best when rooted in strong data. By embracing data programs and connecting the various justice departments, transparency and accountability grow to the surface for all stakeholders and the public it serves. Comprehensive suites of tools exist in today’s modern court system for courts to use data effectively and track key metrics. By implementing comprehensive data programs that visualize pivotal metrics, courts empower justice stakeholders — including analysts, administrators, clerks, and policymakers. This empowerment enables them to make proactive decisions about allocating resources, designing procedural workflows, and creating policies informed by trusted data and actionable analytics.

“By surfacing this data in an easy-to-understand format, you have the ability to truly understand the impact of every decision made in your court,” noted Poole.