Unmanageable Case Management

An Unmanageable Case Management Quandary 1

An Unmanageable Case Management Quandary

Claudio Benoit, Wendi Grimes, Harry Lamont, Joe Martinez, and Sherry Watson

CJA 453 Criminal Justice Administration

April 30, 2012

An Unmanageable Case Management Quandary 2

An Unmanageable Case Management Quandary

Keeping track of courtroom statistics can be a very tricky ordeal because of the length that some of the cases take to complete. There are certain aspects of keeping statistics on court cases that are not very accurate at this time that do need to be changed that would make the statistics much more accurate. With the amount of cases and lack of judges that are being heard daily, it can be difficult to get a case complete in a timely manner. When dealing with juvenile cases there are both benefits and disadvantages to having the same judge preside of the same individual every time. The benefit of a judge becoming familiar with a juveniles background must be weighed against the judge possible becoming unfair in their rulings based on the number of times the judge has had to see the same individual.

Merits and difficulties of case management approach

The merits of this case-management quandary are the disposal of hearing 700 to 500 cases in a month. However, the doubling of case filings has become difficult because judges and other court personnel are trying to stop the backlog of cases from becoming higher. The need for improving the present system;which consist of five judges hearing as many cases as possible, one judge only hearing juvenile cases, two judges rotating with criminal cases, and two judges hearing motion and pending criminal cases is not nearly enough when handling all the criminals that have...