Breaking the Cycle

Yesterday I was talking with my court administrator about problems facing the judiciary and we agreed that recidivism is probably the most serious and difficult to address.

A key reason is that nearly 70 percent of the felony detainees in our Fulton County Jail are on medications for various mental disorders and two-thirds of a large group of detainees tested by Fulton Superior Court tested positive for drugs. As one experienced jurist once told me "If we didn't have drugs we wouldn't have much business," so too without mentally ill offenders our courts would be almost empty.

So today when I saw our county's commission chairman pop into a press conference held by Atlanta's mayor and police chief to tamp down a furor over a rash or recent high profile (i.e. famous people victims) crimes I was surprised and pleased by his focus on the problem of repeat offenders.

John Eaves, the Fulton Commission chair, said he has parternered with law enforcement and the courts in Atlanta and Fulton County to set up a reentry program for felons returning to Fulton from prisons. He promised to work with city officials to deal with the problems posed by criminals.

After all, Eaves pointed out, every offender caught in Atlanta ends up in the county jail, which he said is overrun by mentally ill and addicted repeat offenders. Without addressing those underlying engines propelling these detainees to commit additional crimes the problem will only get worse, Eaves said.

I'm anxious to learn more about Eaves' effort because it is a brilliant concept, one that our chief judge has been trying to spark for several years.

One especially successful such program that Chief Judge Doris Downs points to when promoting the idea has been operating in Savannah, GA for some years. Called the Savannah Impact Center, it houses job, educational, counseling and other services for offenders coming back from prison stints along with offices for probation and other law enforcement agencies concerned with tracking and monitoring those coming back to their communities after serving their time.

The U.S. Department of Justice also recognizes prisoner reentry as a key vulnerability in our nation's criminal justice system. Here is what the DOJ's website has to say about the problem:

"Nearly 650,000 people are released from state and federal prison yearly and arrive on the doorsteps of communities nationwide. A far greater number reenter communities from local jails, and for many offenders and /defendants, this may occur multiple times in a year. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) over 50 percent of those released from incarceration will be in some form of legal trouble within 3 years. In his 2004 State of the Union, President Bush proposed “a four-year, $300 million prisoner re-entry initiative to expand job training and placement services, to provide transitional housing, and to help newly released prisoners get mentoring, including from faith-based groups."

For a better understanding of the effect of mental illness on recidivism take a look at the Public Broadcasting System's Frontline series program The Released. Its exploration of what happens to mentally ill offenders once they are released from prison found that within 18 months of being released two-thirds had been re-arrested.

Fulton County Superior Court

I was surprised recently when someone said they didn't know that the Fulton County Superior Court is the largest and busiest trial court of general jurisdiction in the State of Georgia.

I really shouldn't have been. As The Eagles song Center of the Universe points out, "This isn't the center of the universe, it's just where I want to be." So allow me to introduce the Court.

With 20 Judges elected countywide and a staff of some 200, Fulton County Superior Court is the largest and busiest trial court of general jurisdiction in the State of Georgia.

Judges of Superior Court in Georgia hear administrative appeals and preside over civil, major criminal, and domestic relations cases.

Fulton County, with a population in excess of 960,000, comprises the Atlanta Judicial Circuit, Georgia’s only single-county Judicial Circuit. Fulton County includes Atlanta, the state’s capitol.

The Court offers a variety of programs and services designed to provide the citizens of Fulton County with meaningful access to the judicial system.

• Alternative Dispute Resolution - The ADR Program provides citizens methods to resolve legal disputes other than the traditional trial. Civil mediation, case evaluation, and non-binding civil arbitration are speedier alternatives offered to parties in civil and domestic actions filed in the Superior and State Courts.

• Caseflow Management - This office keeps track of all cases - criminal, civil, and domestic relations - as they proceed through our court. Caseflow Management also generates the annual case count to determine the exact number, type, and nature of each case considered by a Superior Court Judge.

• Business Court - Established by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2005, the Business Court provides a specialized venue for complex commercial litigation with damages sought in excess of $1 million dollars or that involve contractual disputes, commercial litigation, securities, or questions of corporate, limited liability company or partnership law. Its efficiency and success have greatly increased the number of cases filed in Business Court.

• Drug Court - Since 1997 our treatment-oriented accountability court has proven effective for non-violent, drug dependent offenders. More than 400 individuals are enrolled in this innovative accountability court. Defendants who successfully complete the requirements of the 12-18 month program at "Hope Hall," avoid jail time, while rebuilding their lives. 67 percent of graduates never commit another crime.

• Family Court - Ours was the first Family Court in Georgia. Begun in July 1998, it includes legal, psychological, and social services professionals who help resolve multiple family disputes in a coordinated, non-confrontational, and speedy manner. Family Court’s free internet-based I-CAN! program helps self-represented individuals complete legal forms in domestic cases.

• Jury Services - More than 100,000 citizens are called for jury service in Fulton County each year. To accommodate citizens, Superior Court was the first court in Georgia to adopt the One Trial/One Day service term. Superior Court trial jurors serve a term of either one trial or one day.

• Law Library - The Law Library serves the legal information needs of the local judiciary, members of the Georgia State Bar, Fulton County citizens, and local government departments. The Law Library also operates the Jail Law Library, which provides legal materials for Fulton County Jail detainees.

• Mental Health Court - Established in 2006, the Mental Health Court is operated in partnership with Fulton County Mental Health Department’s Division of Addictive Diseases. In the first year the Court had supervised 43 defendants who had been arrested 766 times prior to entering the Mental Health Court. Thirty-five percent had been in prison and most had been hospitialized for mental disorders. Recidivism was 11 percent after the first year of operation.

• Pretrial Services - Pretrial Services is a 24-hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week supervised release program. Pretrial officers screen, assess and intensively supervise qualified defendants prior to their trial. 97 percent of pretrial defendants observe all release requirements and appear at all court hearings.

• Public Information and Court Tours - Through brochures, press releases, its website www.fultoncourt.org and printed publications, the Court seeks to keep the public informed about Court services and the judicial system. The Court also provides Court Tours for citizens to speak to a Judge, observe a court proceeding. Contact pio@fultoncourt.org for information.

Managing Court Cases

To manage or not to manage.

That was the question this week as the Hon. William F. Dressel, president of the National Judicial College, and court management guru Barry Mahoney co-lead sessions in Atlanta on case management for judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers and clerks.

Fulton County's Superior Court organized the three-day seminar. Buoyed by the success of a strict case management routine that has cut disposition of almost all nonviolent drug and property felony cases to just nine weeks, court leaders are poised to expand efficient case management to all cases - criminal and civil.

Poised, but not yet diving in.

A little background may help set the scene for what played out in the meeting room at the top of the high-rise James H. "Sloppy" Floyd state government building which towers over the gold-domed Georgia Capitol.

Georgia has a non-unified court system. Each of the state's 159 counties elects its own judges, district attorneys and clerk of court. Each court operates independently, although loosely bound by the Administrative Office of Courts, which functions mostly as a pass-through for funding.

Each of Georgia's Superior Courts is comprised of from two to 20 autonomous judges who also operate as they see fit. Having a single method of managing cases is still more a dream than a routine, even in the largest Superior Court in Fulton County.

That makes just getting all members of the Fulton judicial community into that room a big step.

But our court has been taking steps toward the management ideal espoused by Judge Dressel and Mahoney, who heads the Denver-based Justice Management Institute.

In 2006, the court began assigning all single defendant, nonviolent felony cases to a single judge with the same prosecutor and defense lawyer carrying the cases through from arrest to disposition.

This so-called FastTrackFelony calendar has a mandated timetable for each stage of a case.

As a result, the total pending felony caseload in the Superior Court of Fulton County was reduced by 44 percent from the inception of the FastTrackFelony Calendar in May of 2006 through May of 2009.

That is a reduction of some 3,500 pending felony cases from more than 8,000 to some 4,500. FastTrackFelony cases – primarily single-defendant, non-violent property and drug cases – account for more than 60 percent of all felony cases before the Court.

This dramatic reduction is the result of dedication and hard day-to-day work by judges and employees of the Court, and staff of the Fulton County District Attorney, Fulton Superior Court Clerk and Fulton Public Defender. It also proves that case management works!

Here's how.

All FastTrackFelony court defendants are interviewed and assessed for court-appointed counsel at the Fulton County Jail where they are scheduled for a first appearance hearing within 24 to 48 hours of arrest.

After First Appearance hearings, all FastTrackFelony cases are assigned to cases managers. The case assignments are vertical, meaning that the assigned case managers follow their cases from accusation or indictment through final disposition.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers also follow the same case through all stages of the calendar. Vertical assignment is a key to keeping cases on track for disposition.

An All Purpose Hearing operated by the Court’s Magistrates, also helps keep cases on track by enforcing time standards prior to indictment or accusation. After defendants have appeared in court for Plea and Arraignment hearings, the final stage is trial.

Cases not resolved by pleas are immediately calendared for trial. Less than .007 percent of all FastTrackFelony cases actually go to trial.

The ability of our court to conclude these within only 9 weeks of arrest benefits the justice system in a number of ways:

· There has been a huge reduction in bond forfeitures in these cases due to timely processing.

· FastTrackFelony defendants almost never have multiple cases pending before the first case is ever reached for disposition.

· It has enabled us to divert the drug addicted and the mentally ill for treatment more efficiently.

· It has dramatically reduced the need for inmate transport to the courts complex since plea and arraignment hearings in these cases are heard at the jail.

Being Georgia's largest court has driven much of the change.

Since 2002, Fulton Superior Court’s caseload has increased 27 percent and it expected to exceed 38,100 cases by year’s end. Because of our location, Fulton County's Superior Court not only serves the judicial needs of the county's approximately 980,000 residents, but also hears all lawsuits filed against Georgia’s state government and many of the large corporations headquartered in Atlanta.

While we have made strides in streamlining the processing of FastTrackFelony cases we still face a serious problem of backlog cases. The court won a grant to fund a one-year project to reduce the number of cases over a year old, but our court's leaders believe that without reworking how we process and manage cases the backlog will return.

That brings us back to the reason for the gathering at the Top of the Slop as the site of this week's meeting is known.

Whether some or all of the recommendations outlined by Dressel and Mahoney this week are put into action remains to be seen.

But the presence of so many of our judges, their law clerks and case managers, the elected district attorney and key members of his staff, the public defender and his assistants and top officials and managers of the Clerk's office indicates we may be about to take the plunge.

More later.