Cover: Courts Innovation Needs Tool

Courts Innovation Needs Tool

by Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

Society relies on the judicial system to play numerous roles and achieve several important goals. It assesses criminal guilt or innocence, serves as a check on executive power over citizens, and helps to keep the public safe. It also adjudicates civil disputes, serving as a venue for negotiation and resolution of various problems. To effectively perform these roles, courts need to manage a wide range of issues, such as high caseloads, resource constraints, disparities in justice outcomes, and ensure appropriate information is available to other government agencies and the public. To adapt to challenges and take advantage of new opportunities, the court system needs to innovate. The related research report, Fostering Innovation in the U.S. Court System: Identifying High-Priority Technology and Other Needs for Improving Court Operations and Outcomes, identifies and prioritizes potential improvements in technology, policy, and practice for the court system.

The ranking of the innovation priorities in the report were dependent on the relative importance of policy goals (and how each priority on would contribute to achieving those goals). The ranking of the policy goals in the report reflects the collective views of the participants in the NIJ Courts Advisory Panel. However, opinions can legitimately differ about the importance of policy goals. Using information drawn from the report findings, this interactive tool for ranking court innovation needs allows users to re-prioritize the needs, based on their own views of the importance of different court system policy goals.

Ranking Courts Innovations Needs Tool

The research reported here was conducted in the Justice Policy Program, a part of RAND Justice, Infrastructure, and Environment.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation Tool series. RAND tools may include models, databases, calculators, computer code, GIS mapping tools, practitioner guidelines, web applications, and various toolkits. All RAND tools undergo rigorous peer review to ensure both high data standards and appropriate methodology in keeping with RAND's commitment to quality and objectivity.

Our mission to help improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis is enabled through our core values of quality and objectivity and our unwavering commitment to the highest level of integrity and ethical behavior. To help ensure our research and analysis are rigorous, objective, and nonpartisan, we subject our research publications to a robust and exacting quality-assurance process; avoid both the appearance and reality of financial and other conflicts of interest through staff training, project screening, and a policy of mandatory disclosure; and pursue transparency in our research engagements through our commitment to the open publication of our research findings and recommendations, disclosure of the source of funding of published research, and policies to ensure intellectual independence. For more information, visit www.rand.org/about/research-integrity.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.