The Court Statistics Book: Book I

By Dr. Dennis. and Professor Anthony Clayton

This book provides decisive guidance on the techniques in counting and classifying cases, which are applicable in any court system and also advances the use of sophisticated equilibrium modeling techniques in determining the optimal quantity of cases and timelines from filing to disposition. Crucially, this book also provides a detailed exposition on the application of twenty-nine statistical formula subdivided into twelve productivity metrics, eight time lag metrics, five civil case activity efficiency metrics, and four judicial resource management metrics. These metrics provide a solid basis for the effective management and mobilization of judicial resources. The book also uses regression analyses in analyzing the factors which explain court productivity in the Jamaican court system and found decisively that the single most important factor explaining court productivity in the civil and criminal jurisdictions of the parish courts was the demand for judicial services, suggesting that judges respond positively to increased demand by increasing output.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781698711058

Dr. Dennis.

Dr. Denarto Dennis is the author of The Court Statistics Book, a book on the fundamentals of a data driven approach to court management which all judicial officers, court administrators, other court personnel and the various stakeholders of the court must know. Dr. Denarto Dennis has also written various scientific articles and papers in the field of court statistics and currently serves in a consultancy capacity as the Chief Statistician for the Jamaican court system. He has been the main architect in driving the development and formalization of advanced statistical tracking tools and measurements in the Jamaican court system. Dr. Dennis has taught mathematics and statistics courses in the Department of Economics at the University of the West Indies, Mona for over ten years where he won faculty awards for excellence in teaching on three separate occasions. He is a graduate of the Manning’s School and The University of the West Indies, Mona in Jamaica and has certification in Data Science (Visualization) from Harvard University. Dr. Dennis is also a trained mathematics teacher.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgment

Foreword

Preface

The Structure Of The Jamaican Court System

Insights Into Case Management Best Practices From The Chief Justice Of Jamaica

Introduction

Chapter 1     The Principles and Practices of Case Classification and Case Counting

Chapter 2     Statistical Measures of Court Efficiency I

Chapter 3     Statistical Measures and Court Efficiency II

Chapter 4     Analysis of demand and supply for court services in the Jamaican court system

Chapter 5     Analysis of the causes of court delay, efficiency and productivity in the Jamaican court system

Chapter 6     A Statistical Profile of the Jamaican Court System

Conclusion

References

Appendix A

Appendix B

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express thanks to the Honorable Chief Justice of Jamaica Mr. Bryan Sykes for the inspiration of his vision which has enhanced the appreciation for a use of statistics for court planning and policy in the Jamaican court system. This forward thinking approach to court leadership paved the way for the production of a book of this magnitude and potential significance. I wish to also thank retired Chief Justice of Jamaica, the Honorable Zaila McCalla for her stewardship and support in the early establishment of the court statistics program in the Jamaican court system.

I wish to all extend special thanks to the past and present staff of the Statistics Unit at the Supreme Court who played an important role in assisting with processing some of the statistical data included in this text. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Data Entry Statistical Officers across the Jamaican court system who have worked tirelessly in maintaining the electronic databases over the past five years which have made much of this production possible. A special thanks also to the staff of the various courts in Jamaica, the court’s administrative leadership and various judges for ably assisting in my quest for knowledge.

I wish to also specially recognize and appreciate the invaluable support I received from the Information and Communication Technology Division of the Court Administration Division who have played a remarkable role in advancing the data systems necessary to capture vast swathes of court data on the Jamaican court system.

Finally, I extend special thanks to my former UWI, Mona academic colleague, fellow Manning’s School alumni and friend, Jevon Henry for first planting and nourishing the idea of writing this book. I also extent sincere thanks to Mrs. Lorna Green, the Registrar of the Revenue Court of Jamaica for her expert editing of the book.

FOREWORD

Denarto Dennis was one of my most outstanding PhD students. His research project employed a combination of qualitative and econometric analyses to investigate a range of economic, governance, resource and historical factors, and determined that the rule of law and the relative strengths of the institutions of governance made the greatest difference to the wealth and poverty of states over time. His thesis was assessed by his examiners as making an exceptional contribution to our understanding of development.

After graduating, he held various academic positions, and served as the Chief Statistician at the Supreme Court of Judicature, where he has been able to apply his profound insights, mathematical skills and lucid intelligence in contributing to resolving one of the greatest impediments to national development; Jamaica’s dysfunctional justice system.

Violence, crime and corruption have profoundly retarded Jamaica’s development. The economy has stagnated for most of the last five decades, with low growth and declining productivity, while other countries have transformed their productivity, economic growth rates and development prospects. The economy is now, at best, one-third of the size it should have been; it may be only one-tenth of the size it could have been. Effective action against crime and corruption would do more to improve the economy of Jamaica than any other measure.

The police are the usual targets for criticism, but the police are just one part of the justice system. At the time that Dr. Dennis started work at the Supreme Court of Judicature, it had become clearer that inefficiencies in the judicial system was also an impediment to progress. The Courts did not process cases quickly and efficiently, so the process of justice was subject to inordinate delays. There was a sizeable backlog, and many took years to settle. There were cases where people remained on remand in police cells, awaiting trial, for years, and homicide cases that dragged on for over a decade, by which time the police officers had retired and the witness accounts were no longer reliable.

These problems undermined public confidence in the justice system, which had a number of damaging consequences. Many witnesses were unwilling to appear in court; partly because the process could take years, and partly because lengthy delays and frequent acquittals gave ample opportunity for revenge attacks. This then encouraged mob justice; in some communities suspected thieves or child abusers were more likely to be beaten or killed than delivered to the police. As a result of these problems, the conviction rate for serious crimes was abysmally low, which effectively removed the deterrent for criminal behavior.

Dr. Dennis set out to contribute to solving this problem with the first truly meticulous measure of court performance, and used equilibrium modeling techniques to determining the optimal quantity of cases and times to disposition. The key finding was that the productivity of the court system depends on judicial leadership and strong management to ensure that cases are processed efficiently.

Public confidence in justice depends on a system that can deliver justice impartially, swiftly, effectively and economically. These goals are not just about efficient management, but rest on the deepest principles of the rule of law. The right to a reasonably rapid and efficient trial is fundamental. As Ecclesiastes 8:11 points out, ‘When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong.’ This moral precept has been established in law since 1225 by clause 40 of the Magna Carta, which states that ‘to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice’. Nearly eight hundred years later, the people of Jamaica were still being denied this basic right.

Dr. Dennis’s work gives us the robust empirical foundation needed to support and direct the reform of the Court system and give the nation a modern, efficient and affordable system of justice. This will help to restore the rule of law, and thereby help Jamaica to overcome the intolerable, ruinous and deadly burden of crime and corruption.

Professor Anthony Clayton, MA (Hons), PhD, FCAS, FTWAS, DFCAEETP, CD

PREFACE

The creation of this book was motivated by the absence of a central reference point for court practitioners, administrators and statisticians to access and understand the range of court metrics and mathematical tools of analysis which are necessary to generate a comprehensive profile of court performance. The pursuit and use of this scientific path in court planning and policy and court administration more broadly, creates the conditions for the optimal mobilization and use of scarce resources, provision of sound judgments and timely disposition of cases, which enhances public confidence in court systems.

A butterfly effect of sorts then ensues where the court system becomes progressively stronger, trust in the justice system grows, broad investor confidence increases, economic activity and business confidence improves and economic growth inevitably follows. There can indeed be no serious study of long run economic growth, without giving account for the role of the court system as an important cornerstone of business activity. In recognition of this fact and of the importance of a data driven approach to the effective and efficient management and mobilization of resources, this writer finds inspiration in the need to create a central, comprehensive body of work for all court practitioners to be able to reference as a source of all major court metrics and their computational logic and applications. While exploring a rich array of court metrics and mathematical models of decision making in courts, this book also explores the critical issue of court delay – its causes, consequences and possible solutions. A meaningful discourse on court metrics and modeling cannot be devoid of an appreciation of one of the most fundamental challenges faced by courts – that of delay to the timely and efficient progression of cases.

This book therefore creates a repository of knowledge which is necessary for developing a data driven approach to court management, within the context of common problems which need to be arrested and resolved in order for courts to function effectively, which is an important outcome for the sustainable development of any state. Although much of the quantitative examples used throughout the text are based on data from the Jamaican court system, which is now far advanced with its court statistics program, the ideas, concepts and theoretical grounding and examples are drawn from all over the world which makes the contents of this book universally applicable and potentially transformative. The target audience is all court administrators, judges, court statisticians, court practitioners as a whole, state prosecutors, attorneys and other stakeholders of the courts whose roles are equally important in fostering an efficient justice system.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE

JAMAICAN COURT SYSTEM

AN EXTRACT FROM THE WEBSITE OF

THE JAMAICAN SUPREME COURT

The structure of the Jamaican Judicial System is based on five basic tiers. The lowest tier is the Lay Magistrates’ Court. This court is presided over by Justices of the Peace. The Lay Magistrates’ Court requires a minimum of two justices to be properly constituted. Sometimes Parish Court Judges exercise jurisdiction in this court and the presiding Judges exercises the jurisdiction of two Justices of the Peace.

Appeals from this court are to the Circuit Court of the parish in which the Lay Magistrates Court sits or by way of case stated to the Court of Appeal.

The next tier of court is the Parish Court. This court is an inferior court of record and, as is the case with the Justices of the Peace jurisdiction, is governed entirely by statute. Parish Court Judges have the jurisdiction to try cases summarily as well as on indictment. The level of sanction, in terms of fines and imprisonment, are lower than that which may be imposed in the Supreme Court.

Parish Court Judges preside over a range of courts at this level. Apart from exercising jurisdiction in criminal cases, Parish Court Judges preside over the Coroner’s Court, Traffic Court, Drug Court, Tax Court, Family Court, Juvenile Court and Civil Court. The jurisdiction of the Civil Court is limited to claims not exceeding $250,000.00.

Appeals from the Parish Court are also to the Court of Appeal.

At the third tier, the Supreme Court is the highest first instance court. It is a superior court of record and has unlimited jurisdiction. It has both inherent and statutory jurisdictions. Courts of equivalent jurisdiction in other countries are sometimes called High Courts.

The Supreme Court has jurisdiction in Civil, Criminal, Family, Commercial, Succession and Admiralty cases. There are also specialized courts which exercise superior jurisdiction which are presided over by Supreme Court Judges. These are the High and Circuit Court Divisions of the Gun Court and the Revenue Court.

Appeals from the Supreme Court are also made to the Court of Appeal.

The Court of Appeal is the court to which all appeals are first referred. The Court of Appeal is the fourth tier of the court structure. Its procedure is governed by statute. It may confirm, overturn or vary judgments in cases which there are appeals from any of the first-instance courts.

In the majority of cases the decisions of the Court of Appeal may be subject to appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (The Privy Council). Technically, the appeal is to the Head of State which is the Sovereign. The Privy Council hears the appeal and makes a recommendation to the Sovereign as to the manner in which the appeal is to be resolved. It may recommend confirmation, overturn or variation of the judgment of the Court of Appeal. The Privy Council is the fifth and highest tier of the Jamaican Court System. Appeals to the Privy Council are restricted to cases of a certain monetary value or where they are of exceptional public importance.

INSIGHTS INTO CASE

MANAGEMENT BEST

PRACTICES FROM THE CHIEF

JUSTICE OF JAMAICA

One the greatest plagues of the court system in Jamaica, and some would say, throughout the Caribbean, and the world, is that of delay in having cases completed in a reasonable time. In respect of criminal and civil proceedings, the Jamaican Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedom places a high premium on disposing of cases within a reasonable time. ¹ This exhortation to dispose of matters within a reasonable time is supported by another important provision of the Charter which provides that ‘[w]henever any person is charged with a criminal offence he shall, unless the charge is withdrawn, be afforded a fair hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial court established by law.’ ²

It is immediately obvious that whatever the definition of or measure used to determine reasonable time, inordinate delay is not to be the norm. To assist with defining or describing reasonable time, the Jamaican courts have determined that two years from the time the case entered the particular court is a reasonable time for disposition in that specific court. This was arrived at after careful review of the available literature by Dr. Denarto Dennis, the Chief Court Statistician.

It is fully appreciated that for some persons this time frame may seem long but it is important that any time standard set be realistic and at the same time be aspirational if the court is not yet at the particular time standard established. In the case of Jamaica, this twenty-four-month time standard is a starting point and the expectation is that it will be reviewed (and reduced as appropriate) as the courts incorporate appropriate technology that will enhance case flow management best practices.

For the court to determine if it is meeting its time standards, reliable data need to be available. It is therefore vital that the court has consistent and dependable data. The data must be collected, collated, and analyzed periodically so that court leaders can have an accurate picture of the state of court operations. The data analysis is not an end itself, but an important step in determining whether the court is carrying out its mandate of resolving disputes at least cost in an acceptable time while being fair to the parties.

How will a court meet its mandate in this time of scarce resources, increasing demand, greater public scrutiny, and greater demand for accountability? The answer lies in effective case management. The experience in Jamaica, which is consistent with the literature from other courts is that, those courts which develop, implement, and maintain an effective case management programme can make significant inroads into backlogs and actually become backlog free in a few years of determined effort. This is so even without an inflow of significant technological resource.

This is exemplified by the High Court Division of the Gun Court in Kingston and the Parish Courts. The High Court Division of the Gun Court has a gross backlog of under 10% and net backlog of under 5%. The Parish Courts (criminal cases) has a contemporary net backlog rate of under 2% while the gross backlog is only marginally above what appears to be the international bench mark of 10%. This was achieved in just over five years of effective case management with little technological support.

Effective case management means that courts must establish early control and institute realistic timelines for the intermediate steps to be completed so that the overarching time standard for disposition of cases can be met in over 90% to 95% of cases. Effective case management also means the elimination of unnecessary adjournments, which implies continuous control of case progression until disposition.

If I may be permitted to demonstrate the importance of statistics with an example from the Chief Justice’s Annual Statistical Reports for the Parish Courts of Jamaica. Until these reports were produced (since 2017) it was not known that the Parish Courts disposed of over eighty percent (80%) of the criminal cases filed in twelve (12) months or less and over ninety (90%) percent were disposed in twenty-four months or less. To put is briefly, these courts were performing much better than the anecdotal evidence suggested. The anecdotal evidence emphasized delays but not successes. The reliable data has enabled the courts to present a more accurate picture and establish that these courts were performing better than previously thought. Such advances have created a catalyst for sound strategic planning and operational interventions to augment target definition and setting and effective performance monitoring and evaluation.

On the other hand, reliable statistics brought home forcibly the dire situation in the civil division of the Supreme Court. In 2019, the clearance rate for civil cases (other than commercial, revenue, matrimonial, and probate) was approximately thirty-one (31%) percent. That is to say, only thirty-one (31) cases were disposed for every one hundred (100) new cases filed. The implication for present and future court efficiency is obvious but such information has also created the basis for critical interventions and reforms geared towards engendering a more efficient and sustainable operation.

As intimated, the two above examples precipitated the development of critical interventions. In the case of the Parish Courts, the development of the Differentiated Case Management (DCM) programme in criminal cases to build on the strengths of their robust performance will be implemented on April 1, 2022 while a range of process re-engineering and resource reallocation and optimization are being pursued in the Divisions of the Supreme Court

In respect of the civil cases in the Supreme Court, the decision was taken to increase the number of Master of the Supreme Court ³ who would now hear many of the chamber applications which are currently heard by Puisne Judges. ⁴ The rules governing the jurisdiction of the Master were amended to expand the range of matters that they could hear. This means that there would be more judges available to hear and determine matters in open court. With the assistance of three senior and respected Judges within the Caribbean region ⁵ a robust case management, and case flow management programme was planned, designed, and implemented. The objective is to increase the case management capability of Judges and Masters of the Supreme Court and in so doing bolster judicial productivity.

So far I have dealt with the insights gained at the operational level of the courts. Attention must now be directed to the leadership corps of the courts. ⁶ It is vital that all levels of court leadership are able to analyze data, draw inferences, and develop polices, practices, procedures, and strategies based on the conclusions derived from such analyses.

The ultimate aim of data driven reforms and strategic interventions is to create excellent, high performing courts, as indeed the most striking characteristic of excellent courts is that they make best use of data analysis by continuously reviewing policies, processes, and procedures in order to embed a culture of continuous improvement so that cases can be disposed in the shortest possible time while the rights of the parties are respected.

The Honourable Mr. Justice Bryan Sykes, OJ, CD.

Chief Justice of Jamaica

INTRODUCTION

The operation of any modern institution requires the use of reliable data to inform sound decision making, policy design and strategic planning. For institutions where demand and supply can be fluid, the importance of data to generate forecasts and thus inform the allocation of resources is paramount. Court systems across the world fit this characteristic as over time the demand and supply for judicial services has a tendency to vary depending on the sophistication of the society as well as a number of factors which are both exogenous or endogenous to the operation of the court system. For example, new or modified legislation, changing norms and values, new trends, the maturity of the population with respect to its litigiousness and the changing rates of criminality, can potentially have a dramatic effect on the demand for judicial services. At the same time, the supply of judicial services varies depending on the availability of judicial and other supporting resources, such as the elasticity of supply of judicial services, the experience and expertise of judges and court staff. A lot also depends on the relative strength of the court’s stakeholders; the prosecution, the police investigative arm and the state lab services. There is indeed a myriad of variables which interplay to determine the equilibrium between demand and supply of judicial services in any given time period. Given the dynamic nature of the court environment, it is necessary to utilize rigorous tools of classification and measurement to quantify court performance. Such tools of classification in the characteristically variable court environment often requires the use of techniques and analysis which are embedded in the ideas of calculus, a discipline that is widely applied throughout this book. By definition, the discipline of calculus is partly concerned with the study of variables which change with time or some other reference variable. Moreover, the term calculus derives from the Latin word meaning small stones or pebbles, because of its preoccupation with the study of small pieces or points. Such is the precision focus being utilized in the measurement of the efficiency of judicial systems that is critical to the allocation and mobilization of resources to their optimum usage. The statistical tools and techniques used in this book create a set of standards for the effective and precise measurement of court activity and performance, allowing for careful and well targeted judicial planning and administration. Effective court administration requires the application of scientific measurements and the creation of statistical profiles for courts which is essential to tracking general progress and the monitoring and evaluation of strategic targets.

The efficient operation of the modern court system is especially important within the context increased accountability of judicial systems as they are largely publicly funded. One of the central goals of judicial management is therefore to ensure that limited resources are effectively managed to produce the highest level of output in terms of the rates of clearance of cases and the preservation of the delivery of a consistently high quality of justice. In order to ensure that this goal is met, there must be a clear understanding of the areas of strengths and weaknesses of the courts as conferred by several mixes of quantitative measurements of court activity. The effective measurement of court performance assists in understanding the fundamental causes of court delay and thus in informing the various interventions which may be necessary to bring redress to this age-old problem. The problem of court delay usually manifests by way of a gradual accumulation of case backlog and case congestion as delay invariably arises from situations where the rate of clearance of cases is either historically or contemporarily inadequate.

This is arguably, the most comprehensive statistics book on the quantification of court performance which has published in the modern world. The core objective of the text to provide court statisticians, judges, court administrators and other court personnel, attorneys and other stakeholders of the courts with a blueprint for understanding and applying scientific principles, tools, techniques and formula to the measurement of court activity and to the classification and counting of cases. The application of the ideas of this text in court management in any country will create the conditions for sustainable improvements in case management in general and in the key performance indicators of the case clearance and case disposal rates in particular.

This book is divided into six chapters, the first of which explores principles of case counting and case classification which forms an essential ethos for all court metrics as in order to apply the science of measurement, it is necessary to first be able to properly count and categorize cases. The second chapter