Made2Measure

Several weeks ago on September 25, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs), 17 goals and 169 associated targets, thereby setting a new global agenda for the next fifteen years. On the one hand, the SDGs agenda promises to engage the whole world community, not only governments but also multinational companies, philanthropic foundations, civil society, scientists, non-government organizations, scientists, scholars and students around the world.   The new agenda was hailed by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as “a defining moment in human history.” On the other hand, critics claim that the SDGs are unmeasurable and unmanageable. The more limited “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs), which will expire at the end of this year, applied largely to poor countries and involved rich ones mostly as donors. The SDGs are broader and go much further than the MDGs; the latter are meant to be universally applicable to developing and developed countrie...

Around the world, the misuse of pretrial detention, the time period defendants are incarcerated between arrest and trial) is massive. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, the overuse of pretrial detention, most of it arbitrary and excessive, has reached “crushing proportions.” Of the 1,000 inmates in Nigeria’s Kiriki Maximum Security Prison, a total of 639 have not been convicted and are awaiting trial. Kayode Yukubu is among them. He was arrested in 2003.   After twelve years as Kiriki’s longest-serving inmate, no court trial date has yet been set for him.   He is among approximately 70 percent of Nigeria’s 56,785 pre-trial detainees who have not been sentenced, many of whom already have spent far longer time behind bars than the maximum period of the sentence for their alleged crimes. (Pretrial detention is intended to ensure an accused person will appear in court or pose a danger to others, not to punish or rehabilitate.) The Economist spotlighted Nigeria’s pr...

Made2Measure returns today to regular postings after a long hiatus (September 9, 2013 was the last post) during which it was suspended to avoid potential conflicts of interests while its principal, Ingo Keilitz, was seconded to the World Bank and the National Center for State Courts.   Performance measurement and management (PMM) is the (self) discipline of monitoring, analyzing, and using organizational performance data on a regular and continuous basis (in real or near-real time) for the purpose of improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, transparency and accountability, and increased public trust and confidence in government institutions. PMM is both a way of understanding the justice sector, as well as a discipline and a promising approach to solving serious global problems such as the high rate and length of incarceration, especially pre-trial detention. Relatively Small Space in the Toolbox of International Development Compared to two other disciplines ...

This is the third in a series of posts exploring the three international models of justice system performance measurement and management: (1) the EU Justice Scoreboard , (2) the Global Measures of Court Performance , and (3) the CourTools . Law and justice scholars lament the spotty evidence linking rule of law and justice programs with development outcomes like economic growth, human rights, sound governance, and poverty reduction. A key cause of the evidence gap is the lack of emphasis on building in-country or domestic performance measurement and management in favor of third-party evaluations. All three international models, more or less, promote increased attention and investment in performance measurement and management – the regular and continuous monitoring, analysis, and use of performance information -- by justice officials and their institutions and justice systems themselves, not by third parties .   Capacity for performance measurement   is the ability of count...

My last blog noted three promising international models of justice system performance measurement and management: (1) the EU Justice Scoreboard , (2) the Global Measures of Court Performance , and (3) the CourTools .   All three, more or less, aim for harmonization and consistent use of a common set of justice sector performance measures. There are, of course, differences among them, but it is their commonality that is potentially transformative for justice systems around the globe. What distinguishes these three models from international global governance initiatives like the World Justice Project’s WJP Rule of Law Index™ and the American Bar Association’s Judicial Reform Index, as well as myriad program evaluations of justice and rule of law projects, is that they promote an approach to performance measurement and management that: is essentially a bottom-up instead of a top-down strategy grounded in the local ambitions of justice institutions and justice systems exercisin...

Three models of justice system performance measurement and management that have gained significant currency internationally over the last few years are: ·          the recently launched European Commission’s EU Justice Scoreboard based on the extensive work of the Council of Europe Commission for the Evaluation of the Efficiency of Justice ( CEPEJ ); ·          the Global Measures for Court Excellence developed by the International Consortium for Court Excellence as part of its International Framework for Court Excellence; and, ·            the National Center for State Courts' CourTools . All three of these models aim for consistent use by all countries and states or, in the case of the EU Justice Scoreboard , all EU member states; all three elevate to the status of core measures of performance a limited number of indicators (e.g., case clearance ra...

Q : Adopting government-wide or justice sector-wide performance measurement and management   to make public service or justice service more efficient and effective is politically attractive, even if elected officials are drawn mostly by the symbolic values of the key success factors with which performance measures are aligned (e.g., legitimacy, fairness, and public trust and confidence in institutions).   Successful leaders and managers are drawn to performance measurement because it informs uncertain decisions. Beyond such models as the European Commission’s EU Justice Scoreboard ,   the Global Measures for Court Excellence   developed by the International Consortium for Court Excellence as part of its International Framework for Court Excellence, and the National Center for State Courts' CourTools , and their attendant exhortations to adopt performance measurement and management, are there any compelling success stories of effective use? A : Yes. Almost five ...

What if we could draw an indicator of the “health” of the justice systems throughout the United States – a Justice Index - from readily available public data that is impartial, reliable, objective and comparable, let’s say the amount of time that criminal defendants spend in custody without a trial, or even without any access to legal or justice services? Or the bail amounts imposed on misdemeanor defendants?   This kind of a measure would not be perfect – no measure is – but it would be something, better than nothing. It would address questions of fairness and efficient use of public resources. That is, a criminal defendant languishing in jail awaiting trial suffers, at the least, a delay in justice. He or she is also occupying a jail bed and spending taxpayers’ money. What if we then join this measure with another meaningful indicator of the health of our justice systems in counties and states, let’s say the degree to which jurisdictions prosecute domestic violence ca...

Bill Gates: My Plan To Fix the World’s Biggest Problems** Measure Them!   This is the headline of the lead article in the Review section of the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal   written by Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and co-founder of Microsoft.      The article was accompanied by a large picture of transparent globe wrapped by a tape measure covering most of the first page of the section.   Its message is the theme of Made2Measure. Because it comes from Bill Gates, we tend to listen. “In the past year,” Gates writes, “I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal .. .This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right.” He writes specifically about foreign aid among other areas like education, health ca...

It is not uncommon for court leaders and justice stakeholders to raise the access to justice “card” to subvert the closing or consolidation of courts.   If you close this court -- the argument goes -- citizens will be denied access to justice.   This is a strong argument because it typically evokes an emotional response irrespective of the information’s truth value, especially if the counter-arguments are couched in bland terms like efficiency and cost-savings. Trouble is that such arguments are heavy on rhetoric and light on hard evidence; and they often produce factionalism and political stalemate (see Court Consolidation in Mahoning County ).      In a 2005 survey of the public and of attorneys in California, respondents who were asked about eleven reasons that might keep someone from “going to court,” cited “travel distance to court from home” less often than eight of the other reasons including fees, cost of hiring an attorney, the time it takes to r...

Close to 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data are created daily. ....Organizations know this data is rich in information and potential insight, but it’s as if they receive a fresh-minted library daily with answers to all their questions, except the books are written in languages they cannot understand.   The above words appeared in a full-page ad by IBM in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal under the headline “Watson Goes To Work.” The ad touted IBM’s Watson, the supercomputer Jeopardy! champion over two human challengers in a pop culture event in February 2011.   Watson’s performance improved as the game progressed as it built on each bit of information acquired from each new clue and answer.   Watson demonstrated the advanced form of computing IBM calls a cognitive system, “a system that is not simply programmed but is trained to learn based on interactions and outcomes.”    The ad brought to mind a “what if” question my National Center for State colleague J...

We have failed to breathe life into the prescriptions for the performance measures that we exhort courts to use on a regular and continuous basis. The connection between well known health indicators like blood pressure, cholesterol level, and blood glucose and our health and wellbeing is self-evident to most informed people.   We know that these measures mean something vital and something very important to us. In my experience, the same cannot be said about the connection between such relatively common measures of court performance as time to disposition , trial date certainty , and collection of monetary penalties and fundamental justice and fairness (see Ten Reasons Not to Measure Court Performance , Made2Measure , November 19, 2008).   Many judges and court managers see these measures as indicators of the relatively narrow concerns of those for whom it’s all about the numbers -- the number crunchers, the spreadsheet guys, and the IT folks who manage the case manageme...

The rationale for measuring citizen/court user satisfaction has rested mostly on the argument that we should improve courts on the basis of what we learn from those served (or not so well served) by the courts, rather those who run the courts.   Two new developments make this argument more compelling: the emergence of the theory of procedural justice (or procedural fairness) and the finding that our desire for being heard, for having a voice in matters, is hard-wired into our brains. Procedural Justice Here is what Kevin Burke, District Court Judge in Minnesota, current President of the American Judges Association, and a long-time proponent of court performance measurement, recently had to say about the importance of procedural fairness ( Judicature, Viewpoint, May/June, Volume 95, Number 6, 251 -254): Better performance is the key to building public support for the judiciary… A court or a judiciary that is as good as its promise is known not just for speed or efficienc...