Courts

The Sandoval County District Court would like to receive some training and guidance with our pretrial services program. A general training in the research recommended functioning of how the program should be run as well as some support in the purchase or development of our own PTS risk assessment tool is very much needed.

Following a conference in April in which the Attorney General called heroin abuse a nationwide epidemic, PERF has proposed a Heroin Northeast Consortium Project which would develop a coordinated and comprehensive response to the problem.

Dane County, Wisconsin is home to the world cass University of Wisconsin-Madison, home of the state capitol and commonly voted on our nation's best of's lists. Unfortunately, in the criminal justice system we are rank as United States most disparite county between African-American and white populations. Dane county is piloting a new Community Restorative Court aimed at the 17-25 year old population. r

The 26th Judicial District is seeking training and technical assistance from a multi-disciplinary team to design an approach using best practices for the scheduling cases from filing to disposition and the management of the docket within the courtroom itself. Achieving buy-in from court officials with diverse perspectives is key. This effort will result in a more productive courtroom and effective utilization of courtroom time.

The Governor’s Office on Crime Control and Prevention (GOCCP) is requesting assistance to fund eight members of the Governor’s Commission to Reform Maryland’s Pretrial Release System to travel to the Commonwealth of Kentucky to observe the pretrial risk assessment process in that state. Such a visit can be extremely beneficial to the Commission in completing the tasks assigned to it by the Governor. Kentucky is one of the few states in the country where pretrial services is run statewide, an approach that the Governor has asked the Commission to examine.

Requesting a study of Philadelphia's indigent defense delivery system. To date, Philadelphia has never conducted a comprehensive, professional study to determine which type of conflict counsel indigent defense delivery system best meets the needs of the City’s criminal, delinquency and dependency court systems. It is prudent for the policymakers of Philadelphia to decide for themselves the appropriate model for delivering conflict services, rather than having something imposed on it through costly litigation.

The Local Public Safety Coordinating Council (LPSCC) is spearheading Multnomah County's collaborative response to the State of Oregon's Justice Reinvestment efforts set forth in HB 3194. The goal of the State effort is to reduce prison use, reduce recidivism, increase public safety, return cost savings to Locals, and redeploy savings at the State level. Multnomah County (MC) is the largest population center in the State of Oregon.

Dane County, Wisconsin ranks as the nation's highest county in racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Our pre-trial services need to learn best practices to facilitate a reduction in racial disparities and earlier resolution of cases.

We would like an expert, Dr. Stacey Patton, to attend a conference that will be held on June 10 and June 11, 2014 at Madison WI. This conference is regarding corporal punishment, and has the objective of educating key stakeholders in Dane County before commencing reform in the subject area. We are asking for travel assistance.

Our New Orleans Task Force has been updated with new members (for the new prostitution diversion program that we will be implementing soon under the Racial Justice Improvement Project). The following critical members have been added: Henry Dean from New Orleans Police Department, Mark Burton and Ginger Miller from the DA’s Office and Charlene Larche-Mason from the City Attorney’s Office.