With nearly 1.6 million new cases filed in 2013, Indiana’s trial courts must continually look for new ways to increase efficiency while still providing a high quality of service to litigants and other court participants.
One of these ways is through Indiana’s Court Reform Grant program, funded through federal reimbursements for previously uncollected expenses associated with Title IV-D enforcement actions. Since 2008, the Indiana Supreme Court has awarded more than $2 million in grant funding to more than 80 trial courts and judicial agencies for projects involving unified court administration, multi-jurisdictional problem-solving courts, court performance measurement, and innovative technological infrastructure, as well as several other types of projects.
During the 2014 grant cycle, two new grant categories were added – one category was for projects designed to help improve accessibility for limited English proficiency (LEP) litigants, while the other was to help enhance the delivery of pro bono services. In addition, the “Court Technology” category was amended to consider only applications for server support and scanners to assist courts in e-filing and scanning of court records in partnership with Odyssey’s Remote Document Storage (RDS). This category was given top priority by the Court.
This past year, the Court received 21 grant applications seeking more than $300,000 in funding. Each of the projects funded in 2014 are representative of the types of projects given special consideration by the Court.
Blackford, Elkhart, Fountain, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Jennings, Johnson, Madison, St. Joseph, Shelby, Union, and Warren counties received funding for the purchase of local servers or scanning equipment to assist these Odyssey counties in their transition to the use of the RDS system.
Howard County, in partnership with the District E Pro Bono Project, received $19,600 to help fund a court facilitation project. Through this project, the District E Pro Bono coordinator will visit the Howard County courthouse once per week and assist litigants in preparing documents and taking care of other preliminary legal matters before their court appearance.
Monroe County received $39,532 to pilot a project on pretrial release risk assessment. Judge Teresa Harper, who serves on Indiana’s recently-established Committee to Study Evidence-Based Pretrial Release, intends this project to help uphold the goals and vision of this state committee. If this pilot is successful, it is possible that it can be used as a model for similar pretrial release risk assessment projects in other counties and courts.
Porter County received $25,000 to help train court staff in the use of evidence-based treatment for its problem solving court participants. This training, provided through the University of Cincinnati, will include the use of cognitive behavioral therapy approaches to identify and avoid triggers for substance abuse.
St. Joseph Probate Court received a $15,000 grant to help implement the court performance measures studied with the help of the $10,000 CourTools grant the court received in 2013. The court is specifically studying the average time to disposition of cases, as well as interviewing litigants and other court participants about their satisfaction with the process and their views on access to (and fairness of) the court.
The Court is confident that those programs selected for grant funding will improve the level of services provided to litigants in these counties, as well as serve as models for other counties that wish to implement similar programs.