COVID-19 and Courts: An Exploration of the Impacts of the Pandemic on Case Processing and Operations

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic instantly changed the day-to-day practices of the criminal justice system. The court system, traditionally reliant on face-to-face interaction, had to quickly alter operations to decrease the virus’ spread while remaining functional as an integral role in the criminal justice system. The current exploratory study examines the response strategies U.S. court systems implemented, impacts on case processing, case backlogs, and additional consequences endured due to the pandemic. Using responses from self-report surveys of court staff (e.g., judges, clerks), results indicated that courts prioritized the types of cases heard and implemented multiple mitigation strategies that were deemed effective, some of which may be sustainable post-pandemic. Despite an increase in virtual jury trials and hearings, many courts saw a surge in backlogged cases and complications in assembling juries. The overall findings may inform judiciary policy and practice concerning short and long-term pandemic outcomes on court processing and future pandemic preparedness.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• courts
• case backlogs
• pandemic
• juries

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Julie Wright for her role in survey development and conceptualization. We would also like to thank the National Association for Court Management for supporting this work and promoting the survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The use of the term technology throughout this paper refers to any tool that allowed courts to operate virtually during the pandemic. Some examples include video conferencing, laptops for home use, and company cellphones.

2. Many court systems do not provide publicly available e-mail addresses or supply only one general e-mail address, which limited our ability to do directed survey recruitment. Additionally, many court systems have advanced protections on their e-mail systems, often blocking messages containing survey links. Both challenges, combined with the additional workload pressures of COVID-19, limited the ability to gain a larger response rate.

3. For example, we were unable to conduct a t-test comparing the number of hours spent on adjudicating a jury case before and during the pandemic because only 10 courts out of the 66 were able to answer this question. The remaining 55 respondents answered “not sure.”