Courtroom Workgroup Research Articles

Right to counsel? A mixed‐methods evaluation of the St. Louis County initial appearance program

AbstractResearch summaryLegal representation is a critical right in the criminal legal process, yet it is unclear when representation is guaranteed. Further, many individuals find obtaining legal representation difficult and expensive. The current study is an evaluation of an initial appearance program implemented in St. Louis County, Missouri. This mixed‐methods study focuses on understanding if and how providing counsel at initial appearance affects the bond amount, release type, and length of pretrial detention. Data from official court records and interviews with project staff and stakeholders suggest that early, free representation at arraignment can facilitate release on recognizance and lowered bail amounts. Results from a series of interaction models suggest that this type of programming may be able to help reduce some racial disparities. Our thematic analysis indicates that courtroom stakeholders see value in the program for the defendants, the criminal process, and the courtroom workgroup dynamics during pretrial stages.Policy implicationsThe results reflect the need for early representation in the legal process. Representation can potentially reduce some of the racial and ethnic disparities in case processing, which are relatively stark and can lead to downstream effects like a greater likelihood of recidivism and conviction. Currently, most funding for public defenders is inequitable to that of the prosecutor's office, and this work speaks to the necessity of providing representation that begins with the initial appearance and continues throughout the life of the case. This work also highlights how outside funding can be used to support more equitable and fair case processing in the criminal legal system.

The Impact of the Defense Attorney on Plea Decision-Making: An Experimental Analysis

Most criminal court cases are resolved through a plea, yet the plea decision-making process remains largely unexplored in comparison to other phases of case processing. With defendants reliant on their defense attorney during the plea process, it stands to reason that the characteristics of the defense attorney would impact plea decision-making. To assess this possibility, we administered an experimental vignette to a national sample, manipulating defense attorney type, race, sex, experience, familiarity with other courtroom workgroup members, and empathy toward the defendant. We found that respondents were more likely to accept a plea offer if the defense attorney was experienced and empathic. When the defense attorney was private, experienced, familiar, or empathic, respondents rated their defense attorney as more qualified, which then influenced their acceptance of the plea offer. Uncertainty of the outcome, consequences of a plea, and reasonableness of the plea offer were the common motivators in decision-making.

Courtroom workgroup dynamics and implementation of Three Strikes reform

AbstractIn 2012, California's voters passed a ballot initiative that scaled back the state's “Three Strikes” sentencing law and permitted certain individuals who were serving 25‐to‐life prison terms to petition for resentencing and potentially release. Using analysis of original qualitative interview data supplemented with court administrative records, this study examines how characteristics of courtroom workgroup members; their intergroup dynamics; political, professional, and administrative considerations; and allocated resources were perceived by court officials to facilitate or impede the implementation of this reform in county courts. Availability of staff and budget was associated with a higher proportion of completed case dispositions in the first 2 years of implementation, but resources were not the only factor associated with timely case processing. Courtroom actors' seniority, experience, and professional security facilitated agreement on processes, schedules, and other details. Small, stable, close‐knit groups established routine procedures and developed expertise more quickly, but could not always avoid bottlenecks or delays. Less stable workgroups had higher rates of denial of petitions for resentencing. Positions toward Proposition 36 shaped by political, professional, or other priorities were perceived to influence some elected DAs' positions and line prosecutors' behavior, manifesting in cooperation, opposition, or mixed messages.

“Court Can Happen Anywhere”: Courtroom Workgroup Members’ Perceptions of the Challenges and Opportunities of a Transformed Workplace

The COVID-19 pandemic has initiated lasting changes in a traditionally staid and inert court system. This study employs a courtroom communities perspective to examine how courtroom workgroup members perceived COVID-19’s impact on their work, their workgroup relationships, and the future of criminal court procedures. It analyzes data from semi-structured interviews with 22 prosecutors, 17 defense attorneys, and 10 judges in Milwaukee, WI, and St. Louis, MO. We find that moving to virtual proceedings limited opportunities for informal interaction. The immediate impact was to upend the courtroom communities’ familiarity, proximity, and stability with implications for plea negotiations and case resolution. Nevertheless, most participants supported using virtual proceedings for certain types of court hearings. Public defenders were more likely than prosecutors, judges, or private defense attorneys to express concerns about technological difficulties for defendants. We conclude by discussing policy and practice implications and identifying areas for future research.

Informality in magistrates’ courts as a barrier to participation

Magistrates' courts are the workhorses of English and Welsh criminal process. Efficient processing of high caseloads in these courts depends on a cohesive network of co-operation among the parties. That co-operation depends on a culture of perceived informality among courtroom personnel, whilst proceedings are actually subject to nuanced uses of legal and procedural provisions. Those nuances are obscured by the seemingly informal way that the workgroup operates to keep magistrates’ courts functioning so that they can manage high volume caseloads.Here I argue that the veil of informality that falls over magistrates' court proceedings undermines defendants' abilities to participate in proceedings. Data gathered through observation of magistrates’ court proceedings and follow up interviews with lawyers highlighted that the courtroom workgroup operates as a network perpetuating co-operative behaviours. That data suggests defendants cannot properly participate because a strong culture of workgroup co-operation both informalises the proceedings and obscures their complexity.

Public Defenders in a Homicide Division: The Courtroom Workgroup, Plea Bargaining, Career Motivations, Views on the Causes of Crime, Perceptions of Prosecutors’ Views of Crime, and Dealing with Occupational Stress in Their Daily Lives

This study examines the courtroom workgroup, focusing on the plea-bargaining process for public defenders and their relationships with prosecutors in their courtroom workgroup. Using grounded theory method, this research examines semi-structured interviews of public defenders (N = 6) in the homicide division of a large East Coast American city. Qualitative analysis of the interviews reveals themes of disconnect in this jurisdiction’s courtroom workgroup. Public defenders of this jurisdiction perceive a stark contrast between their views on the causes of crime when compared to their perception of prosecutor’s views. Results further show that there is limited constructive communication between the defense and prosecuting attorneys in this courtroom workgroup. Interviews also revealed that the public defenders mostly saw structural societal issues as the causes of crime, whereas their perception of prosecutor’s views on crime was starkly different. A symbolic interactionist perspective of these results suggests that workgroup disconnect between the public defenders and prosecutors of this jurisdiction inhibits the plea bargain process, thus enhancing occupational stress and frustrations for the public defenders, who dealt with that stress in many unique ways in each of their personal lives.

Gender in the Courtroom Workgroup: Understanding the Relationship Between the Composition of Workgroups and the Gender Gap in Punishment

For decades, research has revealed a gender disparity in criminal case outcomes. This phenomenon was traditionally explained as a product of male court actors’ protectiveness of women and the minimization of female threat. In the current study, we capitalize on the increasing gender diversity of courts to examine if the gender gap in punishment is explained by the gender composition of the decision-making body in criminal courts: the courtroom workgroup. Using a sample of felony cases from Florida’s circuit courts in 2017 ( N = 10,605), we measure workgroups as judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys assigned to the same division. We find that the gender diversity of the workgroup does not explain variations in court outcomes, nor does it explain the presence of gender disparities we observed in all but one of our case outcomes. As such, male protectionism is insufficient to explain the more lenient treatment of women in Florida’s criminal courts.

Public defenders versus private attorneys: A comparison of criminal case disposition outcomes by type of counsel in Mexico

Recent research on the effectiveness of public defenders vis-à-vis private attorneys in criminal cases has not exhaustively analyzed trial avoiding mechanisms and other pretrial outcomes and expanded beyond the United States. This article addresses these gaps using a novel data set from the Mexican criminal justice system, where trial avoiding mechanisms have been recently introduced. We show that both private and public defenders avoid trials, but at different costs. Cases with private attorneys are more likely to end in dismissals, especially via alternative procedures (dispute resolution mechanisms and diversion), while cases with public defenders are more likely to end in convictions through abbreviated procedures (guilty pleas). Resource constraints and their membership to the courtroom workgroup might incentivize or pressure public defenders to cooperate with the prosecution to secure a guilty plea, thus facilitating the conviction of defendants in administrative procedures that lack the full due process protections of trials.

‘I Have Different Goals Than you, we Can’t be a Team': Navigating the Tensions of a Courtroom Workgroup in a Prostitution Diversion Program

ABSTRACT This study explores how professional stakeholders navigate individual and institutional goals, ethical standards, and perspectives within the courtroom workgroup of a prostitution diversion program. We draw from semi-structured qualitative interviews of current and/or past professional stakeholders (N = 22) and past program participants (N = 3). Though collaboration and consensus building among workgroups is a core tenet of problem-solving courts, findings from this study reflect a more complicated landscape. Respondent interviews illustrate the centrality of collaboration and role blurring; the necessity of reciprocity and balance in the team; challenges of role delineation; diversity in understandings about acceptable professional behaviour; and the protective techniques some stakeholders use to shield current and future participants from harm. Findings emphasise that while prostitution diversion programs are often seen as the least bad of several suboptimal options, stakeholders must balance their personal and professional ethics, expectations, and goals often without guidance in order to provide services and support to participants therein.

Different but equal? Exploring potential catalysts of disparity in remand decision-making in the youth court

The disproportionate use of remand detention (i.e. pre-trial detention) for vulnerable and marginalized youth is an issue of concern globally and demographic disparities in youth remand decision outcomes have been found in many jurisdictions, including England and the Netherlands. This article aims to explore and identify potential catalysts of disparity in the collective process of remand decision-making in youth courts. Drawing from Ulmer’s ‘inhabited institutions’ perspective, and the related ‘court community model’ and ‘focal concerns model’, and empirical findings from research in Dutch and English youth remand courts, this article suggests that several distinctive mechanisms and features of the youth remand decision-making process might function as catalysts of disparity. The findings indicate that the focus on ‘risk’ and ‘welfare needs’, the distinctive context defined by time constraints, limited information, shortages of readily available services, interdependency and interdisciplinary, and high stakes, combined with the profoundly human nature of courtroom workgroup decision-making, make the remand decision-making process in youth courts particularly prone to producing unwarranted disparities. Ultimately, informed by the theoretical perspectives and empirical findings, the article provides insights into how and why disparities might occur in youth remand decisions and offers suggestions for policy, practice and future research.

Voice of the Victims: Accounts of Secondary Victimization With the Court System Among Homicide Co-victims.

The treatment homicide co-victims receive from the criminal justice system often leaves them aggrieved and feeling alienated. A neglected but important area of investigation is the courtroom workgroup's handling of murder cases. This exploratory study examines the nature and extent to which varying secondary victimization experiences are common among co-victims as the murder cases are processed through the court system. The sample consists of 27 co-victims connected to 24 separate cases where the murders occurred in a major metropolitan area in the southeastern United States. Drawing upon focus group data, Nvivo 10 was employed to identify themes that illustrate common secondary victimization experiences among co-victims along with positive and mixed reactions to court processes and personnel. The findings indicate that court requirements to provide notifications are infrequently met and attorney's practice to supply information about case progress and counseling to family members regarding plea-bargaining and sentencing decisions are greatly restrictive. When information is offered, it is often perceived as highly technical and when assistance is provided, it is frequently limited or intermittent. Despite the prevalence of negative experiences, there also were reports of positive interactions with the district attorney and victim advocates. The study concludes by identifying ways in which the courtroom workgroup can uphold the rights afforded to co-victims while at the same time meeting the duties and responsibilities of the workgroup.

Reentry court judges: the key to the court

Over the last few decades, treatment-oriented court judges have moved away from being neutral arbitrators in an adversarial court process to treatment facilitators. In the problem-solving court model, judges are part of a more therapeutic treatment process with program participants and a courtroom work group. The shift from the use of the traditional criminal justice process toward the use of more treatment-oriented models for some populations highlights the need to systematically document key elements of treatment court models. In particular, it is important to clearly document the role of Reentry Court Judges because they are a key component of the Reentry Court model. The current study used interviews with members of the courtroom work group, as well as a focus group interview of former participants in the program, to help identify the role of the judge and activities the judge engages. Findings revealed that the judges played a supportive, informal role, balanced with a more formal, authoritarian role, and the judges engaged participants in pre-court meetings, as well as courtroom sessions. Further, the judges facilitated interactions with program participants outside the courtroom, demonstrating that the judge is a core component of success for participants in Reentry Court.

Negotiating Release? Analysing Decision Making in Bail Court

The vast majority of accused in Canada are released on bail with conditions pending the resolution of their case. As members of the court-room workgroup, the defence, the Crown, and the Justice of the Peace (JP) are tasked with negotiating a set of release conditions in a timely fashion; yet little work has attempted to understand how exchanges between these court-room participants shape the number and type of bail conditions imposed and how closely their in-court actions align with their legally mandated roles. Data collected from court-room observations of 257 bail cases in southwestern Ontario show that the distinct occupational roles of the defence, the Crown, and JPs are blurred within bail proceedings, contributing to a culture of numerous conditions and restrictive releases.

Empiricism and the Misdemeanor Courts: Promoting Wider, Deeper, and Interdisciplinary Study

Since 1956, there have been three waves of scholarly attention on the misdemeanor courts. Despite this attention, misdemeanor courts remain understudied and overlooked. The object of this paper is to summarize the empirical research conducted over the last sixty years and identify the scholarly work that should be undertaken on the processing of misdemeanor offenders in our courts. Buoyed by the current interest in studying the misdemeanor courts, scholars should widen and deepen their study by replicating the work of others in a variety of jurisdictions, observing court proceedings, interviewing defendants and the courtroom workgroup, and assessing whether constitutional ideals are being upheld by our misdemeanor courts.

Do Detainees Plead Guilty Faster? A Survival Analysis of Pretrial Detention and the Timing of Guilty Pleas

Although numerous quantitative studies have linked pretrial detention to increased conviction rates, the precise mechanisms linking these decisions remain unclear. Qualitative studies shed light on these processes, revealing that many detainees plead guilty quickly to escape the pains of detention, including poor confinement conditions, strained work or family relations, and “dead time.” Moreover, these pressures to plead are often exacerbated by uncertain detention length, time-sensitive “exploding” plea deals, and temporal discounting. Utilizing data on felony defendants from large urban counties between 1990 and 2004, we assess whether pretrial detention accelerates the pace of guilty pleas. Survival analyses indicate that pretrial detainees plead guilty 2.86 times faster than released defendants do, suggesting that pretrial detention is a powerful prosecutorial tool. Moreover, local resources affect case processing time in ways that are consistent with the courtroom workgroup perspective. Implications for public policies and future research are discussed.

Does Criminal Specialization Predict Case Processing?

Theories of sentencing have pointed out the association between the sentence and the courtroom workgroup’s joint assessment of defendants’ risk and culpability. One of the most important indicators of risk and culpability is prior criminal records. Types of crimes and pattern of prior criminal events are an important part of the legal discourse around sentencing. This discussion is conceptually similar to the criminal career concept of criminal specialization. In the present study, latent class analysis (LCA) is used to measure criminal specialization. The cumulative disadvantage perspective is incorporated into the article to model how specialization predicts a series of case processing outcomes—dismissal, charge reduction, incarceration, and length of incarceration. The analysis found specialists of the current crime—robbery defendants who specialized in robbery and larceny defendants who specialized in larceny—generally received less favorable outcomes.

Sentencing Recommendations by Probation Officers and Judges: An Examination of Adult Offenders Across Gender

Connecting the courtroom workgroup model with attributions and stereotyping based on the focal concerns perspective and gender sentencing literature, the present study investigates the extent to which probation officer recommendations influence judicial sentencing, and whether the gender of the offender further conditions this relationship. Results from logistic and ordinary least squares regression indicate that there is concordance between probation officer recommendations and sentencing by judges. Offender gender has both direct and indirect effects on judicial sentencing through its relationship with probation officer recommendations, and Black males tend to receive lengthier sentences than other race/gender counterparts. These findings provide evidence that probation officer recommendations are an important part of the sentencing process and offer additional insight on how extralegal factors such as gender and race impact criminal justice decision making.

The Role of Courtroom Workgroups in Felony Case Dispositions: An Analysis of Workgroup Familiarity and Similarity

While pleading guilty has become ubiquitous in criminal trial courts, limited research has focused on the plea process and the factors that influence guilty plea convictions. Numerous theoretical accounts of the plea process highlight the importance of the court actors and their interactions. Based on this research, the current study analyzes the impact of courtroom actor familiarity and similarity on the chosen mode of disposition and the time to disposition. The findings demonstrate that similarity among the actors and familiarity between the prosecutor and judge increase the odds of a plea disposition and reduce the days to disposition. However, familiarity of the defense attorney seems to impede on the informal plea process, such that cases are more likely to proceed to trial when the defense attorney is more familiar with the other actors.

FEDERAL SENTENCING AS A COMPLEX COLLABORATIVE PROCESS: JUDGES, PROSECUTORS, JUDGE–PROSECUTOR DYADS, AND DISPARITY IN SENTENCING

Investigations of how criminal justice actors contribute to variation in sentencing typically focus on the role played by the judge. We argue that sentencing should be viewed as a collaborative process involving actors other than the judge and that the role of the prosecutor is particularly salient. We also contend that the courtroom workgroup literature has suggested that sentences may vary depending on the particular judge and prosecutor to whom the case is assigned. By using a unique data set from three U.S. district courts (N = 2,686) that identifies both the judge and the prosecutor handling the case, we examine how the judge, the prosecutor, and the judge–prosecutor dyad contribute to variance in offender sentences. We do this by employing cross‐classified random‐effects models to estimate the variance components associated with judges, prosecutors, and judge–prosecutor interactions. The results indicate that disparity attributable to the prosecutor is larger than disparity from the judge. Moreover, the role that the judge plays is moderated by the prosecutor to whom the case is assigned, as the judge–prosecutor effect is consistently larger than other random effects across the models. We also find that results vary by judicial district.

(Un)Professional Relationships and the Struggle for Expertise in Asylum Appeals

The paper considers the role of advocates in asylum appeals and their perspectives on the decision-making process. In particular it looks at relationships between advocates, Judges and Home Office representatives: issues of trust, the development of informal norms and the existence of common professional goals. The paper draws on organisational approaches to decision-making such as Eisenstein and Jacob’s ‘courtroom workgroup theory’, in addition to previous work on court cultures, to examine differences between advocates’ experiences at two different hearing centres. From interview and observational data, a picture emerges of asylum tribunals as sites of struggle; not only between asylum-seekers and the state, but between different professional identities, backgrounds and levels of expertise.