SJI Newsletter

March 2021 | Volume 31, No. 6

 

The New Guide To Assist Courts In Planning for Natural 

Disasters and other Emergencies

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC), with SJI support, has developed a new 

emergency management planning guide to help court officials better prepare for and

respond to natural disasters and other emergencies that threaten court operations. The 

guide, which replaces one created in 2007, comes at a time when the nation is 

experiencing unprecedented hurricane and wildfire seasons, a pandemic, increasing civil 

unrest and domestic terrorism. The guide identifies how court officials should write 

emergency management plans, and connect with state and federal agencies that can help 

them before, during, and after natural disasters and emergencies.
The work to develop the guide started with a “lessons-learned” meeting in 2019, when 

court officials from states that experienced major natural disasters -- Florida, Texas, Puerto 

Rico, the Virgin Islands, California and Hawaii -- gathered in Denver to share what did and 

did not work in their states. After the meeting, NCSC consultants conducted technical 

assistance projects in many of those states through the lens of the lessons learned.

The new guide, which was recently presented to the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ), is 

intended to help all state courts as they create and refine their emergency management 

plans, commonly referred to as COOPs, or Continuity of Operations Plans. “While the 

challenges are great, many courts have learned quite a bit about how to innovate and 

maintain operations in the face of an emergency,” said Nathan Hall, the project director. 

“The recent lessons learned by these courts have been documented in the new COOP 

planning guide.” Hall added that it made perfect sense to develop a new guide because the 

2007 guide needed to be updated, and other emergency management guides are not 

specific to courts.

Here are some initial steps, spelled out in the guide, for court officials to take before writing 

an emergency management plan:

• Get executive support.

• Assign a COOP leader.

• Assemble a COOP planning team.

• Understand emergency management laws and policies.

• Establish relationships with local emergency management officials and key court 

leaders.

This work will end with the development of additional online assessment and planning tools 

to help courts. “Moving forward,” Hall said, “this work should make the process of 

developing a COOP plan much more doable for courts and ultimately result in courts being 

better prepared for any emergency situation that may arise.”
NCJFCJ Holds Roundtable Discussion with

Military-Connected Family

Organizations and Programs

The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), with support from 

SJI, held a virtual roundtable discussion last month with representatives from 

organizations, programs, and agencies serving military-connected families. The roundtable 

discussion was held to further the NCJFCJ’s efforts to improve support for militaryconnected families that are involved in the juvenile and family court system. To this end, 

national-level entities that work with military-connected families were brought together to 

network, create new or enhance existing connections across organizations, and share 

information on programs, resources, and training opportunities.

Roundtable participants included representatives from a broad range of civilian 

organizations, military programs, and offices within the federal government, namely 

the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness, the National Children’s Alliance, Justice 

for Vets, National Organization for Victim Assistance, the National Military Family 

Association, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, Zero to Three, the Battered 

Women’s Justice Project, the National Center on the Sexual Behavior of Youth, Family 

Advocacy Programs and JAG Corps staff from military installations, the Department of 

Defense/Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, the Office of Juvenile Justice and 

Delinquency Prevention, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services 

Administration. Participants also included NCJFCJ judges, Military Committee members, 

and staff.
The roundtable was the most recent activity in NCJFCJ’s Military-Connected Families and 

the Courts Project, which began in 2018 with funding from SJI. The project’s overall goal is 

to provide training, technical assistance, and resources to help strengthen collaboration 

and coordination across state court system professionals, civilian organizations, and 

military installations in order to better serve military families involved in the juvenile and 

family courts.

To read the full article, please visit: NCJFCJ Holds Roundtable Discussion with MilitaryConnected Family Organizations and Programs | NCJFC

Dual Status Youth - Technical Assistance

Workbook, Updated Edition

The RFK National Resource Center has released the Dual Status Youth – Technical 

Assistance Workbook, Updated Edition to enhance its practical guidance for state and local 

jurisdictions on behalf of dual status youth. The highly successful framework, originally 

developed in 2003, continues to be presented in its original form given the successful 

outcomes it has generated for dual status youth and their families—as well as multisystem, youth-serving agencies throughout the country—for nearly two decades.

This updated Technical Assistance Workbook provides access to a wealth of practical new 

examples of replicable products (e.g., memoranda of understanding, information sharing 

agreements, policies, procedural narratives, multi-disciplinary team structure and 

operations, system performance and outcome measures, data collection and reporting 
methods) that will support state and local jurisdictions seeking to undertake this important 

work. The RFK National Resource Center’s Dual Status Youth Practice Network and Peer 

Mentors are featured, demonstrating how peer-to-peer partnerships can assist jurisdictions 

in effectively navigating through challenges and obstacles to create successful outcomes. 

Additionally, the updated Technical Assistance Workbook highlights the increased 

importance of Implementation Science principles and tenets to ensure sustainability of dual 

status youth initiatives.

Currently, the RFK National Resource Center is working in five states and nine jurisdictions 

to positively impact multi-system initiatives on behalf of dual status youth. These efforts, 

combined with its long history of intensive technical assistance partnerships, have resulted 

in lessons learned, replicable products, and practice methods in more than 

thirty jurisdictions across the country. These are presented in the updated Workbook.

Like its predecessor, the updated Workbook serves as a companion piece to the 

Guidebook for Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare System Coordination and Integration: A 

Framework for Improved Outcomes, Third Edition (2013). Look for the red icon below in the 

workbook to reference to additional materials found in the Guidebook.
Four-Part Series Explores Use of Artificial Intelligence in the 

Criminal Justice System

Through the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, NIJ has made available the 

following final technical reports (these reports are the result of an NIJ-funded projects 

but were not published by the U.S. Department of Justice):

Title: Artificial Intelligence in the Criminal Justice System: Demystifying Artificial 

Intelligence, its Applications, and Potential Risks

Authors: James Redden, Molly O'Donovan Dix

Links: Summary, Full Document (pdf, 10 pages)

Title: Artificial Intelligence Applications in Law Enforcement: An Overview of Artificial

Intelligence Applications and Considerations for State and Local Law Enforcement

Authors: James Redden, Brian Aagaard, Travis Taniguchi

Links: Summary, Full Document (pdf, 10 pages)

Title: Artificial Intelligence Applications for Criminal Courts: An Overview of Artificial 

Intelligence Applications for Prosecutors and Associated Considerations for the Criminal 

Court System

Authors: James Redden, Duren Banks

Links: Summary, Full Document (pdf, 11 pages)

Title: Artificial Intelligence in Corrections: An Overview of AI Applications and 

Considerations for Systems Administrators a Policy Makers

Authors: James Redden, Christopher Inkpen Ph.D., Matthew DeMichele Ph.D.
Links: Summary, Full Document (pdf, 8 pages)

View all recently added publications and multimedia.

Ethics Awareness Month

March is Ethics Awareness Month. The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) has 

published the winter issue of the Judicial Conduct Reporter and is available online. The 

issue reviews judicial ethics and discipline in 2020 with stories on:

• State judicial discipline in 2020

• Removal cases in 2020

• Top judicial ethics and discipline stories of 2020

What judges said to women that got them in trouble:

• Judicial participation in demonstrations, protests, marches, and rallies

• Judicial ethics and discipline during a pandemic

What judges said that got them in trouble in 2020:

• What they said to or about litigants that got them in trouble
• What they said to or about criminal defendants that got them in trouble

• What they said to or about attorneys that got them in trouble

• What they said to court staff that got them in trouble

• What they said in election campaigns that got them in trouble

• What they said to law enforcement that got them in trouble

• What they said off-the-bench that got them in trouble

• What they said on social media that got them in trouble

The Judicial Conduct Reporter is published electronically on NCSC's website, and an index 

and current and past issues of the Reporter are available online. Anyone can sign up to 

receive notice when a new issue is available.
The State Justice Institute is a federally-funded, non-profit corporation established by federal law in 1984 

to improve the quality of justice in the state courts.

SJI Board of Directors

Chair

John D. Minton, Jr.

Chief Justice

Supreme Court of Kentucky

Frankfort, KY

Vice Chair

Daniel J. Becker

State Court Administrator (ret.)

Utah AOC

Salt Lake City, UT

Secretary

Gayle A. Nachtigal

Senior Circuit Court Judge

Washington County Circuit Court

Hillsboro, OR

Treasurer

David V. Brewer

Justice

Oregon Supreme Court

Salem, OR

Jonathan Lippman

Chief Judge of New York (ret.)

of Counsel

Latham & Watkins, LLP

New York, NY

Chase T. Rogers

Chief Justice (ret.)

Supreme Court of Connecticut

Partner

Pitney Day, LLP

Hartford, CT

Wilfredo Martinez

Senior Judge

State of Florida

Orlando, FL

Marsha J. Rabiteau

Executive Director

Center for Human Trafficking Court 

Solutions

Bloomfield, CT

Hernan D. Vera

Principal

Bird Marella P.C.

Los Angeles, CA

Isabel Framer

President

Language Access Consultants, LLC

Copley, OH

Jonathan D. Mattiello

Executive Director

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