Community Based Court Observation

Court observing is a way to engage the community in a positive way and to encourage transparency and accountability in the process.

This “Train the Trainer” webinar is designed for those jurisdictions, practitioners, community leaders and others interested in Bail Reform, on how to conduct a community based court observation project. This project offers an opportunity to engage community members, students, and others to learn about current bail practices in action. 

The information that you will take away from this webinar will provide you with the materials (training manual, observation surveys and data recap forms) that you can use or easily adapt for your jurisdiction and audiences. The materials will provide your court observers complete training on capturing the data that you might be collecting. 

We developed our project with 3 primary goals:

•  To gather real-time objective data that will help us identify patterns and long term trends within the court system.
• To make those involved in the judicial process (judges, prosecutors, etc.) aware of the public’s interest in the pretrial process.
• To educate communities about the justice system and in doing so, create a more informed and involved public.

This project is a great way of keeping community members actively involved and informed about Pretrial and Bail Reform issues in their state and engage new voices in the effort.

Panelists:

• Kimberly Haven 
• Melissa Rothstein