How does the community feel about problem-solving courts?

• Position: Panel Discussion

PANELISTS:

Michele Bertran Superior Court of New Jersey

Mary Barr Conextions

Charles Grodin 60 Minutes II

Monroe H. Freedman Hofstra University School of Law

Jacqueline Nolan-Haley Fordham University School of Law

Michele Bertran Superior Court of New Jersey

My title is ombudsman. I am the ombudsman for the Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex Vicinage, and I am going to talk to you a little bit about the ombudsman program, and the community's response to it.

But before I do that, I want you to do a little bit of work this afternoon, and I know it's the last panel, but I'm not going to make you work too hard, just a little bit. You're going to exercise a very old method of technology, and that's your imagination.

I want you to accompany me, if you will, on a virtual tour. Now, to do this you're going to have to close your eyes. Some of you may be comfortable with that, some of you may not. Those of you who are not, just peek at your neighbors while they do it. I'm checking, too.

First of all, imagine that you have a legal problem. The issue is something very, very dear to you. Get out of your car in front of a courthouse, one that you've never been to before. What are you looking for? What do you hope to see? What are you thinking about?

Walk in the door. What do you see? How do you find your destination; courtroom, office, or special program? How does the courthouse look? How does it feel? You have questions. You're worried. Who answers them? What information do they give you?

How does the staff treat you? What do you hope will happen in court? Who helps you if you are lost, confused, do not speak English, have a disability or are distraught?

What do you expect to find if you have been mistreated, feel you have been mistreated, think you have been discriminated against or wish to complain? What courthouse features help you to feel safe, respected, fairly treated, and well-served?

Open your eyes. Come back. Keep that mental picture in mind as I tell you about the ombudsman program in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex Vicinage.

Our court sits in Newark, New Jersey, the state's largest city. It has original jurisdiction in criminal, civil, and family cases. We handle over 100,000 cases annually with sixty-two judges and close to 1200 court staff, including an administrative staff of seventy.

The Office of the Ombudsman, located in the courthouse, offers three kinds of services: public information, where we try to inform the public and prevent problems before they start--hence, a preventive model; community relations, including a court tour program, speakers bureau, and special events designed to educate the public about the court and take judges and court staff into the community to learn about the public's concerns, a reciprocal educational model; and lastly, we offer citizen assistance. That is to say, when a court user feels aggrieved and wants to complain, and this is often, as you can well imagine, we listen, we investigate, we resolve, and we work to improve.

This program as it relates to the paradigm under discussion here today is not that of problem-solving court, so you can well imagine, when I received the invitation to come and speak, I thought, Why me? And that was before I knew who my distinguished co-panelists were going to be. But the office is not a problem-solving court, but it is a problem-solver in the court.

I will tell you how the community has responded, but first I want to give you a little history about the program. The recommendation for an ombudsman grew out of the groundswell of several sources. First the Supreme Court Committee on Women and secondly the Supreme Court Committee on Minority Concerns made this recommendation, and they made the recommendation on the basis of a series of town hall meetings that were held around the state in the early 1990s.

The meetings were held to determine public opinion about the courts, and the results were not surprising. They were very much in line with other surveys that you may be familiar with, surveys, for example, conducted by the National Center for State Courts. The public made its opinion very clear.

First, the courts seemed shrouded in a tangle of archaic rules and procedures and the mystique and befuddlement of legalese, and secondly, the public made clear that the shroud of secrecy and mystique seems to protect courts and their personnel from complaints about mistreatment or discrimination.

In response, the sensible recommendation emerged: establish an office to provide information and redress grievances, and hence, the Office of the Ombudsman. This recommendation was made to the Supreme Court and adopted by it in 1992.

In the ten-year journey since the recommendation was adopted, four of the fifteen judicial vicinages--New Jersey is a unified court system, and its twenty-one counties have sixteen judicial vicinages--in the ten years since the recommendation was made, four vicinages have adopted the program.

In New Jersey, we have argued about everything, starting with the name, which will not surprise you when it comes to courts and court planning. People have objected to the gender-specific term "ombudsman," but it is of Swedish origin; it means citizen representative, and we have maintained it. Some people have suggested that perhaps "ombuddy" is a little better than ombudsman.

(Laughter.)

I didn't like that one, either.

We have argued about the name, the scope of authority, and the responsibilities. We have done all of this in an attempt to break new ground and develop the features of an ombudsman for the courts, and I have to tell you that the debate continues.

We have been helped in this process by other groundbreaking innovations in jurisprudence, such as problem-solving courts. These forward-thinking models are contributing to the realization of an accessible, responsive, and de-mystified court system.

Now, of course, this is not without its problems, as we can see from the symposium. There is much debate to still be had.

Now, let's turn to the community's response. It will not surprise you, I don't think, that initially members of the community are genuinely perplexed. You're here to help me? What a novel idea. I mean, people are perplexed and pleasantly surprised that the court has an office to help them.

Let me describe it to you. It's an office located on the first floor of our main building. It is a welcoming environment, a safe environment, and a comfortable environment. It is staffed with community-relations liaisons who are attentive, who immediately offer assistance to court visitors, and who attend to their needs immediately--again a novel idea sometimes in our system.

So how has the community responded? What do they say? Well, we've tracked this a bit, and the most frequent response is, "Thank you, God." Other remarks are, "Why didn't we have this sooner? Does every court have one? If not, they should."

Now, why is the community responding in this way? Because they do not expect courts and court staff to help.

We have been humbled by the extent to which recipients of our services have gone to demonstrate their gratitude. For example, we frequently say we cannot accept gifts, and yet we get flowers and balloons and things delivered thanking us for what is to be expected in our system.

Everyone who walks into the courthouse has a problem. I think certainly that has been made clear here in this symposium, and I do not want to repeat the obvious, but everyone who walks into the courthouse has a problem. People come to the courthouse expecting to find help for their problems. The system can be formidable if people are unfamiliar with the court system, are lost, confused, have difficulty articulating what they need in a language that we immediately recognize.

Although we understood the importance of this program when we started, we could not have known how much the community would welcome it. We could not have understood how much they needed it. The public was clear from the outset. The public, the community, continues to be very clear about its support for these kinds of programs. And they have been very generous to us court problem-solvers.

Programs like the ombudsman send a strong message about the system. They send a strong message to us about the system and a message to the public of responsiveness and accountability, a message of respect for people's struggles and compassion for their suffering.

Again, everyone who comes to the courthouse has a problem. I hope that you will remember your thoughts and your feelings as you imagined yourselves with legal problems, you who are probably in the best position to deal with your own kinds of legal problems. But you are a part of a community, not separate from it. You are part of the community that the court is obligated to serve.

I know you care about this and that's why you're here. We who toil in the system are public servants. If we want to serve well, we must, as some commentators have noted, fix what is broken. The public's incredulity tells us that we have miles to go before we rest. Their support tells us that we can make innovative jurisprudence a reality.

Mary Barr Conextions

My name is Mary Barr. I am executive director of Conextions, and we are very new, so you haven't heard of us yet, but you will.

For five years, I've been working in prisons and jails, and I guess that's the unique perspective that I...