Module 3 Comprehensive Assessment

How do you conduct comprehensive assessments in busy courtrooms?

Providing thorough and efficient assessments requires comfort with conducting the assessments. Depending on your jurisdiction’s evaluation requirements, the volume of the docket, and each defendant’s circumstances, each assessment is unlikely to take an extensive period of time but can extend the length of time for the daily docket.

Courts have taken different approaches to conduct good assessments:

• Dialogue – Judges should be comfortable having a dialogue with every defendant about their ability to pay. While there are tools that will assist in reducing the amount that a defendant must disclose aloud in the courtroom, and many dockets do not have capacity to conduct a full assessment relying only on an in-court dialogue, the opportunity to share with and be heard by the court should be provided.
• Ability to Pay Bench Cards – Bench cards are a tool that highlight best practices, common considerations, and offer judges an outline for in-court conversations. Ability to pay bench cards regularly provide the considerations for robust assessments. (See the CCJ COSCA Fines and Fees 2.0 Bench Card). Washington's bench card even includes sample questions to use when determining the defendant’s ability to pay.
• Calculators – Ability to pay calculators and online portals use the defendant’s self-reported information about their financial situation to help set the fine or fee amount. The goal is to assist with calculations that reflect the current statute considerations and collect the information necessary to make the determination in an organized manner. Washington has a calculator designed for Washington state judges that can also be used by attorneys and prosecutors to prepare sentencing recommendations to the court. California has an online portal that allows defendants to submit requests to judges for review online of previously set determinations.
• Assistance from counsel or other court services – The court can look to the defendant’s counsel to assist in providing information for the assessment as part of the regular course of business. Requiring defendants to provide all the information for a full assessment in court can be difficult. However, their representatives regularly appear and can prepare the client ahead of a hearing. Other court services like pretrial services may be able to assist with preparing the defendant with the information or provide the information to the court that will assist with the assessment.

Hear from Judge Patricia George from the Phoenix Municipal Court on her approach to using the Arizona bench card and reliance on counsel to conduct ability to pay hearings in a high-volume docket.