Court delay Understanding the causes of court delay within the criminal justice chain

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Understanding the causes of court delay within the criminal justice chain

Steven Kasper; S2599317 Supervisors:

Dr. S. A. De Blok Msc. A. P. Seepma

MSc Technology & Operations Management Faculty of Economics and Business

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Preface

The need for investigating the underlying causes of court delay emerged because of the increasing research interest in the justice environment from the University of Groningen. To increase the knowledge about this research area, several master thesis projects were initiated. This report is one of those initiated thesis projects.

From a thesis fair, at which all possible thesis research projects were presented, this topic interested me highly due to its complex content and interesting environment of lawyers, court rooms, public prosecutors and suspects. Therefore, I applied for this topic and was fortunate to be allowed.

As already mentioned, this report is part of the thesis research. The content will mostly be formed by a review of literature, research methods, results, and discussion of the results compared to literature. The research is conducted for the University of Groningen and for public justice institutes or organizations which operate within the criminal justice sector. Especially for the public prosecution in Groningen, at which this research was performed, the content of this report can highly contribute to the knowledge of their system and processes.

I want to thank my supervisors both from public prosecution and University; Carolien de Blok, Aline Seepma, Nicolien Nieboer and Arjen Polstra for their supervision, quick feedback, tips and insights. Without these, this report would not have been possible. I also want to thank all the interview and focus group participants, project coordinators and colleagues for their support and answers. Finally, I want to thank God who gave me all the health, joy, motivation and possibilities to do this research project.

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Abstract

Purpose of the research is to determine the undelaying causes of the postponement of the court hearing. This phenomenon is also called court delay. Court delay is research using literature from operations management to specify internal processes, supply chain management for determining chain wide processes, and criminal justice to denote the process characteristics of the criminal justice organizations. This holistic approach provided a holistic perspective which is used to determine a conceptual model consisting of causes derived from literature.

The research method is determined as phenomenon-based theory building case study research. Four methods are used for qualitative data collection: expert interviews, focus group sessions, criminal case file research and past project research. All this data is coded to provide an overview of the data by categorizing it.

Results indicate that the biggest cause of delay is caused by the category processes. This cause consisted of for example mistakes when filling in and sending documents, insufficient information transmission between employees and unclear process responsibilities. The second category was IT systems which mainly referred to system working method. Some causes were related to the fact that all chain partners use their own IT software. Dependency of chain partners was found to be the third cause, mostly due to the late delivery of chain partner reports. Other causes where: The work amount, Juvenile process characteristics, Information delivery suspect, and behavior of the defending party.

These results were discussed using the previously formulated conceptual model according to the three perspectives which were also used in the theoretical framework. The reasonable time limit refers to the category ‘dependency of chain partners’ and it is unsure whether the actual time limits set by the public prosecution are reasonable. Process prohibition due to laws and procedures was not found and was reformulated as ‘chain process characteristics’ which mainly refers to the causes related to insufficient knowledge of employees about the process knowledge. The operations management perspective existed of processes, capacity and IT systems. Which were related to the categories processes, work amount and IT systems. The supply chain perspective existed of: Use of IT, Process barriers and advanced planning. Chain wide cooperative use of IT is not performed within the criminal justice chain. Process barriers seem to be lowered due to governmental programs such as ‘ZSM’ which places multiple chain partners in one working environment. Advanced planning was not conducted among chain partners and delayed reports often pressurized processes of other chain partners by increasing working pressure and errors.

Recommendations to avoid court delay are to increase education of employees about IT systems and juvenile criminal justice laws and processes, internal and chain-wide development of IT should include a close study to employees needs and wishes in order to complement processes, also chain-wide IT system development should be considered to increase communication between chain partners and working procedures should be made visual, clear and consistent to enable overall implementation and usage by employees.

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1. Introduction

When –for example– a suspect is arrested and held in custody for processing, the police, public prosecution, and courts form an information exchange chain in order to bring him or her to justice. Information exchange between and within these criminal justice organizations is sometimes inefficient and incomplete (De Blok et al. 2015; Court of Audit 2012). Because of this a case file can be incomplete or proof might be missing. It can also lead to miscommunication between partners. For example when the suspects of the so called Bonny and Clyde case where heard, the court was delayed because the prison forgot to arrange transport for one of the suspects1. These previously stated problems can lead to the postponement of a court hearing. Because of this so called postponement or delay, a case backlog is created which increases the overall costs of the process. However, criminal justice organizations face governmental budget cut-backs and need to ‘do more with less’. Therefore criminal justice organizations try to reduce the occurrence of ‘court delay’ to reduce costs.

In general terms, court delay refers to the interaction between the court-organization and the public prosecution’s office, and the interaction between the public prosecutor’s office and the police (Fabri & Langbroek 2003). A court backlog occurs because a court hearing does not take place due to for example incomplete information, lack of proof and incomplete dossiers. Dandurand (2014) argues that court backlogs are signs of an inefficient system. Court delay has also been a broadly discussed topic in the United States (US). As a summary of that discussion, Messick et al. (1999) name five lessons that could be learned from the US on how to reduce court delays: delays cannot be legislated away by simply ordering courts to process their caseload faster, commitment is essential to achieve success when implementing a new program, incentives of people within the justice chain must be addressed, solid empirical analysis is crucial to create good search for patterns among cases and successful programs may not reduce delays but it can for example reduce throughput time of cases. In order to find if these lessons are applicable on the European criminal justice system, Steelman & Fabri (2008) researched the similarities and differences between the Italian and American system. They conclude that much research is usable and can be very helpful providing insight and solutions how to reduce court delay.

Much of the literature focus directly on courts and not on the criminal justice chain as a whole (Fabri & Langbroek 2003; Steelman & Fabri 2008; Mears & Butts 2008; Flanders 1980; Martin & Maron 1991; Weatherburn et al. 2000). While Bazemore (2006) and Pekkanen & Niemi (2012) focus on performance measures to measure the process, De Blok et al. (2014) and De Blok et al. (2015) view the criminal justice system from a supply chain management (SCM) perspective in order to understand the process between justice organizations. Other research has been done focussing on inefficiency in the criminal justice process (Dandurand 2009; Dandurand 2014). Because court delay can be defined as one of the symptoms of an inefficient system (Dandurand 2014), it can be extended to the criminal justice process as a whole including police and public prosecution. Considering this chain wide approach of court delay, much is unknown about how court delay emerges are and why it is occurring. Additional research can contribute to a better understanding of the underlying complexity of the phenomenon court delay.

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7 Pekkanen & Niemi (2012) indicate that it is not only necessary to ensure the level of output (by for example creating performance measures) but it is also necessary to determine the areas in need for improvement. Therefore, trying to provide a chain wide perspective, this research aims to answer the question: What are the underlying causes of court delay within the criminal justice chain and how can they be avoided?

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2. Theoretical background

In order to define the research question, a literature research has been done within SCM, operations management (OM) and criminal justice literature on why and how a process delay occurs. Justice organizations can act similar to a manufacturing environment, trying to produce a case file by adding certain parts to it (Pekkanen & Niemi 2012). A case file flows through the processes from one production cell to another and has to wait in queues between cells. This internal organization perspective can be made more insightful using OM literature. On the other hand, in order to produce the service, some sub-parts are not ‘produced’ within organization but in other partner organizations. The interaction between organizations can be explored by SCM literature which focuses on the interaction between justice organizations. In order to understand what the process is actually processing, namely understanding the overall service it aims to provide, a criminal justice perspective provides insight in the ‘product characteristics’. This holistic approach enables a deeper insight in how court delay is caused in the criminal justice chain process. The overall outline of this section will firstly a to criminal justice perspective on delays to understand what the process is processing, secondly an OM perspective on delays to address delays at an organizational level, thirdly a SCM perspective to address delays at a chain perspective and fourthly a holistic criminal justice perspective merging all perspectives stated before in a conceptual model.

2.1 Criminal justice perspective

When a case is not moving as fast as it could or should be according to for example the administration office of the public prosecution which schedules the court hearings, it is described as a delay and the planned court hearing has to be postponed. Indicating that court delay also refers to the case process itself as Dandurand (2014) stated: ‘[court] Case backlogs are an obvious symptom of the system’s lack of capacity or its inefficiency or both’. This makes the ‘court delay’ problem the product of an inefficient system. When addressing delay from a case process perspective, there is a time span which is created by the public prosecution in which the case file should be finished and court should come to a verdict. This predetermined time span should be sufficient (and not too much) to conduct all investigations, procedures, and research needed to create the case file. In criminal justice means, providing a judicial indictment to justify why a citizen has become a suspect and what is needed to compensate the overall society or victim for the activities done by the suspect. However this time limit set should also take into account that faster is not always better because for example lawyers should be given enough time to prepare their defense. This so called ‘time span’ is also referred to as the ‘reasonable time’ between start and ending of a case (Fabri & Langbroek 2003). Reasonable time

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9 for the accused (Fabri & Langbroek 2003). However when this time span is taken too short, a court hearing need to be replaced which causes a loss in court hearing time.

If this reasonable time span is sufficient for all criminal justice chain partners to jointly finish their activities, assuming they work efficiently, delay can be a capacity related problem. That means, when increasing capacity, delay within processes will go down and due dates (for example the court hearing) can be met. However, Weatherburn et al. (2000) and Dandurand (2014) suggest that shortage of capacity is not the explanation for criminal court delay because they fail to address the underlying causes of the main problem and are thus a temporary solution. This indicates that increasing the capacity of for example public prosecution or courts by increasing the amount of employees will not solve the underlying causes of court delay.

Evaluation of performance measures, to identify the underlying causes of court delay, used in the criminal justice sector do not merely focus on the case file preceding itself but more on the actual results of the service that is delivered (where the process leads to). Often those criteria are hard to measure (Mears & Butts 2008; Pekkanen & Niemi 2012). In 2001 the so called ‘van Kalsbeeknormen’ were introduced within the criminal justice sector in the Netherlands. This evaluation performance measure defines what percentage of the juvenile cases should be handled within a certain time period (Zuiderwijk et al. 2012). This measure focuses on the time that a case file takes to finish and how much services need to finish within that time limit. It showed that, by introducing these measures, the overall throughput times dropped. However it did not indicate a lower amount of court delays.

Law and procedures

The law and other procedures can also have a delaying effect on processes (Steelman & Fabri 2008; De Blok et al. 2015). Law and procedures must be followed and it can sometimes contradict process efficiency knowledge for example when sharing information with a certain justice partner is prohibited by law to protect the interests of the suspect.

2.2 Operations management perspective

From the example stated before, the OM perspective on criminal justice organizations can be compared with a production line existing of separate machines who all add certain parts to a case file to deliver the overall product or service. From this point of view, a delay can be caused by either a breakdown or a lack of capacity of a machine in a production line. Machine breakdowns can occur based on various reasons, for example operator mistakes, inexperienced operators, bad maintenance policies and bad planning. These reasons can also occur within a service context. For example people can make mistakes, or are not educated well enough, there is no good overall planning and no actions are taken to prevent delays/errors on forehand.

Capacity

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10 Planning and scheduling

Delays can also be caused by bad planning policies. When creating a planning it is important to choose between activities so that only activities that are necessary will be taken into account (Pinedo 2009). Several factors are important when planning activities, for example determining the quantity of resources which is needed to achieve the activity, assigning persons, determine hours needed for the task, and include time slack to address possible time which is needed to fix errors. Normally, from a manufacturing point of view, schedules would be created by a planning department. However a planning can also be created by professionals themselves. For example courts can either use a master planning or an individual planning to create a case schedule. However an individual planning did decrease the case processing time significantly but it was not proven influence the amount of court delays (Butts & Halemba 1996).

2.3 Supply chain perspective

The overall aim of SCM is to manage relationships, information, and product flows between the supply chain partners (Neely 2007). Most of the literature on SCM focuses on the manufacturing sector and less on the service delivery sector. However, as Ellram et al. (2004) argues, the underlying aims for the two different sectors are the same. It is beneficial for both sectors to focus on, for example, integration and cooperation so that all partners within the supply chain act as a whole (De Blok et al. 2015). Integration and cooperation form the pillars of SCM in order to create a supply chain network of high performance (Stadtler & Kilger 2002). A court delay, namely the postponing of the court hearing, can more or less be related to the coordination pillar because scheduling a court hearing is a coordinating activity. Messick et al. (1999) and Steelman & Fabri (2008) stated that leadership as part from the integration pillar, is important for successful implementation of possible solutions for underlying problems that cause court delay. However, in the actual process of determining the possible causes, it seems to be a less relevant delay cause. In order to achieve good coordination between partners three things are needed: Use of information and communication technology, process orientation and advanced planning.

Use of information and communication technology

Information technology (IT) is vital in communicating with other chain partners. Data about for example process state of a service or product can be immediately exchanged across the supply chain at low costs. IT can also contribute to certain ‘data warehouses’ in which all partners store data to enable good decision making (Stadtler 2005).

Zuiderwijk et al. (2012) states that there is often no data link between partners in the criminal justice chain. To establish such a data connection or increase the communication between partners, IT projects have been set up in different countries. Project success is mostly denoted an increase of successful completion of cases or an increased case process flow (De Blok et al. 2014). Besides this Yang & Maxwell (2011) found that information systems, such as IT, are important to achieve an increased information flow if the systems effect on internal processes is minimized. These findings add a relation between better communication between partners and an increased number of cases that are completed when using IT.

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11 Process orientation aims to take away barriers between partners in order to increase or accelerate the execution of processes between organizations (Stadtler 2005). This can either be done by re-design or continuous improvement.

Re-design of processes in the criminal justice chain tend to take out unnecessary delays within the process rather than totally reform it (Dandurand 2014). Total reformation of a process is often not possible because of laws and regulations and should be initialized by government. Continuous improvement projects to take away obstacles, for example contradicting procedures of different partners, tend to reform existing procedures or add extra procedures to avoid failures within the process. In the Netherlands examples of process oriented projects are the ‘performance improvement criminal justice chain’ (VPS) - and the ‘as simple, fast, smart, society oriented, together and selective as possible’ (ZSM) project. Process barriers or obstacles can lead to delays because for example partners can have different perceptions on how to do or deliver a certain part necessary for completing the case file. However reducing these potential causes of delay requires good communication between partners which is currently insufficient (Fabri & Langbroek 2003; Court of Audit 2012)

Advanced planning

Planning is crucial achieving the overall goal that the supply chain is aiming for (Ellram et al. 2004). In the criminal justice chain the goal can be for example finishing the case file. Planning, for example hierarchical planning, exists of different levels. These levels are aimed to provide clarity and overall focus on activities in the supply chain. Different planning levels can for example be strategic planning, production planning, transportation planning etc. (Stadtler 2005).

However, advanced planning within the criminal justice chain is difficult. Most of the times activities and resources needed for the process are known but the exact capacity or time needed for finishing the process is determined when executing the process. This is due to uncertainty about the context of the case, decisions taken by the public prosecutor and the requirement of professional judgment (De Blok et al. 2015). Event scheduling, where a certain plan is updated when new information about for example the capacity comes clear, seems more suitable. This type of scheduling requires a plan which denotes the different process steps and the estimated time necessary (Stadtler 2005).

Indicating and planning when the court hearing should take place is done by the public prosecution administration office. The ‘reasonable time’ that they plan should be in consensus with all the other chain partners to develop national time standards (Steelman & Fabri 2008). Planning is considered an important step for monitoring for example system performance and individual case progression. Dandurand (2009) also stated that automation can have a positive impact in scheduling and managing cases. However automation will need reformation of procedures so that it may yield its full benefits. However, without an advanced planning available in the chain, partners will still be unaware of the process status of each other which can lead to errors and eventually court delay.

2.4 Holistic criminal justice perspective

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12 Langbroek 2003; Steelman & Fabri 2008). Laws and procedures can hinder the process within the criminal justice environment because they have to be followed (De Blok et al. 2014; Steelman & Fabri 2008). Also shortage of capacity at the chain partners is probably not the main cause of court delays (Weatherburn et al. 2000; Dandurand 2014). Evaluation performance measures, introduced in the Netherlands, did lower the case throughput time but that did not necessary lower the amount of court delays that occur (Zuiderwijk et al. 2012). The OM perspective indicated that there are various ‘production’ related issues that can cause delay in a process. Planning and scheduling is vital for monitoring and insight in the process (Stadtler 2005; Pinedo 2009) and capacity can delay the process when ‘input peaks’ cannot be processed in time. According to the coordination pillar of the SCM view, three aspects are needed for good supply chain management: Use of information and communication technology, Process orientation, and advanced planning. The use of information and communication technology seems underdeveloped in the criminal justice chain (Zuiderwijk et al. 2012) and increased communication between chain partners did seem to increase the overall number of completed cases (De Blok et al. 2014). However it is uncertain if this will decrease the amount of court delays. A process orientation in order to take away certain barriers between criminal justice partners is necessary for re-design or continuous improvement of processes that involve several partners. Advanced planning is crucial to achieve clarity, focus and the overall aim of the supply chain (Ellram et al. 2004; Stadtler 2005).

The perspectives taken in this section can be used to create a conceptual model to visualize the underlying causes of court delay.

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3. Methodology

Every research needs a certain ‘path’ to achieve its goal. This path needs to be described precisely so that everyone knows how to walk the path to reach and verify its destination. A research methodology is similar to a path. It is the route which is taken in order to reach the main goal: an answer to the research question. This chapter describes the path of how in this research, that main goal is reached. Data is qualitative and is collected using documentation of past projects, criminal case file research, focus groups and expert interviews.

Firstly, the research method is specified and explained and research case will be introduced. After that will be specified in which data is collected by the model which is introduced in that section.

3.1 Research method

Case study research is a powerful theory developing tool because the phenomenon can be studied in its natural setting and is not, as in for example laboratory research, removed of its context. While deductive theory-testing uses existing theory to test whether theory-building which is done previously is correct, theory-building emphasizes on developing constructs, measures, and testable theoretical propositions (Eisenhardt & Graebner 2007). As determined before, relevant empirically determined theory is needed because actual theory does not emphasize a complete, chain-wide, system based approach to reduce the amount of court delay. This relevant theory can be developed from observing actual practice using a case study research strategy, which enables answers to questions as why, what, and how in full understanding of the complexity of those questions. It can be used for exploratory investigations where the variables are unknown and not that well understood (Voss et al. 2002). This exploratory investigation, or phenomenon-driven research, derives mainly justification value based on the importance of the phenomenon (court delay) and the lack of viable theory and empirical evidence (Eisenhardt & Graebner 2007). A phenomenon-driven theory building case study is therefore used in order to understand the complexity of the criminal justice context and the underlying causes leading to court delay. Aim of this study was to expand the theory for determining main causes of court delay based upon actual empirical data. A conceptual model, which is previously derived from literature in the theoretical framework, will be validated and extended using empirical data in the discussion and, as summary of the a main outcome, presented in the conclusion section.

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14 Figure 3.1 General overview of the juvenile criminal justice process

As figure 3.1 visualizes, an input flow of case files is handled by the police. When it becomes clear that the suspect is juvenile, the council of child protection is contacted to provide advice about the context in which the juvenile lives. This is denoted by the double headed arrow. Police then sends the required information about the case file to the public prosecution who finishes the case while having close interaction with the council of child protection. When finished the public prosecution and the council of child protection send their documents to the court so that a court hearing can take place. After court hearing the verdict will be executed. This is denoted as output.

Court delay relates to the processes before the court hearing takes place. Therefore, in order to determine the underlying causes of court delay, this case study is mainly focusing on police, public prosecution and council for child protection. The research is based on one case and is therefore defined this as a single case study (Yin 1994). Unit of analyses will be the criminal justice chain of juveniles.

The criminal justice chain of juveniles is aimed at youth younger than 18 years old. The punishment is aimed to be educational and pedagogic in order to protect the youth from crime and becoming a frequent offender (Bazemore 2006). Because it is widely accepted that pedagogic effectiveness of a punishment lowers if the period between crime and punishment execution becomes larger (Butts & Halemba 1996), the juvenile justice chain has a high focus on throughput times. Juveniles are still growing up and the chance for recidivism can be reduced by suitable and effective sentences (Richards 2011). Therefore the juvenile criminal justice chain needs to proceed as fast as possible because process delays are increasing the likelihood that the juvenile’s involvement in law-violating behaviour will continue to escalate (Butts & Halemba 1996). Because of the pressure to proceed as fast as possible, the focus to reduce court delay, by determining the underlying causes, in this chain is maybe even more important than the criminal justice chain of adults.

3.2 Data collection

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15 Figure 3.2 Overview of the research method based on Su et al. (2014)

The first step, understanding the process, is explained in the next section. After a good understanding of the process emerged, other data collection methods were used which is explained in ‘further data collection’. The qualitative data analysis was performed using the steps which are shown above which produced the results. Steps four and five are described in chapter four, five and six.

3.3.1 Understanding the process

In order to increase the practical knowledge about the actual processes which are taking place in the criminal justice chain, the following two data collection methods were used: Past project research and criminal case file research.

Past project research

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16 Table 3.1 Past projects whereof documents are used.

These past projects involved different chain partners and aimed to fasten the throughput times of case files by eliminating inefficient and unnecessary processes. Performance of different processes also affects court delay, as previously argued. Therefore the information derived from this research method was useful to provide answers to the research question.

Criminal case file research

A criminal case file is the complete documentation of the pursuit initiated against the suspect. Criminal case file research was done together with an experienced employee of the Court Hearing Administration office. One of the core responsibilities of the court hearing administration office is to plan the court hearing which ensures that they have a good view on delays within the process of a case file.

Six case files with long throughput times were selected because it is likely that they would have a long throughput time due to certain delays that occurred during the process. Most of the data collected using this method was information that was imported in the system. When there was uncertainty about routing or causes of a case the employee gave an optional suggestion based on her experience. All criminal case files have been documented in the central database. When the delay cause was not clear, it has been indicated in the central database.

3.3.2 Further data collection

Before performing the expert- and focus group research, participants were selected. After selection, possible participants were contacted. For the expert interviews an appointment was made and the focus group sessions were planned on a date on which most participants were able to participate. Selection of participants for expert interviews and focus group research

Possible key participants within the organization were identified together with a Lean SixSigma black belt project manager which performed several improvement projects within the public prosecution and knew the organization very well. Interview criteria determined whether a participant was a suitable candidate to interview. These criteria where:

 Working in the criminal justice sector;

 Influential, meaning that they have the ability to change, update and review the process.  Experienced. They should at least have 1 year of work experience.

 Working together with multiple departments and multiple chain partners;

The same procedure has also been followed when selecting participants for the focus group sessions. A list of contact information of each selected interviewee was created to enable contacting possibilities. Participation and the organizational role of participants can be found below in table 3.2.

Past projects

Author: Title Place

Polstra et al. (2015) Outcomes, conclusions and recommendations of L6S project ZSM

Groningen

Zwart (2014) Improvement plan of case flow of the police report Haarlem

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17 Table 3.2 Participant listings

One expert interview was conducting involving two persons (no. 2 and 3). Therefore the total amount of expert interviews is 8. Some participants are from the same departments, as can be seen above, this has been done to increase the validity of their point of view and also to make sure that data was complete. Participants from multiple departments and organizations were interviewed to avoid biases of a departments and to create a complete overview of the actual problem.

Expert interview research

Interviews can provide deeper knowledge in understanding the underlying causes of court delay. Specific information and questions can be asked to determine specific causes which delay, or could delay, the overall court hearing process. Interviewees were contacted via email to explain what the research was about and if they were willing to be interviewed. Interviews were semi –structured and categorized according to the categories formulated in the conceptual model. Some example questions are presented in table 3.3.

Perspective Sub-category

Number Function Organisation

Expert Interviews Focus group session 1 Focus group session 2

1 Junior public prosecutor Public prosecution 2 Public prosecutor youth (1) Public prosecution 3 Public prosecutor youth (2) Public prosecution 4

Public prosecutor ZSM

supervisior Public prosecution 5 ZSM Coördinator (1) Public prosecution 6 ZSM Coördinator (2) Public prosecution 7

Court hearing planning

expert (1) Public prosecution 8

Council of child protection employee

Council of child protection 9 Youth assessor expert (1) Public prosecution 10 Youth assessor expert (2) Public prosecution 11

Lean SixSigma black belt

project manager (1) Public prosecution 12 Case control officer (1) Police

13 Case control officer (2) Police 14 Case control officer (3) Police 15

Lean SixSigma black belt

project manager (2) Public prosecution 16

Officer court hearing

planning department Public prosecution

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18 SCM Process barriers between chain partners

 Do you (regularly) notice process barriers (or: differences in processes) that exists between chain partners? If yes, which?

 Do you know what the causes of these problems are? If yes, which? Advanced planning

 Is there a joint planning involving all chain partners when processing a case file?

Operations Management

Capacity

 How is the capacity of a department determined?

 Is there at this moment enough capacity on the departments to settle the amount of case files?

Table 3.3 An example of interview question which were regularly asked during interviews.

All 8 interviews were recorded and transcribed. Each interviewee was also asked if they were willing to participate in a focus group. Not all interviewees were able to participate due to other obligations. Focus Group research

Three focus groups were planned and each focus group had a different aim as listened below: - Focus group session 1: Determine juvenile criminal justice process map

- Focus group session 2: Determine bottleneck and delays within that process

Participants of these focus group sessions were not all interviewed due to the fact that it was not possible to interview all participants because of the time constraints of this research. Causes that were named during the interviews where used in the focus groups to test their validity and importance. This enhanced applicability, validity, and importance of the causes which were named in the expert interviews, and therewith also the overall results of the research. Participants were invited via email and were already familiar with the research subject. The focus group sessions where organized together with a Lean SixSigma black belt project manager.

During these sessions notes were taken from statements that participants made to clarify or state certain causes or problems. These notes were taken when the researcher or the Lean SixSigma black belt project manager thought the statement was important. Every session was prepared with - and discussed after- with the Lean SixSigma black belt project manager.

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19 Figure 3.3 Impact effort matrix which was created at focus group session two

The impact effort matrix is used to determine the importance of certain problems. Based upon these problems, the importance of the cause can be determined because the impact on the process is measured.

3.3.3 Qualitative data analysis

Processing of the all collection methods was done using coding. The coding method is presented in figure 3.4 and is inspired by the methodology which is used by Su et al. (2014).

Figure 3.4 Coding methodology

The first-order codes were converted to second order codes to increase the ability to group problems and indicate their relations. These different groups were placed into categories using third-order coding. All information was stored in a central database. Coding was done for problems, causes and effects resulting in first-order problem codes, second-order problem codes, third-order problem codes, first-order causes codes, second-order causes codes, etc.

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20 Data collected from criminal case file research was directly stored as first-order codes in a database during research. Processing was done later using the indicated causes for delay which were found in the system of the public prosecution. Further processing was done according to the analysis methodology stated before. From this research, no problems or effects could be determined because the information was factual and does not contain any direct characteristic process related problems other than a delay why the court hearing was postponed or planned later.

When performing past project research causes were taken from the appendixes or reports of past projects. They were documented in the database with, if possible, a problem, cause and effect. If no problem, cause or effect was stated, the coordinator of that project was asked if that data could be retrieved. If not, this data was taken into consideration characterized as unknown.

Data from expert interviews was transcribed from recordings and summarized after that to indicate what the main statements of the interview. Causes mentioned in the interview were stored as first-order codes in a database file together with the corresponding problem and effect. Within the documentation, a citation was made with a number indicating where the cause was taken from. During the focus groups sessions, important information said by the participants was directly documented. Also the process map and the impact/effort matrix was used to strengthen and support the overall research by adding new causes and highlighting them. Processing has been done similar to the interviews using numbers in the original documents to indicate where the information of the database was from.

Database

All data which was retrieved from conducting all research methods where stored in an Excel file database together with a reference to the data. Different columns where used for the case study research. This was necessary because some information of for example offence dates and hearing dates were also documented. Aim of this database was to store all problems, causes and effects centrally to preserve an overview over the data which would make a possible review and analysis easier. A detailed overview clarifying the information which was stored per column can be found in appendix B.

Coding category determination and discussion

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21 Figure 3.5 Example of criminal case file analysis method

Because of the richness of the criminal case files, most case files had multiple delay causes. Every delay cause which was indicated in the criminal case file was allocated to a second-order cause. First-order codes derived from other research methods were less complex and did not include multiple causes. Because expert interviews, past project and focus group research also included problems and effects besides causes, the allocation process as visualized in figure 3.5 is also performed for problems and effects. The total allocation process for all research methods has been reviewed by - and discussed with - an expert at the public prosecution to increase validity of the decision-making process.

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22 In the past projects-, expert interview and focus group research causes where stored together with a corresponding problem and effect which enables the generation of a problem-cause-effect scheme. This is also done to prevent the loss of valuable relations between those parts due to coding of the data. Effects indicate importance of the cause.

Additional information from focus groups

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4. Results

Results which are created during the qualitative analysis are presented in this chapter. All quotes have a document number which denotes the reference to that specific document. The letters I,F,PP and CCF denote respectively Interviews, Focus groups, Past Projects and Criminal Case Files. First an explanation of the results which are conducted from coding will be given. Results are interpreted after the figures are explained.

It was not possible to include all proof to strengthen the base for the third order caused due to the word limit. More information can be found in the database.

4.1 Third-order code delay

The overall results are presented in figure 4.1. Results are based upon 117 delay causes.

Figure 4.1 Main causes of court delay

Figure 4.1 shows that the main reasons for court delay are the processes internally in the organization and between criminal justice chain partners. Secondly 22% of the causes stated relate to the use of IT within the organization and also within the criminal justice chain. Together these two mixed categories are 47% of the delay causes in the criminal justice chain. Dependency on chain partners is also a big category with 16% of the total amount.

Processes (25%)

A process refers to the activities between persons, departments and organizations. Processes can cause delay because of for example mistakes when filling in and sending documents, insufficient

25% 22% 16% 12% 9% 6% 3% 3% 4%

Third-order code causes

Processes ICT Systems

Dependency of chain partners Work amount

Juvenile proces characteristics Other

Unknown

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24 information transmission between employees and unclear process responsibilities. When for example a mistake is made when filling in a document, another person can be working with the wrong information and needs to, if the error is discovered, ‘repair’ the document which causes extra work. Within this third order code, no specific second-order code cause had a higher occurrence. A typical example for a process delay was for example: “… Lawyers receive *the case file+ as we create it in GPS, but some parts come afterwards for example the forms of the victim, they are digitally added in our case file, they are available for us and for the courts but they are not sent on paper to lawyers. That is the case in every court hearing. It occurs every time..” (I5). In this example ‘not sending the documents’ is the cause and relates to a process that is not functioning as it should. Another interviewee stated: “…Offenses without victims are quicker than in the regular review process, because you don’t have to (…) the victim process does not interfere. A review is only final when the victim process is finished." (I1). Finishing the victim process is in this case the cause that the process is delayed. Also not keeping working arrangements can be a cause of various problems: “11% of the case files is delivered too late and stay more than seven days on the ZSM department.” (F1). Processes, as the cause of delay, have been named by 77% of the interview participants, during focus group sessions, and past project research as a cause which affects the criminal justice chain. It was not stated as a cause in one of the case files which were used in the criminal case file research. ICT systems (22%)

ICT systems are vital for transferring case files and necessary information within organizations and among chain partners. Every chain partner within the juvenile justice chain has their own computer system. The public prosecution uses GPS, the police mainly uses BOSZ and the courts use Default. Causes that relate to ICT systems are mainly about the computer system of the public prosecution, GPS. Five data sources indicated that the system method was bothersome. This is also the biggest second-order code cause that contributed to this third-order code. For example one of the interviewees stated: “…GPS is very rigid. You need (…) You really need to think first before doing something…” (I1). Another one said: “I do not find GPS a very user friendly system *…+ sometimes some activities do not appear on the activity list and then you directly do not know what to do.” (I2). Other main second-order causes were (closely related): the unclear structure of the system, errors within the system, not enough training and education about the system. However there were also causes which referred to systems of other chain partners for example “Inaccurate registry and unreliable information in BOSZ because of incompetence of users” (PP2) which relates to police systems and problems because of lack of user competence in using the software. In 85% of the interviews, focus group sessions, and past project researches this cause was stated. There was also one source in the criminal case file research which indicated ICT systems as a cause of which that specific case file was delayed.

Dependency of chain partners (16%)

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25 influenced by chain partners and because of that we are not able to deliver the reports well and on time before the court hearing.” (I5).

Besides the delivery of reports, also decisions of the judge, national government policies, and working times of chain partners can delay the process. Dependency of chain partners was stated in 63% of all research methods.

Work amount (12%)

Another third-order code cause is the amount of work that employees have. Capacity is stated by three different sources as a cause of delay but also causes that indicate: more time needed, there is less priority for juvenile cases because of work pressure and lack of time are for example stated as causes of delay. For example one past project stated that ”Time pressure and lack of insight in [flow charts] suitability to prevent errors” (Document: PP3) are the main problems why people do not use the flow charts, which were aimed to prevent errors, when the work pressure is increasing. Others indicate that because of a lack of personnel, it is hard to focus on the main process: “*when there is low capacity].. then people only work on post and mail. So actually the things that have more haste. The rest *of the work+ is not worked on and remains as it is.” More factors such as increase work-shifting by colleague’s and slow decision-making of management cause an overall increase in work amount.

Juvenile characteristics (9%)

With only 9% of the total share, the juvenile characteristics are not a big delay cause. However they are important and can not only cause problems because some people indicate that the employee juvenile expertise is dropping but also that it is difficult to handle big cases. Most of the second-order code causes relate to the knowledge of employees or the lack of training and education about juvenile criminal justice. One of the past project indicated that when the special juvenile meeting was abolished, there was no juvenile expertise and case files were not handled but people tried to avoid these types of cases (PP3).

Other (6%)

Some second-order codes seemed too random to derive a special third-order code cause from. They are merged together in a ‘other’ third order code cause. It contains second-order code causes as: Insufficient solutions, increased scaling of public prosecution and culture.

Unknown (3%)

Some second-order code causes did not have a description. These causes where marked with a question mark. Most of these causes did have a problem associated with them.

Information delivery suspect (3%)

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26 summon as is stated by an interviewee: “… From the system JKS I take an Arabic summon. But then I don’t know for example if it is the right dialect. *…+ it is an Arabic summon but we do not know at all if the suspect can read it.” (I3). When the suspect cannot read the summon, the court hearing can be delayed because a suspect is not present during the hearing and did not know that he should have been there.

Behavior defending party (4%)

Opposing behavior of the defending party can cause delay because of the rights that the suspect has when being in the criminal justice system. However, as one would suspect that this would cause high variability in the process, no one participating or conducting expert interviews, focus group sessions and past projects indicated this as a source of delay except that sometimes, due to bundling of new crimes, a court hearing was suspended. Only the criminal case file research gave indication of this delay cause. For example: “The court hearing administration office withdrew the case three times because there was a new crime which needed to be attached. Also, the suspect remained abroad and could not come to the court hearing. After that his mom (guardianship of juvenile) called if the court hearing could be deferred because they were not able to attend on the planned date.” (CCF5) This enormously delayed the case and also caused a lot of rework for the court hearing administration office.

The main findings of the previous section are stated below in table 4.1. The third-order codes ‘unknown’ and ‘other’ are left out of consideration due to their randomness and unavailability.

Third-order code Total number of sources

Main findings

ICT Systems 12 The GPS working methods, the structure, its development, its

faultiness and education are inadequate and cause lots of problems

Skills and knowledge of the ICT systems are not sufficient Police ICT systems are unclear

Juvenile process characteristics

6 Juvenile expertise and knowledge assessors is not sufficient Dependency of

chain partners

11 Delivery of reports not on time

Work amount 7 Lack of capacity

Less priority for juvenile cases

Processes 10 Failures when sending documents

Errors when filling in documents Unclear responsibilities

Waiting for processes

Not keeping working arrangements Information

delivery suspect

2 Translation of summon insufficient Behavior

defending party

5 Not finishing community service, new offences and unreachability of suspects

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27

4.2 Relations between problems, causes and effects

The interview-, past project- and focus group research also contained information about the link between a specific problem and a specific cause. Each order problem code connects to a third-order cause code which is visualized in figure 3.4. The other diagram denotes the link between cause and effect. Figure 4.2 visualizes what each relationship diagram is about.

Figure 4.2 Visualization of the relationship diagram functions

The third-order cause code ‘behavior of defending party’ is neglected in the relationship diagrams because it was only found in the criminal case file research which contained no problems and effects. Therefore, no links could be made. Third-order cause code ‘Information delivery suspect, unknown, and other were also neglected due to their low occurrence (12 times in total).

Problem-Cause dependency

The number of problems linking towards a certain problem can indicate the importance of that problem and can also indicate what main problems are for certain causes. Results can be found in figure 4.3 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

ICT Systems Juvenile process characteristics

Dependency of chain partners

Work amount Processes

N o . o f tim e s i n d ic ate d

Third-order cause codes

Relationship diagram problems and causes

Lack of information Employee skills insufficient Insufficient process overview Busyness factors employees

Action of chain partners Problems related to public prosecution hearing System unclarity

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28 Figure 4.3 Problem and cause diagram

Inadequate ICT systems seem to be the main cause of insufficient process overview and problems related to the public prosecution hearing. The insufficient process overview is based mainly on the inadequacy to notice or know how digital input influences the processes further on. This is also stated by various interviewees who stated problems related to the interaction between the public prosecution and courts “*The case file+ needs to be appointed again and if the court registry doesn’t enable a check mark than the case file does not end up in a certain arrests bin and then the public prosecution cannot retrieve the case file and plan it for court hearing” (I3) and “…GPS is, in terms of input it comes very precise and you really need to do the right thing because if you just miss a check mark it will completely go wrong somewhere further in the process” (I5).

The special public prosecution hearing which is used to settle the case using community labor or fines is normally not part of the court hearing process. However, when the suspect for example does not complete or execute the sentence, the case needs to go to a court hearing. Therefore, this public prosecution hearing could have influence on the regular court hearing process. Most of the problems are related to ICT systems which consist mostly of a planning error within GPS.

The characteristics of the juvenile process are mainly highlighted by the problems related to insufficient skills of employees which is also found as main finding in table 4. Some problems are related to the public prosecution hearing because this type of hearing is used in 50% of the juvenile cases.

Actions which were not taken by chain partners or information which was not provided are the main problems which cause dependency of chain partners. During one interview communication and information provision was also stated as an improvement suggestion: “I think that the communication between the department *…+ and for example the chain partners and also within the public prosecution should and can be better.” (I8).

High working pressure or business of employees due to deadlines, availability of colleagues, and capacity issues are all problems which relate to the cause ‘work amount’. This has also been found as main cause for the postponement of juvenile cases by employees that are, due to their insufficient knowledge, uncertain about these cases. This increases the work of other colleagues which have sufficient knowledge. This is also stated in multiple interviews, for example: “*When talking about juvenile case files+ It is a fact and I see that people are uncertain about that *…+ you see that they find it difficult to make the right decision. That is more related with the whole context that surrounds it. Than they make sure that there is a colleague who can think with them, and if not, they will postpone the case…” (I4).

Lack of information of chain partners or department seems to be the main problem which causes processes for example to be delayed. The second most important problem which relates to the cause processes is insufficient process overview. Insufficient communication, unclarity about the workings of processes and working agreements all cause processes to be delayed.

Cause-Effect dependency

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29 Figure 4.4 Relationship diagram causes and effects

The third-order effect code ‘Process delay’ is an effect that can be caused by almost all third-order causes. It is occurring often which is not remarkable because process delay is very much related with court delay which was the aim of this research. What is interesting in this table is that there is a strong connection between the third-order code effect ‘rework’ and the third order code cause ‘ICT systems’. This indicates that much of the problems which are caused by ICT related causes, often lead to rework. The third-order code effect ‘rework’ also consists mainly of the second-order code ‘risk of errors’. Making it not only a direct effect, but also an increasing risk which could eventually lead to rework. Some interviewees stated for example that they had troubles understanding GPS and: “Or you do something *in GPS+ and you think: ‘I hope that everything will be alright’. However I think it will not be all right. I need a lot of help with that *working in GPS+” (I7). GPS experts indicated that in such circumstances people should always ask for help before filling something in or approve something because of the risk that there will be an system error which is much harder to solve and causes lots of rework.

5. Discussion of results

Based upon the results written in chapter four, chapter five is aimed to compare the literature discussed in the theoretical framework with the findings that have been done in this research. The conceptual framework will be used and each perspective (SCM, OM and Criminal justice) will be discussed whether this perspective is complete or should be adjusted or extended. The adjustments or differences with the original conceptual model will be updated to a new and more complete conceptual model in the second section. The original conceptual model is stated in figure 5.1.

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

ICT Systems Juvenile process characteristics

Dependency of chain partners

Work amount Processes

N o . o f tim e s i n d ic ate d

Third-order cause codes

Relationship diagram causes and effects

Process delay Repair activities Overproduction Decreasing punishment effect Working pressure

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30 Figure 5.1 The conceptual model as the outcome of the literature framework.

5.1 Comparison with conceptual model

The context of the criminal justice chain

As Dandurand (2014) suggested court delay not only refers to the courts, but also to the processes before. Within juvenile justice, the time span which is created by the public prosecution must be short because of the pedagogic content of the sentence. Because of this, limits do not allow much space for extra delays. If a certain chain partner delays the process, it will result in a very short preparation limit for layers, judges and victims to prepare themselves. Data indicates that this is at the moment not the case, as is also stated by one of the interviewees: “…We as public prosecution have our processes well organized. But we are influenced by chain partners and because of that we are not able to deliver the reports well and on time before the court hearing.” (I5). This is acknowledged by the council of child protection which indicated during focus group session two that “due to a late delivery of the NFIP (psychological) report, we are also late. We try to retrieve preliminary information from them about the case file by phone so that we can start. Sometimes courts receive our reports Friday evening while the court hearing is on Monday” (F2). The limits which are set are tight and put pressure on the whole chain to proceed as fast as possible. The ‘van Kalsbeeknormen’ which are still used as guidelines to measure how fast juvenile case file should be handled are not always met by for example the police as mentioned in a recent police report of the Case File Management Police (2015). Interesting though is that other chain partners, other than the public prosecution, seem to be responsible for much of the delays within the criminal justice chain. This dependency of chain partners that the public prosecution suffers is primarily caused by problems such as ‘lack of information delivery’ and ‘lack of activity from chain partners’. This raises questions whether the limits set by the public prosecution and government are realistic and do give every chain partner the right amount of time to finish their reports.

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31 The knowledge and skills which are required to understand the juvenile criminal justice are indicated as problem which causes delays within the criminal justice process. Because multiple assessors do find juvenile cases difficult they postpone a case file because of that. A special procedure which is often used in juvenile justice, approximately in 50% of all cases (Case File Management Police 2015), is the disposal process of the public prosecution. This special process does not require a complete police report and a case can therefore be handled quicker than when a normal court hearing process is initialized. However if the suspect does not agree with the settlement which is proposed, or does not complete the sentence, the case needs to be settled in the court room. If this occurs throughput times will be extended and multiple problems can delay the process. Overall, the insufficient knowledge of (mainly) assessors about the handling of juvenile justice and the overall knowledge of the procedures and processes within justice is currently a delaying cause in the criminal justice chain and assumable not the prohibition between working processes because of juvenile processes which was stated in literature.

Internal OM perspective

The third-order code processes mainly addresses the causes which fall within the boundaries of the OM perspective. Failures when sending documents or errors when filling in documents are can be lowered by working agreements. However, working arrangements are not always kept and therefore people could, if they want to, find a work around. This can be due to reluctance to hold the working arrangement, inattentiveness because they do not know what the consequences are of their workings or that working arrangements are not clear and well spread among all employees. These working arrangements should be clear, consistent and visible for all employees. This aspect which focuses on processes is not found in the literature research. Also, it is found that employees do not know who is responsible for the process, which mainly leads to process delay and confusion among employees. The way that a case file should be handled or must be processed is mainly based upon working arrangements. This strengthens the importance of clear working arrangements which are kept.

From the relationship problem cause diagram can be derived that a lack of process overview can also be caused by IT systems. Some interviewees also stated that they found that the actual processes in ICT systems were vague and lowered their ability to ‘control’ the overall process, lowering the ability to oversee and predict it: “I have the feeling that every time I import something I have to do something else. I though, I followed the instruction and I import it rightly, however the outcome is different. *…+ Nobody can control it” (I3). Inadequate systems require adjustment of processes which need to be adjusted to avoid delays or extra work. When an ICT system is developed well, it should complement and improve existing processes.

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32 two and a half years this is giving resentment and puts pressure on us because you have a capacity problem. We have taking care of it together but now we are less flexible and if someone gets ill we say: ‘I’m sorry but I already work four days, I’m not going to work two more.” (I3). People, mostly in interviews, that stated that capacity was a problem did not refer to the fact that planning and scheduling was insufficient. So in contrast to what was suggested in the literature research, there was no indication that planning and scheduling could be the problem of delay.

External SCM perspective

The use of IT among chain partners is very important for the overall criminal justice chain. The number of causes associated with it and the fact that most data sources name this as a cause of much problems suggests that this is a very important aspect which can highly influence the entire chain process. Especially with the digitalization of case files, the expectation is that this aspect will become more important. The ability to create so called ‘data warehouses’ which store data of all chain partners centrally (Stadtler & Kilger 2002) is not possible due to the different systems used by different chain partners. This was already found by other reports but still seems to delay the overall case file flow (Zuiderwijk et al. 2012). An underlying problem which could lead to a lower yield of IT is the lack of skills from employees and the missing chain wide development of IT systems.

Dependency of other chain partners signifies the existence of process barriers. Some process barriers as for example: “Working times of the council of child protection are not efficient and other chain partners expect a better pro-active attitude from the council of child protection.” (PP3) are related to the management of that chain partner and do affect the whole process negatively. The numbers of process barriers have been greatly reduced due to certain governmental programs such as ZSM. ZSM was aimed to improve the intake process of the case file by putting all chain partners together in one working environment. This greatly benefits the communication between partners and also the signaling of barriers that exists between partners. The insufficiency of communication, which was indicated by Fabri & Langbroek (2003) and the Court of Audit (2012) seems to be lower due to these improvements. These process barriers however still exist because of for example incomplete information delivery, delivery of reports and the varying quality between chain partner reports. Advanced planning activities do not seem to occur within the criminal justice chain. There are multiple limits made which are arranged with the criminal justice chain partners. However chain partners have difficulties in keeping those limits which is mostly related to the third order cause dependency of chain partners. Deadlines, which are mostly the court hearing dates, are not met or are met just in time, increasing the working pressure of courts, public prosecutors and lawyers who then need to prepare in a very short time before the court hearing. There is no actual monitoring of the state of processes within criminal justice organizations which causes much commotion and confusion among chain partners.

6. Conclusions and recommendations

The last chapter concludes and finishes the research. It is divided in four parts; the first part will present a model which is based upon the conceptual model and conclude the discussed results. The second part will state recommendations which can be derived from the overall results and