Case Processing

The purpose of the workgroup is to update, innovate and improve the processing of cases in the General Sessions Court of Charleston County. Strategic initiatives include providing public defender representation in bond court, weekly jail population reviews, texted court reminders, and helping with the growing backlog of cases.

While there have been improvements in the case processing over the years, timeliness of case processing within the Court of General Sessions (GS) has been consistently challenging to impact. In South Carolina, the benchmark has been to have 80% of pending General Sessions cases at or below 365 days and few counties have met this standard. Then, the pandemic exacerbated the challenges. It limited in-person proceedings and jury trials, and case backlogs grew as more new cases came into the system than were disposed. If this trend continues, it can lead to growing backlogs and increased jail populations. Backlog more simply defined by the National Center for State Courts is the term used to describe the number of cases that are older than the time standard set by the court. A few examples of backlog impacts include overloaded workloads, not enough time to focus on serious cases, increased lengths of pretrial detention, increased time for people to miss court and/or be rearrested while awaiting court, and longer waits for justice to be served impacting victims, defendants, witnesses and the community-at-large. Therefore, the initiatives this workgroup is advancing deliberately focus on:

INITIATIVE ONE: jail population review

• The institutionalization of a weekly Jail Population Review (JPR) process,

INTIATIVE TWO: General Sessions court reminders

• Making text court reminders available to help maintain contact with defendants and limit missed court appearances, and

INITIATIVE THREE: research pandemic impacts & institutionalize lessons learned

• Keeping leadership routinely appraised of key case processing data and backlog projections to aid in problem-solving efforts.

These initiatives are grounded in data and designed to help shape ongoing efforts to achieve improved case processing while remaining adaptable as the COVID-19 pandemic evolves. Center to these efforts is the value of stakeholders coming together to regularly monitor the evolving trends, provide feedback, and creatively problem-solve.