| This research examines the effect of caseflow management on timeliness in the Colorado District Courts for fiscal year 2009-2010. Colorado's Supreme Court established a general 1 year time standard for case disposition for criminal, civil and domestic relations cases. This study developed a model to examine whether high utilization of caseflow management methods affected the district court's caseflow timeliness. Through an empirical analysis involving 17 of the 22 districts, the key methods of caseflow management were examined against the actual case data of each district court and the responses from district court administrators to written survey instruments about the caseflow management methods used in each district. Further, for each district, an analysis was conducted to determine the following variables' impact on timeliness: level of caseflow management, political affiliations of each district court judge, the portion of the docket of the case type being studied, population of the district, cost per case and cases per staff.;The findings of the research confirm the hypothesis that effective caseflow management is a predictor of improved timeliness in both criminal and civil cases in the district courts. The higher the level of caseflow management the lower the percentage of cases disposed out of compliance with the 1 year time standard. The research also determined that districts with a higher percentage of Republican judges had a lower percentage of civil cases out of compliance. Larger population also was shown to have an impact on the improved timeliness of civil cases. The findings also demonstrate that compliance to time standards in criminal, civil or domestic relations cases is not affected by control variables such as the cost per case, based on budgetary allocations and the total number of cases on a districts docket, and cases per staff, based on the total number of cases on the docket divided by the number of staff and judges. Neither did the portion of the docket that the type or types of cases being studied explain any variation in timeliness. |
