For many years, I assessed courthouses, and additional file storage has been a common need for court and related components. The introduction of electronic filing and imaging has now reduced storage in many courts, and I find more courts with reduced filing needs and even vacant file rooms. This...

Earlier this year, I toured a Midwest courthouse with a deputy from the courthouse law enforcement staff as the initial part of a needs assessment. We began by examining the secure route that deputies use to accompany prisoners from the courthouse cellblock to the courtrooms. During this part of...

When conducting a courthouse planning needs assessment, it is important to evaluate the current capacity and condition of the existing courthouse and forecast future demand. As mentioned in our last post, the demand includes the workload and staffing needs of the court and related components and...

Courthouse planning has comprised a large part of my professional experience. During most planning sessions, population projections come up to predict court workload. I have seen numerous studies that examined the number of people in a court jurisdiction per case and the number of people per judge....

The courthouse planning needs assessment sets the stage for the other elements in the design and construction process (I like to call it a catalyst for design/construction). Therefore, the more engaged the court components are in the needs assessment, the better the results for the future of the...