As courts and circuit councils plan for courtroom use well into the next millennium, they will have a handy tool to visualize their future space requirements. At Judicial Conference direction, the Administrative Office has developed a computer model that takes certain assumptions about district judges, incorporates projections of the court's long-range facilities plan, allows courts to add their own unique variables, and produces a tailored plan of how many courtrooms will be needed 5, 10, or more years into the future as judges take senior status and vacancies and new judgeships occur.
"This model," said Judge Norman H. Stahl (1st Cir.), chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Security, Space and Facilities, "graphically aids a court's analysis of future courtroom planning. Its projections are based upon a court's real need, available judgeship data, and actual and projected workloads. The end result is more than a snap shot in time; it is an accurate representation of the facilities that will be needed along a continuing time frame."
The model considers the following factors in making its calculations.
The Judicial Conference approved the planning assumptions the computer model uses at its March 1997 session. The model assumes that a senior judge with a courtroom will occupy the courtroom for 10 years after taking senior status; that it takes three years for a new judgeship to be established and a judge to begin work once a court's caseload warrants an additional judgeship; that a replacement judge begins work two years after the judge being replaced takes senior status; and that active judges will take senior status in the year they are eligible.
Courts and circuit judicial councils can modify the assumptions based on actual circumstances at their locations. For example, projections of future courtroom use can be based on the average age of the court's judges, or on caseload, which varies from court to court. In this way, an individual court's needs can be considered when making projections. The court makes the changes by selecting the correct numbers on screens displayed by the computer model.
Finally, the computer model displays how the assumptions affect a court's courtroom planning. A judge/courtroom analysis timeline can graph current and projected 10-year courtroom requirements. The model also can generate a list telling when replacement judges would begin work, or a list showing when new judges would be needed based on caseload growth. In turn, projections can be checked against the General Services Administration planning prospectus that is prepared for each court project.
Courts with projects in the planning stages soon will receive informational packets on the computer model from the AO.