High Court Criminal National Performance Measures

The performance measures presented here provide a set of indicators (over a 12 month period or as at 31 December 2013 depending on the measure) that are used to monitor the performance of the High Court’s criminal jurisdiction. Performance standards for each measure (by case type where applicable) have been determined by the High Court judiciary.

The performance measures are:

Clearance rate
Waiting time to trial
Earliest available date

For clearance rate, target compliance of 100% has been set.

For waiting time to trial and earliest available date, target compliance of 80% has been set.

The proceedings are:

Criminal Trials

Criminal Appeals

Each performance measure is defined, the purpose described, and actual performance presented ( see note 1 ).

Clearance Rate

Criminal Trials	Criminal Appeals
Performance standard	100%	100%
Actual Compliance (12 month data)	103%	101%

Definition:

Clearance is the number of disposals in a given period as a percentage of the new business that came into the court in the same period. When the clearance rate is equal to 100% disposals are keeping up with new business; when the clearance rate is above 100% disposals are exceeding new business; and when the clearance rate is less than 100% disposals are not keeping up with new business.

New business for criminal trials is recorded from entry into the trial stage (post case review under the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 (CPA) and post-committal under the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 (SPA)). For Middle band cases under the SPA, new business is counted from middle band decision date. For protocol cases under the CPA, new business is counted from the date the order is made to hear any Category 3 protocol case in the High Court. New business for criminal appeals is from date filed.

Purpose:

Clearance rate measures whether the court is keeping up with its incoming caseload. If cases are not disposed in a timely manner, a backlog of cases awaiting disposition will grow. Knowledge of clearance rates can help a court pinpoint emerging problems and indicate where improvements may be made. While courts aspire to clear (dispose of) at least as many cases as have been filed/reopened/reactivated in a period by having a clearance rate of 100 percent or higher, clearance rates can be affected by a sudden increase or decrease in volumes.

Summary for 2013:

There have been more disposals than new business for both criminal trials and criminal appeals, so that the target for clearance rates has been exceeded (100% target, 103% trials, 101% appeals).

Waiting time to trial

Criminal Trials		Criminal Appeals
	Short trial (< 10 days)	Long Trial (> 10 days)
Performance standard	< 12 months	< 18 months	< 6 months
Target compliance	80%	80%	80%
Actual compliance (12 month data)	60%	83%	92%

Definition:

Waiting time to trial measures the length of time that cases have been in the court system until the future scheduled hearing date, for cases that have a future scheduled trial date.

Waiting time to trial for criminal trials is recorded from entry into the trial stage (post case review (CPA cases) and post-committal (SPA cases). Cases that are re-trials are not included in these figures.

Waiting time to trial for criminal appeals is from the date the appeal was filed, until the date of the scheduled substantive hearing, for appeals which have a scheduled date of hearing.

Purpose:

The waiting time to trial measure is an indicator of the ability of the Court to provide a timely hearing date for cases and appeals that are ready to proceed, and of the effectiveness of the Court’s scheduling practices.

Summary for 2013:

The target for waiting time to hearing is being exceeded for criminal appeals (80% target, 92% compliance).

For long criminal trials, the target compliance of 80% was exceeded (83%).

The target for short trials (80%) was not met (60%). Cases are allocated dates when they are expected to be ready for trial.

Although the Court reports against this standard, the reasons for delay are often beyond the Court’s control.

During the last year, common reasons beyond the control of the court include: delays in the delivery of reports about defendant capacity under Criminal (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act 2003 and delays in obtaining expert evidence.

The following information as to the availability of hearing dates shows that the delay is not due to the unavailability of hearing time.

Earliest available date

	Short trial (< 10 days)	Long Trial (> 10 days)	Appeals
Performance standard	< 9 months	< 9 months	< 6 months
Target compliance	80%	80%	80%
Actual compliance	82%	76%	82%

Definition:

This measure is defined as the time from the reporting month end to the earliest available date for any block of hearing time across all High Court registries. The performance standard requires that at least 80% of the time, a hearing fixture can be provided within 9 months for any trial, and within 6 months for any appeals, no matter the length of hearing time required in any registry. Earliest available date is an “end of the queue” measure.

Purpose:

Time to earliest available date is an indicator of the court’s ability to provide a fixture in a timely manner, should a case be ready for hearing.

Summary for 2013:

More than 80% of the time, registries are able to provide a fixture date for a short trial case within 9 months, and for a criminal appeal within 6 months, in all High Court registries.

Footnotes

Note 1: The explanations provided below have been drawn from material available in the Trial Court Performance Measures section of the Courtools website, http://www.courtools.org/Trial-Court-Performance-Measures.aspx (developed by the National Centre for State Courts (US)), as well as definitions developed by the Ministry of Justice. The data used is sourced from the Ministry’s Case Management System, and for the Earliest Available Date measure, from each High Court registry’s scheduling staff.