Chesterfield 'Screens' Docket: Like at Airport, New Monitors Aim to Help the Flow in Court
Posted on: Sunday, 11 May 2008, 09:00 CDT
By Mark Bowes, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
May 11--Finding the right courtroom in Chesterfield County will be a little like finding the right boarding gate at Richmond International Airport.
The county this week is activating 21 wide-screen, high-definition video display monitors in two of its three courts to help people find their destination.
Instead of looking for their names on small docket sheets tacked to a bulletin board, court-goers can view a scrolling, multicolored monitor to confirm where they need to be and when.
Nine of the 37-inch flat-panel docket monitors should be operational tomorrow in Chesterfield Circuit Court. The remaining 12 will be activated this week in Chesterfield Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.
"I was always impressed when I went into the airport and saw the monitors with the display [of] up-to-date incoming and departing flight information," said Judy Worthington, the Chesterfield Circuit Court clerk. "And that's what I wanted for my court. So that's basically how we designed this thing."
Chesterfield is the first locality in the region and one of only a handful in the state to use the technology in its courts, which cost the county about $60,000 for equipment and labor.
Richmond Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court hopes to have similar technology in place by the end of the summer, said Clerk Laura Gardner.
The city is being assisted by the Supreme Court of Virginia, which is using the Richmond juvenile court as a test case for potentially expanding the technology to other courts in the state, said spokeswoman Katya Herndon.
Chesterfield developed its system independently and is paying for it out of its Technology Improvement Program fund. The system was designed by the county's Information Systems Technology Department, "We did not use consultants," Director Barry Condrey said.
Fairfax County has used video docket monitors for about three years in its traffic court and for about a year in its circuit and general district courts, a spokesman said. Norfolk Circuit Court installed two 60-inch monitors in November, one for criminal cases and one for civil, a spokeswoman said.
The monitors used in Chesterfield will continuously loop the names of the parties involved in each day's criminal and civil cases, along with the courtrooms they need to report to and the time and status of their cases.
Chesterfield General District Court, which handles roughly 10 times the number of cases as Circuit Court, will not immediately use video dockets. More study is needed to see how such a system could be adapted to the court's heavy caseload, which on some days can reach 1,500 or more, Clerk Leroy Hudson said.
"I had a lot of concerns with the sheer volume and the mixture of civil, criminal and traffic cases," Hudson said. "We're afraid of people being late getting into the courtrooms, getting confused or getting into the wrong courtroom."
Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or mbowes@timesdispatch.com.
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Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
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