TOPEKA—For a third time since 2009, the Kansas judicial branch has been recognized by the National Center for State Courts for reporting excellence in providing detailed and publishable court caseload data.
This year's national recognition was for reporting excellence for six continuous years.
Kansas received two excellence awards from the Court Statistics Project in 2009 in recognition of its reporting in two categories — civil and juvenile caseload statistics. Since then, Kansas has continued to report detailed case type data in all five categories that conform to the definitions and case counting rules in the State Court Guide to Statistical Reporting.
"I'm proud that Kansas was recognized for its efforts to collect and publish caseload data in a manner that gives it utility beyond our state," said Lawton R. Nuss, chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court. "This allows us to see how Kansas compares to other states in number and types of cases processed and their outcomes."
The Kansas judicial branch collects data about nearly half a million court cases handled each year by district courts across Kansas, as well as by the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. The data are published in an annual report available on the judicial branch website at www.kscourts.org.
The data are also published on the Court Statistics Project website at www.courtstatistics.org to allow for national and cross-state analysis of case data to give court officials information essential to efficient and effective management of fair and impartial courts.
The Court Statistics Project is a joint effort by the National Center for State Courts and the Conference of State Court Administrators, an organization composed of state court administrators from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S territories.
When considering award candidates, the Court Statistics Project evaluates the following criteria:
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number of case types reported
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number of status categories, case characteristics, and manners of disposition reported
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publishability/quality of data reported
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improvements from past reporting years
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sustained excellent reporting
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overall support and investment in improving caseload reporting
Kansas, like other state court systems, has long published its own data. But it didn't always directly compare to other states because of differences in court structure, case definitions and counting practices, court rules, statutes, or terminology. Adhering to the statistical reporting standards established by the Court Statistics Project ensures comparability of all data reported to the project.