Court staff

In March 2023, court staff and judicial officers from 13 Pacific countries attended the Pacific Justice Sector Programme’s Court Performance Management and Annual Reporting workshop in Wellington NZ. Participants looked at how court data is captured, analysed and reported, then worked through their own data to understand how their home courts are performing against various indicators, and what responses might be needed as a result.

Below are the supporting resources.

Providing customer service is a component of every government organisation and a responsibility of all employees working within to deliver.

This is a training toolkit designed to support the delivery of customer service training to court staff and provides information and guidance supported by resources used within the New Zealand Ministry of Justice. 

This is a suggested approach with the expectation that any of these documents or tools will need to be reviewed and tailored to accommodate the individual circumstances of your country (and jurisdiction).

The training aims to provide staff with clarity around their responsibilities and strategies to build on customer service skills and behaviours. In order to optimise the outcomes, training may be supported and enhanced by:

• Ministry of Justice heads providing guidance and clarity around their expectations for customer service delivery standards through policies, guidelines, mission statements
• Managers re-enforcing Ministry objectives by monitoring and providing feedback for staff, specifically for the completed assignments, and measuring and reporting on any key performance indicators
• Managers using the assignments to identify specific training needs for inclusion in workshop training
• Trainers amending delivery resources and activities to include branding, graphics and tailoring the content and activities to meet identified training needs.

In any judicial system, the keeping of court records and recording evidence is an integral part of the role of a court-taker, whether by hand or electronically.

New Zealand is fortunate to have a digital evidence recording system, but we know that many of the Pacific Island countries must reply on manual records and minute taking. We have looked to share what New Zealand resources could be of benefit while trying to source and share more relevant Pacific experiences.
All these resources for minute taking go hand in hand with the decision-making training undertaken by judicial officers where they are provided with a template for capturing and making their decisions. Following such a template means judicial decisions should be clearly and fully set out and thereby require less determination from the minute taker as to what should be recorded.

The following resources are available for minute taking with suggestions on how they can be utilised to help your staff understand the part they play and how to ensure the court records are maintained.

There are innumerable disabilities that affect people’s experience of the judicial system and affect their access to justice – whether it be physical, mental, medical, psychological, social, cultural or otherwise. Some disabilities are generic and have ready-made solutions while others not so discernible so are more difficult to cater for. This is a training toolkit designed to support how Pacific Island countries may accommodate and respond to the needs of the disabled customers that they encounter.

The toolkit aims to provide resources for training for staff by first building their awareness of disability issues, and to identify the barriers that exist that prevent people from being able to participate in the judicial system.
The training resources have gratefully been sourced from the Office of Disability Issues, a New Zealand organisation specifically set up as a focal point for government on disability issues and administered by the Ministry of Social Development. Their training module is supported by a copy of their 2016 Disability Strategy and we have added some other design resources that you might find useful. All these resources are explained in detail further on.

Understanding the barriers that are in place will then help staff identify and plan how to adapt their physical environment and build their own Pacific resources and solutions to accommodate and respond to disabled customers’ needs. Removing these barriers enables everybody being able to participate and widens access to justice.

As a measure for assessment and an activity during the training, staff are asked to create a list of as many disabilities that they can. They can then demonstrate their awareness, understanding and empathy to identify potential barriers and the measures needed to address these. The final part of the activity is to create a list of options available and actions that can be implemented to address and remove these barriers.

These lists could then go on to be used to create a resource for management, identifying the types of disabilities and frequency they occur, potential barriers and suggestions for remedy from an in-country and local perspective that can be built into a court workplan of action.

This is a suggested approach with the expectation that any of these documents or tools will need to be reviewed and tailored to accommodate the individual circumstances of each Pacific Island country. We have provided comments where we think they could be modified and made suggestions about what to include or replace.

Safety and security relates not only to personal safety but also to things like prevention and protection, security of buildings, documents and information and safety for customers using our services and facilities.

In New Zealand, the safety and steps measures taken in the court are derived from the substantive legislation like the Health and Safety at Work Act 2016, Privacy Act 2020 and specifically for courts, the Court Security Act 1999 that governs the Court Security officers.

Stemming from that legislation, the Ministry have drafted the policies, standards and protocols that we operate under and these guide the training that we provide.

Participants for this training will consider what human trafficking is, identify the operational indicators of human trafficking and complete an assignment in order to answer some of these questions, can participate in a discussion group and create an action plan of things that they can do to support and accommodate victims.