Administrative Work Bogging Down Justice System: Suffolk DA

Assistant district attorneys in Suffolk DA Rachael Rollins' office spend between 4,000 and 8,000 hours a year transcribing data from paper documents into paper case file jackets, and administrative staff spends anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 hours copying much of that same data into a computer database, Rollins said Friday.

"I want that to sink in: 9,000 to 18,000 hours a year manually inputting data," she said. "In addition to the massive waste of human capital, we are also more vulnerable to human limitations and errors. Because of the demand in caseloads, my staff often have to triage tasks and almost always this means that stacks of case files waiting to be entered manually will have to wait when a distraught person who has been victimized walks in, an attorney calls with a question about a case or a courthouse closes during COVID."

Rollins spoke as part of MassINC's seventh annual Policy Summit in Pursuit of Justice, which focused its opening session on rooting out racial bias in the criminal legal system and the ways data is key to that goal. A lack of readily available data — including information that's kept on paper, in boxes in a warehouse instead of in online files — makes it harder to see where disparities exist and how severe they are, she said.

Rollins called on legislators to "demand action and compliance" with data-related provisions of a 2018 justice reform law.

"If [the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security] or any other agency are facing any obstacles that prevent them from implementing the law more than two years later, they should identify those obstacles," she said. "If it is a matter of funding, than the Legislature should appropriate the necessary funds."