In his first municipal court briefing to the Killeen City Council last Tuesday, Judge Kris Krishna began with four main topics for discussion: challenges, the number of defendants, funds collected and metrics from the National Center for State Courts.
“The biggest issue we face in the court, really for the last year, is staff turnover,” Krisna said.
With a high than normal rate of turnover Krishna said it’s causing stress for existing employees due to the additional workload and time spent on training new employees.
“We have major projects which we are trying to do,” Krishna said. “We are trying to increase the efficiency of the court with new technology.”
With pending technology upgrades, Krishna says he is trying to create more efficiency within the department and for services provided to the public.
The list of new technology includes installing credit card machines, implementing a new pay-by-phone system, public access for online records and dockets, defense attorney access and to fully utilize more online options.
Krishna’s next update was the number of defendants in municipal court. There were 1,564 defendants were seen in the lobby during May, 669 defendants appeared for court dockets.
As part of his presentation, Krishna explained that funds collected by the court are split between fines, fees and court costs which go to the state and to the City of Killeen.
In April, courts collected 314,307 with $97,477 remitted to the state, the city retained $217,030. In May, courts collected $357,580 with $108,191 remitted to the state, the city retained $249,389, according to Krishna’s report.
Krishna explained that the state court metrics are what he uses to conduct business and a good tool to measure progress on cases that are handled by the court.
“The clearance rate is the number of outgoing cases against the number of incoming cases for each month,” Krishna said. “In April, the court cleared 124.30% of cases and in May the court cleared 99.59% of cases.”
Krishna explained that the time to disposition is the percentage of cases disposed or otherwise resolved within established time frames.
“This measure, used along with the clearance rate and the age of active pending caseload, is an essential management tool that assesses the length of time it takes a court to process cases,” Krishna said.
He went on to say that clearance rates are low at present because of the back load of cases awaiting disposition with some at 180 days.
Between 2018 and 2022 the court was not focusing on conducting warrants, activating them and following through on them.
“We are currently working to address the back load of cases, but with the other departmental challenges, it may take some time,” Krishna said.