Justice Indicators. Vera Institute of Justice. April Paper prepared for the UNDP Governance Indicators Project, Oslo Governance Centre.

Transcription

1 Justice Indicators Vera Institute of Justice April 2005 Paper prepared for the UNDP Governance Indicators Project, Oslo Governance Centre. Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 1

2 Performance measurement within the justice system is an important way to assess progress towards the goals of good governance. 1 With the careful choice of performance measures (or indicators ) this exercise can focus the attention of reformers on the experiences of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, who always experience the highest rates of victimisation and the most difficulties accessing justice. However, indicators widely used in the assessment of justice systems may miss important facets of the experiences of those who are poor and marginalized. With this in mind, the paper discusses the use of traditional justice sector indicators, suggests principles of good practice for the development of propoor, gender-sensitive measures, and offers several broadly applicable examples This document is a reworked version of a guide on performance indicators that was developed by the Vera Institute of Justice under the British Department for International Development s Safety Security and Access to Justice program. The full guide was written for programme managers responsible for improving the delivery of safety, security, and access to justice in any part of the world and provides a framework for thinking about and developing a comprehensive system of performance measurement. For a more detailed discussion and additional examples, please consult the complete guide which is available on-line at Background A country s justice system aims to ensure safety, protect property, assert legal rights and mediate differences among citizens. Systems that are unable to provide these protections disproportionately impact the poor and vulnerable. There are several reasons for this. Many poor neighbourhoods have high crime rates. What is more, the impact of crime on poor people can be particularly serious. Those who have little may be pushed deeper into poverty by the loss of scarce resources, and violent crime that results in hospitalization and with it a loss of productivity can have significant repercussions for those who rely on the victim for support. Similarly, a period of incarceration can mean the loss of income for a whole family. 2 In many countries the poor live in rural areas far from police stations and courtrooms. Without transport, it may be impossible to seek redress through formal measures. Even where courts are accessible, prohibitively long waiting times and complex procedures for lodging complaints can put justice out of reach. In many settings the poor also experience difficulties finding legal representation and when they do get to court, they tend to be more dissatisfied than others with the results. Finally, because the overwhelming majority of those arrested, charged and held in prison the world 1 In the UNDP document Governance for Sustainable Human Development, governance is described as The exercise of political, economic and administrative authority in the management of a country s affairs at all levels. It comprises the mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizen s and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences. 2 For a more detailed discussion of the links between justice and poverty see Justice and Poverty Reduction (London: Department for International Development, 2000). Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 2

3 over are poor, the ability of police, courts and prisons to provide fair and humane treatment is critical for protecting this population. Women also tend to suffer disproportionately under inefficient or corrupt justice systems. In many areas the police, courts and judiciary are male-dominated. Women may find it difficult or impossible to get fair representation and may experience discrimination or even abuse when they seek to do so. A study conducted by the Ugandan government reported that gender disparities among those who make and enforce laws, male domination of informal systems of dispute resolution, lack of access to education and predominantly domestic roles all contributed to the marginalization of women and restricted their access to justice. 3 Many performance measures assess quantity. For example, measures may assess the number of police officers working in a city, the number of crimes reported, time taken to try a case, or prison populations. These measures provide information which is important to assess the work of different parts of a justice system. Nonetheless, the traditional quantitative approach to performance measurement is problematic when it comes to helping justice systems better serve the poor and vulnerable. Quantitative indicators are often based on administrative databases used to organize systems or manage resources, and such databases tend to say little about the quality or experience of justice. In addition, it is often difficult to know who is included in quantitative measures, with the result that it may be impossible to disaggregate data to learn about the experiences of population subsets. Measures may systematically miss the most vulnerable, for example women, those who do not have access to a telephone, illegal or unregistered residents, those who live rural areas, or do not speak the dominant language. Finally, measures that are based on the amount of service provided often do not offer the kind of detailed information on points of system failure that reformers need. Using Indicators Effectively An indicator is a measure that helps answer the question of how much, or whether, progress is being made toward a certain objective. 4 Indicators can be used at the highest policy levels to measure progress towards an overarching purpose, such as assuring equal access to justice across lines of gender, ethnicity, or economic class. At a second level, indicators are also commonly used to measure progress toward institutional objectives (intermediate outputs) such as increasing the number of criminal convictions of those committing violent crimes or expanding the provision of legal services to people in poverty that are expected to contribute to broader policy goals. At a third level, indicators can be used to measure the daily activities through which an institution can attain its objectives. 3 Government of Uganda, 2002, Study on Gender and Access to Justice, The Republic of Uganda Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Justice, Law and Order Sector 4 This definition comes from the Handbook of Democracy and Governance Program Indicators (Washington, DC: U.S. Agency for International Development, 1998). The World Bank defines an indicator as information [that] can be used to assess performance and assist in planning for the future. (Judicial Sector Indicators (JSI), a World Bank Information System available on the web at Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 3

4 An assessment of a country s justice system as it relates to governance is principally concerned with the first two levels: strategic (or first-level) and institutional (or second-level) indicators. Activity (or third-level) indicators are essential for front-line management, but they do not provide information on the extent to which a justice system is achieving its aims. The choice of indicator does not necessarily follow obviously from the objective. Consider the institutional objective of successfully prosecuting more of the crimes affecting poor urban populations. Conviction rates may seem to be an obvious measure of the success of prosecution, but how should you measure conviction rates? Many police agencies think of conviction rates as the percentage of people convicted among the total number of people initially charged with a crime; but prosecution agencies in those jurisdictions may calculate conviction rates as a percentage of people who actually stand trial, eliminating from the denominator all of those cases where the prosecution or the court dismisses the charges before the trial begins. The denominator matters, because if the conviction rate is calculated based only on the number of cases that go to trial, prosecutors can raise their conviction rate by withdrawing weaker cases before trial. Indicators are almost always proxies of the outcomes or concepts they measure. To varying degrees, indicators are removed from the outcome of interest and simplified in order to make it possible to measure them easily, frequently, and at low cost. Their value lies in the fact that they are expected to correlate with the desired outcome, but the correlation is rarely perfect: changes in most indicators are fundamentally ambiguous. Consider, for example, the proxy indicator most widely used to measure changes in the volume of crime: crimes reported to the police. Changes in this proxy measure are always ambiguous. An increase in the rate of reported crime could indicate a higher real crime rate, an increased level of confidence in the police, or both. 5 It follows, then, that an indicator should rarely be used on its own. To interpret changes in ambiguous indicators, you should always use a group or basket of indicators relating to the same policy objective. Baskets of indicators provide a more valid, reliable, and rounded view of policy progress. At the same time, you must not allow the basket to get too big. A very large basket of indicators takes too much time to interpret and can numb the will of officials to achieve measurable results. Studies of organizational management suggest that a basket of between three and seven well-chosen indicators provides the degree of validity and the ease of interpretation required. The art here lies in your ability to assemble small baskets of powerful indicators. 5 Example cited from Phillipa Hayden, Scoping Study for Developing Indicators for Safety, Security and Access to Justice (SSAJ) Programmes (Birmingham, England: Performance Assessment Resource Centre, 2003). Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 4

5 An example of how a few indicators may be used together to provide insight into the same phenomenon is provided in Box Box 1.1: A Basket of Indicators Used to Measure a Single Concept Aim: Equal access to justice across economic divides Indicator 1: Number of new courts opened in rural and urban areas with concentrations of marginalized populations Indicator 2: Number of courts per 100,000 residents Indicator 3: Percentage of citizens who say that they have access to court systems to resolve disputes Indicator 4: Percentage of accused not represented at trial As a group, these four indicators give a better indication of equal access to justice a first-level, strategic purpose than any one of them would alone. But the first two indicators are not particularly powerful, and the basket as a whole is poorly balanced. The first indicator in the basket the number of new courts opened among marginalized populations measures the activity of a court-building program, but it does not tell us whether the result of that program is that marginalized populations are coming closer to having their fair share of courts. The second indicator tells us nothing about the equality of the distribution of courts. The third indicator also tells us nothing about equality, but because it is based on a survey, it could easily be adjusted to reveal that information. Finally, the basket as a whole is unbalanced because three indicators relate to the courts, and one to legal aid. When bundling indicators together to measure progress toward a high-level purpose, it is best to avoid narrower activity indicators and draw one indicator from each institution that contributes to the overall purpose. A better balanced version is shown in Box This example is drawn from a larger set of indicators described in Handbook of Democracy and Governance Programme Indicators. Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 5

6 Box 1.3: A Better Balanced Basket Aim: Equal access to justice across economic divides Indicator 1: Percentage of citizens who say that they have access to court systems to resolve disputes, disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, region, and level of urbanization Indicator 2: Percentage of accused persons legally represented at one or more court appearances in their cases, disaggregated as above Indicator 3: Percentage of citizens who say that the police will respond to them without requiring a bribe if called to resolve a dispute, disaggregated as above Indicator 4: Ratio of prosecution caseloads in courts serving wealthier communities to those in courts serving marginalized communities Two of the indicators in this second version of the basket are adapted from the first version but are disaggregated to reveal issues of inequality. The third and fourth add balance by extending the group of indicators to apply to police and prosecution services. Test your indicators for sensitivity to the changes you hope to make. Ask yourself: if your program is successful over the first three to six months, when will that improvement be reflected in your indicators? If the change is not reflected quickly, look for indicators that are more sensitive to the changes you hope to make. Design indicators that allow you to isolate the experiences of relatively powerless groups, such as women and people living in poverty. Some indicators will inherently reflect the experience of particular groups, but for most indicators you will need to be able disaggregate the data. Administrative data sources such as reports on prison violence are often reported in aggregate form, thus making it impossible to assess the experiences of particular groups. Official reports on prison violence (to extend the present example) may be useful in assessing prison conditions, but only if they are supplemented with indicators that describe experiences of violence among different population segments. One example of the latter would be interviews with exinmates. Avoid creating perverse incentives. You should construct indicators that promote and reinforce positive activities that is, activities that move systems closer to a desired outcome. For example, choosing the number of charges filed per officer as an indicator of police performance may provide an incentive to increase easily made arrests for petty offences, tying up resources and having little impact on public safety. In this example, a better indicator of police work would be the average amount of time to respond to reports of violent crime. Use the simplest and least expensive indicators that you can. It is important to establish whether existing data sources can inform an indicator before spending money to collect new data. If fresh data do need to be collected, there are usually several ways to do so. The choices typically involve a trade-off between quality and cost. Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 6

7 Build confidence in indicators among stakeholders. Action should be guided by changes in indicators over time. Before this can happen, though, responsible officials need to have confidence in the indicators. Design indicators that make sense to most people. The less you need to explain, the more readily your indicators will be accepted. Data Sources for Indicators The most common sources of data are: administrative databases surveys third-party reports (including press reports) legislation There are usually several data sources from which you can calculate a given indicator. There is rarely a correct choice: some sources are more expensive to use; some are more readily available; and some are updated with greater frequency. All are flawed. The challenge is to understand those flaws. The choice of data source is entirely contextual. For example, if a government already conducts an annual survey of a representative sample of the population, adding a question to the survey about violent victimization may be relatively easy. On the other hand, creating and sustaining a survey from scratch may be prohibitively expensive; in such cases, using administrative data may be more practical. Some indicators can be implemented using data from more than one institution. Conviction rates, for example, can be calculated by matching data drawn from the police and the courts. On the other hand, actually matching data from multiple sources may be difficult or impossible; in the present instance, it may be more practical to rely on data solely from prosecutors. Even when drawn from a single institution, an administrative data source may serve well in one country and very poorly in the next. For example, police records of cases of intimate partner abuse may provide a good indication of levels of domestic violence in some communities. However, if women are not taken seriously by the authorities, if they feel they risk further abuse by calling the police, or if the police keep poor records, then levels of domestic violence might be better measured by confidential surveys or hospital records of intimate partner homicides. (Note that the latter assumes that homicides are accurately attributed, and that their numbers rise and fall together with rates of violence; this is not always the case.) 2. Strategic Indicators Good governance in the justice sector can be broken down into strategic aims. These aims may include improving personal safety for all members of society; making the Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 7

8 courts and other systems of redress accessible to all; and improving treatment of those convicted or suspected of crimes. Because in most cases justice sector reform must be system-wide to be effective, the basket of indicators chosen to assess these aims should likewise address the sector as a whole; a collection of indicators that focus on one part of the system alone will probably misrepresent the whole. For example, efforts to improve public safety by increasing arrest rates in rape cases where the perpetrator is know to the victim will achieve that end only if the courts are able to secure convictions. 2.1 Safety and Security For both citizens and government officials, perceptions of safety are at least as important as actual crime rates. And in fact, the two are not directly correlated. Fortunately, experience in several countries demonstrates that governments can improve public security and make people feel safer. The two most widespread indicators of safety are change in crime volume from one period to the next, and crime rate in one location compared with that of another. To construct either of these indicators, however, you must select a source of crime data and decide which crimes to count. Neither of these choices is straightforward. The sources of crime data most readily available are official police statistics and victimization surveys. Both are imperfect measures that can produce inconsistent results. Police statistics are distorted by unreported crime and often do not include the information needed to disaggregate victimization rates. The accuracy of surveys depends on who conducts interviews, what questions are asked, and how representative the sample is. Survey results may be distorted by mistrust of surveyors, faulty memory and sampling errors. As for deciding which crimes to count, traditional indicators usually focus on a relatively narrow range. The International Crime Victim Survey, for example, which has been used effectively in almost 20 developing countries, asks respondents about seven household crimes (burglary, attempted burglary, vehicle theft, theft from vehicles, vandalism of vehicles, bicycle theft, and motorcycle theft) and six personal crimes (robbery, theft from the person, assault and threats, sexual assault, consumer fraud, bribery and corruption). However, typical victims of different crimes usually differ by gender and economic status; the selection of indicators should reflect such differences. Together, police statistics and victim surveys provide a better sense of actual crime rates than either can alone. But neither says much about people s perception of security. The Vera guide Measuring Progress toward Safety and Justice recommends a spatial approach to measuring safety and security, focusing on four distinct locations: homes, streets and paths, public spaces, and justice institutions. For each of these locations, the guide suggests choosing one index to measure actual crime rates and another to measure perceptions of safety. These indices should be disaggregated by gender, geography, and level of poverty, whenever possible. Table 2.1 gives an example of Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 8

9 this approach as applied to the home, with a focus on experiences of domestic violence. Table 2.1: Selected Sector-Wide Strategic Indicators for Safety and Security Strategic purpose Potential indicators Possible data sources Improve safety and security at home Change in a domestic crime index (domestic violence incidents, residential burglaries, arson, homicides, and other crimes in the home, weighted by seriousness as locally defined) Police statistics Ambulance statistics Survey of service providers Victim survey Change in a personal domestic security index (perception of safety in the home) Perception survey Small group interviews 2.2 Access to Justice Access to justice should be widespread and equal. Strategic indicators for this aim might usefully measure success in removing hurdles that restrict access to the justice system, creating a sense of entitlement to justice among all population segments, and eliminating the expectation that officials need to be bribed. Traditional indicators of access to justice focus almost exclusively on structural access (Do the laws create an independent judiciary?) and physical access to the courts (Have courts been built and staffed?). These should be supplemented with indicators that measure the capacity of courts and lawyers to perform as promised, and the ability of people particularly women and those of marginal status to actually access the legal system. At the strategic level, the challenge is measuring the cumulative impact of more-responsive police, more-available legal advisors, moreconvenient courts, and other justice services. To measure progress across the justice sector as a whole, one could imagine at least three different approaches. One option would be to examine processes that depend on the simultaneous responsiveness of several institutions, such as the appropriate use of pre-trial detention, which depends almost equally on the efforts of police, prosecution, defence, courts, and prisons. A second option would be to measure what victims, witnesses, complainants, and accused persons know about their rights and available services. A third option would be to measure progress in the elimination of bias and corruption across the justice system. Table 2.2 suggests a number of indicators for measuring progress in each of these areas. These measures draw heavily on inspections and small group surveys rather than on administrative data. These indicators would need to be disaggregated to reveal differences among various marginalized groups, including people in poverty. Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 9

10 Table 2.2: Selected Sector-Wide Strategic Indicators for Access to Justice Strategic purpose Potential indicators Possible data sources Minimize pre-trial detention Change in the rate at which people are remanded in custody or fail to post bail following first court appearance Prison statistics Court statistics Change in the mean and median duration of pre-trial detention Prison statistics Court statistics Expand awareness of rights to assistance and access Change in the amount and quality of information available to victims, witnesses, complainants, and accused persons about their rights to assistance and access to institutions that can resolve their disputes Institutional visitors reports Court users survey Survey of facility managers Victim survey Change in the awareness of victims, witnesses, complainants, and accused persons about their rights to assistance and access to institutions that can resolve their disputes Perception survey Small group interviews Reduce bias throughout the justice system Change in diversity (by gender, ethnicity, geography, religion, or other relevant group) of professional staff of justice sector institutions Government personnel records Institutional manager survey Change in index of perceived bias within justice institutions Perception survey Small group interviews Reduce corruption throughout the justice system Change in index of perceived corruption Perception survey Small group interviews Formal complaints registered 3. Institutional Indicators The remainder of this paper provides a short summary of institutional (or secondlevel) indicators. Such indicators assess the progress of specific organizations responsible for safety, security, and accessible justice. Some of these organizations deal principally with criminal justice, but others, such as the courts, are responsible for a wide range of legal issues. Because strategic indicators often draw on the performance of justice institutions, one strength of a strategic system of performance measurement is its ability to develop indicators that summarize the simultaneous operation of several institutional components. It is important to consider the operation of individual justice institutions and to be aware of idiosyncrasies in the institutional data that helps constitute wider strategic indicators. For example, if one indicator of access to justice is the time between arrest and trial, it is important to know the proportion of defendants who are granted bail Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 10

11 and how this information is recorded. 7 Measuring Progress toward Safety and Justice includes a detailed rehearsal of possible sets of indicators for several institutions; here we have included a short summary. 3.1 Policing Nurturing effective and respectful policing lies at the heart of any effort to make people safe from violence, theft, and intimidation and to ensure that everyone has equal access to justice. Because the police are usually a poor person s first point of contact with the formal justice system, how officers respond to requests for assistance is particularly important. Indicators of performance traditionally used by police organisations focus on activity and productivity. Examples include arrests, seizures of illegal material (e.g. drugs or guns), and crimes solved. While useful, these indicators reveal more about what officers do than their ability to serve the needs of all citizens. The other common indicator of police performance is crime itself, but because police statistics are easily manipulated, this indicator requires continuous and rigorous auditing. In recent years, police organisations have shown increased interest in supplementing traditional indicators with measures that track levels of public confidence in the police and police responsiveness to victims of crime. A key indication that victims have confidence in the police is whether they actually report crimes against them, especially when assessed over time. In the Punjab region of India the opening of 13 new Community Policing Resource Centres, staffed by members of the local community and providing telephone hotlines and designated areas for women, resulted in a three-fold increase in reports of domestic violence, indicating rising levels of police confidence amongst women. 3.2 Prosecution and Legal Aid While prosecution services and legal aid institutions seek different outcomes, their work should be complementary. Prosecution services must demonstrate the ability of the criminal justice system as a whole to convict the guilty and free the innocent. Legal aid institutions should be concerned that their clients avoid harmful penalties and are satisfied with the fairness of the proceedings, including the adequacy of the legal advice they receive. Effective systems of performance indicators must allow both institutions to succeed at the same time, rather than encouraging one to flourish at the expense of the other. For many prosecution services, the pressure to increase conviction rates can obscure other outcomes. As a result, conviction rates are sometimes calculated in ways that create perverse incentives for prosecutors to delay weak cases indefinitely. An alternative would be to supplement better methods of calculating conviction rates with indicators on improving pre-trial practices, reducing bias in the use of discretion, and improving service to victims. 7 Bail refers to release pending trial with financial or non-financial surety; for example reporting weekly to a police precinct Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 11

12 Two common indicators of adequate legal aid services are the availability of publicly paid lawyers and the proportion of cases with poor defendants that result in victories in court. In order to better capture the quality of representation, availability and workload indicators should be supplemented with others more directly related to client needs and interests. These could usefully include: More-responsive and morecontinuous representation, greater protection from harmful punishment, and improved satisfaction with the services provided. 3.4 Judicial Performance Courts stand as a metaphor for justice in most countries. Courts can help people realize their rights, solve disputes, obtain remedies, and affirm rules that protect individuals from injury and preserve social peace. But to do this well for everyone, courts must be easily accessible and understood, trusted, and efficient, especially for members of the public who are disenfranchised, discriminated against, underprivileged, or neglected. Traditional indicators track the volume of cases passing through the system, the speed of decision making, and the character of decisions that are reached. Such indicators can alert officials to factors that impair a court s ability to meet the public s demand for judicial services, but they do not reveal much about the experience or quality of justice, and they provide little guidance for justice officials who want to serve the public well. In Brazil, for example, a system of measurement was used to assess five areas of performance for newly established courts set up to serve local communities and especially the poor. These five areas were number of cases filed, number of verdicts and sentences, the time taken to dispose each case, the proportion of hearings held on time, and an assessment of the quality of decisions. But because there was no information on the identity of those who use the court, the experiences of those individuals, or the impact of court decisions, it was impossible to assess the extent to which the new courts were meeting their express goals. 3.5 Non-Custodial Sentencing Whatever their form, non-custodial sentences should be humane, economical, and effective at preventing subsequent crime. They should be equally available to poor and disadvantaged offenders. They should be used in response to all but the most serious offences. And they should be used to reduce overcrowding in jails and prisons. Most indicators of performance for non-custodial sentencing are static and short-term, such as the total number of people under community supervision. A balanced basket of indicators for non-custodial sentencing would capture the availability and use of non-custodial mechanisms, while also measuring the extent to which these serve community-wide interests. Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 12

13 3.6 Prisons Where a genuine threat to public safety requires an offender to be removed from the community, that person should be housed in a safe, orderly, and humane setting. Achieving these standards in prison conditions benefits people living in poverty because nearly all prisoners and their families are poor. Traditional prison indicators tend to focus on the quantity of prisoners rather than on the quality of care provided. Measures such as prison population (proportion of the general population incarcerated) and ability to contain prisoners (number of escapes) say little about the experiences of people living in prison. Indicators of overcrowding and space per prisoner, which are also commonplace, come closer to measuring the quality of incarceration. Nonetheless, the size of the prison population tends to reflect the operation of other parts of the criminal justice system, which are better controlled through interventions in police, prosecution, and judicial institutions. The challenge in designing indicators for prison is to identify simple measures that capture the experience of incarceration, particularly as it burdens prisoners and their families over the long-term. Two outcomes that can be usefully measured with a variety of data are the living conditions within prisons and prisoners access to systems of redress. 3.7 Accountability Mechanisms Ombudsmen and other independent complaints bodies are crucial components of the justice sector, providing the poor with a real hope of redress if officials act in arbitrary or abusive ways. Their dual purposes are to build confidence among citizens in the institutions they oversee and to assure that officials are held accountable for arbitrary or abusive conduct. Among the indicators frequently used to measure the performance of these institutions are measures of productivity: the number of investigations completed and the duration of those investigations. While these are important, the greater challenge is to reveal how much access to justice accountability mechanisms provide, especially to people in poverty. Responsible officials might therefore focus on outcomes such as increasing confidence in accountability mechanisms among people in poverty, and enhancing the ability to hold people accountable for abusive or arbitrary conduct. 3.8 Non-State Justice Institutions People in poverty often rely on non-state institutions for safety and justice. These institutions present two special challenges for performance measurement: non-state institutions take a seemingly infinite number of forms, and they keep few records that are useful for measurement purposes. Some non-state justice institutions are ancient, some sprout up in urban centres as a result of under-governance or lawlessness, and some are offshoots of state institutions. In some places, they supplement or complement state institutions. In other places, they operate in lieu of state institutions. Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 13

14 While not much is known about non-state justice institutions, most observers believe that they represent valuable assets and present unique opportunities for advancing safety, security, and access to justice among the poor. Most observers also believe that non-state justice institutions frequently fail members of the communities they serve. Not all segments of society are equally served by non-state justice institutions: women, the elderly, and the poor are sometimes left out of the decision-making process. Moreover, non-state institutions sometimes coerce conciliation, force confessions, and serve the interests of unelected individuals and powerful groups. Most of the indicators currently in use for these institutions focus on the process of resolving disputes just one of the functions that non-state justice institutions provide. As is the case with indicators used to assess state justice institutions, measurements of non-state institutions focus on process, speed, volume, and outcome of decision making. Additional measures might usefully assess the extent to which non-state institutions make their work more transparent, improve the protection of rights, and enhance cooperation between non-state and state institutions. Vera Institute of Justice Justice Indicators 14