Monday, April 2, 2007 | 7:09 a.m.
The need for more Clark County Family Court judges couldn't be clearer, the court's presiding judge says.
More judges - the Family Division is asking the Legislature for six - would shrink the time it would take to hear and resolve cases, Judge Art Ritchie says.
Cases handled by Family Court include adoptions, divorces and paternity matters, temporary protection orders and child abuse and neglect allegations.
"The citizens of Clark County are more likely to touch our court than civil or criminal," Ritchie says. "The benefits to the community are kind of obvious."
The six proposed Family Court judges would boost their ranks to 19. They are part of a requested funding package for 10 new judges for the 8th Judicial District, including three new judges to handle civil matters and one criminal judge. The proposal also includes two additional judges for Washoe County's Family Court.
Judges and court administrators sold their case to lawmakers on the Assembly Judiciary Committee on March 21.
The numbers tell the tale: Clark County, with a population of 1.9 million, has 33 judges handling more than 91,000 case filings per year. That means the county has 1.7 judges per 100,000 population, and 2,782 filings per judge.
Every Western state - including Nevada taken as a whole - has more judges per capita than Clark County, and far fewer filings per judge. By comparison, in Washington there are 1,659 filings per judge; in Arizona, 1,225; in Idaho, a paltry 500.
"We're seeing an impact on the quality of justice," Chief District Judge Kathy Hardcastle says, referring to the time judges can spend on individual cases. "We don't want to become an assembly-line court."
In their testimony, Hardcastle and Ritchie presented statistics showing the courts' rising caseloads, in large part because of the county's exploding population, and the consequences.
In 2000 there were 41,297 family and juvenile case filings. That number climbed to 58,760 in 2006 - a 42 percent rise.
The American Bar Association recommends that 90 percent of Family Court cases be disposed of within three months and 98 percent within six months. Yet in Clark County, only 34 percent are resolved within three months and 55 percent within six months .
The time it takes to get civil cases to disposition is similarly lagging, court statistics show.
According to committee testimony, one Family Court judge who handles juvenile cases must attempt to oversee as many as 10 foster care cases per hour, giving the judge an average of six minutes to hear each child's case.
Hardcastle says legislators were receptive to the request for more judges, although she notes that the Judiciary Committee doesn't hold the purse strings. Budget appropriators, who will look at Assembly Bill 246 in May, might drive a tough bargain, she said.
"Everybody appears to recognize the need," she said. "We'll get some new judges. It's just a question of how many."
The 10 proposed new judges for Clark County would cost the state $1.8 million annually for their salaries.
In addition, if the bill were approved, the county has agreed to pony up $7.2 million in additional annual funding for court staff and bailiffs to handle matters in the new criminal judge's court, a new deputy district attorney and deputy public defender. The county also has agreed to fund $19 million in one-time facility improvements to house the new judges.
Ritchie says the timing is key. As judges have been added in recent years on the civil and criminal side, it's imperative that the Family Court, one of the busiest in the nation, not get lost in the shuffle.
"It's pretty clear where the resources should go," he says. "From top to bottom, it's the Family Division's turn and the Family Division's need."
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