For years AVCV has been receiving anecdotal reports that crime victims have been prevented from exercising their rights in court as guaranteed by the Arizona Constitution.   

Since AVCV cannot attend every court proceeding and monitor the activities directly, we will use this website to gather, sort and analyze trends in court proceedings from the observations of both trained volunteers and the general public.  So make your voice heard! 

The court monitoring program’s primary goal is to gather standardized, objective information about how judges enforce victims’ rights.  This program will help us: identify trends in court practices regarding victims’ rights; identify judges with good and bad bench practices; determine models that work effectively in ensuring victims can maximize their rights in court; provide an opportunity to work collaboratively with the judicial branch of government to improve every victim’s ability to exercise his or her rights; and educate voters. 

How Courts in Action Works 

The foundation of this program is utilizing trained volunteers, like you, who will regularly attend court proceedings and record their observations.

Volunteers who are accepted into the program will receive 2 hours of classroom training, plus a one-day practical in-court.  Once you have become comfortable with the criteria used to record your observations, you will be encouraged to monitor court proceedings and submit your information for inclusion in our database, which will be available on this website. 

In order to maximize the value of our database of judges, we also want to encourage the general public to enter observations about judicial conduct into our database as well.  The different data sets will be kept separate.  However, giving you - the public, an opportunity to share your observations is critical for the free flow of information. 

An important fact to note is that all data collected will be based on a questionnaire developed by Arizona Voice for Crime Victims.  This 55 question form addresses specific areas including: court efficiency, judicial demeanor, public access, victims’ rights, other court participants (lawyers in court, staff, etc.), conclusions, and an award section to identify a person whose performance was exemplary.

Also, all data will be screened by AVCV staff prior to being included in the database.  Persons submitting data may be contacted for further information about their observations prior to their data being included.