Spokane Community Court faces 87% caseload bump from last year amid understaffing

(The Center Square) - Spokane’s elected officials received an update Monday on community court capacity, noting an almost 87% increase in caseload from last year amid concerns over long-term sustainability.

The update came as Spokane prepares to fully enforce its anti-camping ordinances in light of a recent Supreme Court decision that restored law enforcement’s ability to do so. However, with caseloads through the roof, the city council is skeptical about how much the court can sustain.

During a Monday committee meeting, Court Administrator Howard Delaney told the council that his department could absorb the increased volume under its current staffing model. He said the public defenders and prosecutor’s offices are the ones struggling.

“Both the prosecutors and public defenders are literally at the edge of what they can do with existing staffing levels,” Delaney said. “Both of them really need to add another attorney to community court and they just don’t have the staff.”

He said Spokane is also losing two public defenders at the end of August, which the city might not be able to replace until October. On top of that, there’s only one prosecutor with limited staff.

Delaney said that from July 2023 to June 2024, Community Court received 1,408 new cases, just under 87% more than the 753 cases from the year before. He said that most of that increase was in the last three months alone.

However, Community Court isn’t the only one struggling with caseloads. Delaney said that standard case filings outside of Community Court also increased, and just last week, there was a 90-minute docket with 95 people on it, giving each of them less than a minute.

“The court itself, based on the existing staffing models, assuming no loss and resources going forward, can absorb and process those cases,” Delaney said. “The team members are the ones that will struggle.”

Still, the Community Court is already struggling with funding. Not to mention that Mayor Lisa Brown proposed defunding Municipal Court by roughly $528,000 last month and the Public Defender’s Office by $366,000, on top of $9.3 million from police and a wealth of other cuts.

With the city grappling with an approximately $50 million structural deficit that could take years to fill, there’s not much left to bolster Community Court or the rest of Municipal Court.

Councilmember Michael Cathcart questioned whether the city could contract public defenders amid the shortage, similar to the county’s model. However, Council President Betsy Wilkerson doubted whether the community court could handle the anticipated increase at all.

Wilkerson said that regardless of the public defender and prosecutor shortage, only a few judges handle all these cases, leaving defendants in a state of “limbo” longer than they should.

“It’s a very fragile system,” she said, “so, with the increase, it just makes me concerned in that we’re not funding it at the level it needs to be.”