This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 18th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Courts have had to modernize in the wake of COVID.

Many of the efficiencies they've discovered probably ought to stay, so how have they performed?

And how has COVID shifted the balance of power between defense and prosecution?

Mark Levin is Chief Policy Council at the council on criminal justice.

We spoke last month.

Courts, I think in the wake of COVID have discovered some efficiencies,

which is some of their work doesn't have to be done in a courtroom, but some of it really does have to take place in a courtroom.

And it's weird to imagine that a defendant would appear via Zoom before a judge.

But so what have you observed as the as the broad wake of COVID with respect to the judicial branch of government trying to do its job of adjudicating criminal cases.

Yeah, no, it forced us to prioritize, I think, and to modernize, which we should have been doing in many ways already.

And now the challenge, hopefully, is the pandemic, at least E EBS is to figure out which innovations to keep and

what things we really do need to do in person for example and of course all this is

coming against the backdrop of an enormous backlog where some jurisdictions from Seattle to Houston or it could take several years to clear out cases.

And so the first step I said prioritized, that's where we have to say arresting people for unpaid fines and fees from marijuana.

Even, you know, hard drugs, you know, people could be referred to treatment through deflection programs

that have shown a lot of positive impact because you know bringing people to jail and especially letting them languish there it has a lot of negative effects where that actually causes the person more problems than they ever presented to society to begin with.

So, um, contracting COVID, possibly chief among them.

Yes, and of course while you're in jail you often lose your job, your your apartment might be, you might not be able to pay a rent, you might be evicted, your

cars impounded, which people forget.

That's like $500 to get your car back, even if it's only a couple days, which $500 a lot of people

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