Audit of the New Bedford District Court Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

An overview of the purpose and process of auditing the New Bedford District Court.

Overview

In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor has conducted a performance audit of certain activities of the New Bedford District Court (NBDC) for the period July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2022.

We conducted this performance audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Below is a list of our audit objectives, indicating each question we intended our audit to answer and the conclusion we reached regarding each objective.

Objective	Conclusion
Did NBDC have closed criminal case information in an electronic format that was remotely accessible to the public, unless otherwise restricted, as required by Rule 5(a)(2) of Massachusetts Trial Court Rule XIV: Uniform Rules on Public Access to Court Records?	Yes; see Other Matters
Did NBDC ensure that at least one clerk attended all criminal sessions of the court, as required by Section 12 of Chapter 218 of the General Laws?	Yes

 

To accomplish our audit objectives, we gained an understanding of the aspects of NBDC’s internal control environment that we determined to be relevant to our objectives by reviewing NBDC’s mission statement, policies, and procedures, as well as by interviewing NBDC management and employees. We evaluated the design and implementation and tested the operating effectiveness of the internal control for criminal complaint applications,² which must be approved by a clerk before criminal cases are assigned a docket number to make them official cases before they are entered into MassCourts.

To obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to address our audit objectives, we performed the following procedures.

Public Remote Access to Closed Criminal Cases

We determined whether NBDC had closed criminal case information in an electronic format that was remotely accessible to the public, unless otherwise restricted, as required by Rule 5(a)(2) of Massachusetts Trial Court Rule XIV: Uniform Rules on Public Access to Court Records. To do this, we selected a random, statistical sample of 60 closed criminal cases—using a 95% confidence level,³ a 0% expected error rate,⁴ and a 5% tolerable error rate⁵—from the population of 11,106 criminal cases that were closed during the audit period. We obtained the case files related to our sample and verified that the case file information was remotely accessible to the public. Specifically, we verified that the public could remotely access the following information: the defendant’s name, the name of each attorney who had entered an appearance in the case, docket information, and calendar information (e.g., scheduled events related to the case).

We noted no exceptions in our testing; therefore, we conclude that, for the items we tested, NBDC made closed criminal case information available in an electronic format that was remotely accessible to the public.

Clerk Attendance in Sessions

To determine whether NBDC ensured that at least one clerk attended all criminal sessions of the court, as required by Section 12 of Chapter 218 of the General Laws, we selected a random, statistical sample of 60 closed criminal cases—using a 95% confidence level, a 0% expected error rate, and a 5% tolerable error rate—from the population of 11,106 criminal cases that were closed during our audit period. We obtained the case files related to our sample and verified that at least one clerk attended the related criminal sessions of the court.

We noted no exceptions in our testing; therefore, we conclude that, for the items we tested, NBDC ensured that at least one clerk attended all criminal sessions of the court.

Data Reliability Assessment

To determine the reliability of the list of criminal cases that were closed during the audit period, which we received from NBDC officials, we selected a random sample of 20 closed criminal cases from the list and traced them to the hardcopy closed criminal dockets for agreement. In addition, we selected a judgmental sample of 20 hardcopy closed criminal dockets from our audit period and traced them to the list of criminal cases that were closed during the audit period for agreement. We also performed validity and integrity tests on the list, including checking for dates outside our audit period, hidden rows and columns, and duplicates records.

Based on the results of the data reliability assessment procedures described above, we determined that the information obtained for our audit period was sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our audit.

Conclusion

Our audit revealed no significant instances of noncompliance by NBDC that must be reported under generally accepted government auditing standards; therefore, this report contains no findings.

2.    According to the Massachusetts Trial Court website, a complaint application in a criminal case is “a complaint alleging that a crime has been committed by the defendant . . . including a police report . . . or other written information supporting the complaint.” A police department or an individual submitting a complaint submits this application to the clerk magistrate.

 

3.    Confidence level is a mathematically based measure of the auditor’s assurance that the sample results (statistic) are representative of the population (parameter), expressed as a percentage.

4.    Expected error rate is the number of errors that are expected in the population, expressed as a percentage. It is based on the auditor’s knowledge of factors such as prior year results, the understanding of controls gained in planning, or a probe sample.

5.    The tolerable error rate (which is expressed as a percentage) is the maximum error in the population that is acceptable while still using the sample to conclude that the results from the sample can be relied on.

Date published:	April 18, 2024