Effect of Case Management on Access to Justice Strategy in Molo Law Courts of Nakuru County, Kenya

Abstract

Access to justice suffers a number of challenges and results to ineffective functioning of the justice system. Despite the existence of empirical studies on strategy implementation and strategic planning in the Judiciary, no research has been carried out on the effect of case management on access to justice. The population of the study comprised one hundred and thirty five respondents being magistrates, Judicial staff, Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) counsels, advocates, police and prison services, children and probation officers based in Molo Law courts. The study used the descriptive research design. Stratified proportional sampling was used to categorize various stakeholders into strata and determine the number of participants that would be selected from each stratum. Simple random sampling was used to select individual respondents from each stratum. Primary data was collected by use of questionnaires, where quantitative data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics specifically Spearman correlation analysis, while qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis. The study targeted to collected data from 94 individual but only 72 were able to complete and return their questionnaires to the researcher. From the study findings, the values of Spearman correlation coefficient were r = 0.735 for case management. This implies that the way case management is handled is an important determinant of whether there will be access to justice or not.