So You Want to Courtwatch?

For decades, advocates, activists, and organizations have deployed courtwatching as a tactic to achieve a wide variety of outcomes, such as ensuring a more transparent criminal legal system, reporting on judges or prosecutors, gathering information for a campaign, providing individual case support, increasing civic engagement, and guaranteeing policy implementation. This document is written for organizers who are thinking about using courtwatching as a tactic within a larger campaign strategy to dismantle the criminal legal or immigration systems. Specifically, this report provides an overview of various courtwatching models, lays out an array of feasibility questions to consider before committing to developing a program, and includes practical tips for courtwatching efforts that rely primarily on volunteers.