Jeff Nadler has a degree in criminology, extensive experience in the nation’s court systems, and an athlete’s affinity for strategy. He points to all of these as driving his interest in the criminal justice system, but the sports element is probably the most surprising.
Jeff honed his strategic thinking—and poise under stress, self-discipline, resilience, and, well, arm strength—as a senior division professional golfer, former pro arm wrestler (with a career high ranking of fifth in the world), and former football player for Florida State University.
Those skills came in handy immediately. Jeff’s first job out of college was substance abuse program coordinator with the Department of Corrections in Tallahassee, Florida. There, he came face to face with and began to understand the deep complexities and needs around rehabilitation.
Recidivism realities
In 1980, while statistics commonly cited a 50% recidivism rate, Jeff witnessed pretty much 100%. Even back then, offenders could make an easy $1500 a week selling drugs—that translates to at least $5500 a week in today’s dollars.
There was no real effort to prepare people in corrections facilities for a different way of life upon release. They didn’t gain other job skills or complete education there, and the money they could make returning to what they knew was a no-brainer—even in the face of potentially returning to prison. Minimum wage at the time was $3.10 an hour, or $124 a week before taxes.
Gaining deep court system experience
Jeff eventually moved to Arizona, where he worked in a range of court services at the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC)/Supreme Court. He gained extensive knowledge and experience in courts administration and overseeing grants and funds.
When he left the Supreme Court for consulting, he was fielding two or three clients at a time, helping with RFPs and sourcing technology and vendors. He helped start NCSC’s eCourts conference to help inform states about the benefits of and ways to modernize their court systems.
As a consultant, he presented legislation to the State of California and former Governor Schwarzenegger to apply digital court recording to save the state over $100 million a year with court adoption of electronic records.
Court System modernization doesn’t have to be painful
Jeff leads the Criminal Justice team at Resultant. He’s on a mission to help courts modernize without the problems that plague many states’ attempts to do so. Disparate systems are the biggest challenge because there are so many parts to each court system:
- Case management
- Jury analytics
- Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) compliance
- Law enforcement
- Corrections
- Communications
When different parts of the court can’t access the information they need, it really slows down their processing, and that impacts workers and correction facility residents alike, down to people being locked up longer than they need to be and employees leaving an unsustainable situation, adding understaffing to the problems the courts already have.
– Jeff Nadler
A recent case system modernization migration in Texas performed by another data company resulted in some unpleasant side effects, including increased jail population and the inability for employees to access information they previously could, resulting in some process times doubling or even quadrupling.
Jeff said, “We can also come into a situation like that and smooth it out before the lawsuits start happening. We have the experience and the inner working knowledge of the court systems to make it flow.”
Jeff appreciates his role at Resultant and the team members he gets to collaborate with: “For so many years as a consultant, it was just me handling very complex systems and all the details. I find it deeply rewarding to have an excellent team with me here.”
