Technical Efficiency of the Kenyan Judiciary: a Case of the Magistrates‘ Courts

Abstract

Efficiency is a performance measure: in production, it is concerned with how well resources are used in a firm. For that matter, it should be tracked within a firm or an organisation. This study set to do just that, that is; track the technical efficiency of the Kenyan Judiciary through its first instant court system, the Magistrates‘ Court. This was done for the period January 2014 to January 2016. It involved first, estimating monthly average technical efficiency of the courts and using the estimates in the second stage to establish the courts‘ efficiency trend for the period. The estimation was by FDH while the trend was established by simple Excel graphs. ANOVA was done as a statistical test for the trend. The results pointed to an improving technical efficiency for the period January 2014 to January 2016. However, the improvement was found to be driven mainly by a few super-efficient courts. Analysis without these showed a declining Magistrates‘ Court technical efficiency. So, the said courts should be identified and used as a benchmark for the rest. The study settled on the Magistrates‘ Court because of its size, it handles the bulk of Kenyan filed court cases and is found in most areas. For FDH, it was chosen because it has the ability to handle multiple outputs without limiting its efficient frontier to a convex shape. Also, FDH needs no prior specification of a decision making unit‘s production function. However, because of FDH‘s sensitivity to outliers, this study reports result both with and without outliers.