Each week, the NBC television series Law and Order depicts a crime from its perpetration, through the investigation of the suspect and motives, all the way to the prosecution and sentencing of the suspect. In an hour, viewers can watch a criminal case progress through the New Your City criminal justice system- with commercials included.

Although the actual pursuit of justice is not accomplished in 60 minutes, it has become more efficient and accurate in McLean County, Ill., which uses the E*Justice System (EJS).

EJS is an integrated justice information system (IJIS) with software that allows the sharing of data among McLean County’s disparate justice divisions. According to John Zeunik, McLean County administrator, data sharing was once a far-off goal in this locality where redundant data entry was the rule, and the legacy systems were written in house with different computer languages (mainly in COBOL) and were inherently maintenance intensive.

"We observed that we could not communicate electronically between key computer systems," said David Kistner, support services division commander of the McLean County Sheriff’s Department. "Frankly, it was embarrassing in many instance to find out how horribly inefficient our existing system was." According to Zeunik, staff members wrote criminal case data on 3-inch-by-5-inch index cards, then filed them in boxes. This wasteful pattern permeated across the police and sheriffs departments, the jail system, the district attorney's office, the circuit clerk of the court, and up into the circuit court judge’s office.

Unveiling the Problem

The technical and personnel inefficiencies were revealed in September 1993 when McLean County presented its 1994 fiscal year budget to the county board. The office of the circuit court had requested funding for five new permanent employees. "We had just finished an extensive study of that office using consultants from KPMG [KPMG Peat Marwick LLP], mainly to study office efficiencies," said Zeunik. "That office was always asking for more people."

The increase in criminal case loads drove the need for more staff to enter data into the various systems (see "Criminal Convergence" sidebar); however, the redundant data increased the risk for mistakes. "With repeated duplication of data, there was reduced accuracy – more opportunity for keyboard errors," said Kistner. "This is a growing county. We couldn't simply prop up the inefficient system with endlessly hiring new employees."

Eyeing an IJIS

The county hoped technology could abate these bloating fiscal and staffing issues. Its first step was to bring in an IJIS consultant.
During the next two years, county department heads and the chair of the county board’s justice and public safety committee met weekly "before work to discuss how we could use technology to work more efficiently and as a close-knit team," said Kistner. As the county studied workflow patterns, Zeunik said it continued to add staff. "The justice system’s human resource demands were the largest expenditure for the county," said Zeunik.

The search for a technology remedy cultivated an esprit de corps among county leaders and justice officials, who had named their group the IJIS team. As it observed workflow within the jurisdictions, the group documented problems with the disparate systems and devised a vision along the way: a data warehouse from which all justice offices in the county could access the same accurate information. "We envisioned challenging ourselves to look at totally reengineering our systems and breaking existing paradigms," said Kistner. "Our vision for McLean was [that the system] would be integrated and seamless," added Zeunik.

As it continued to research software-based solutions, the team discussed its goals with the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) in Williamsburg, VA. After deciding to pursue an IJIS, Zeunik said the team formalized an RFP process, which drew the attention of IBM and SCT. However, TRW won the contract to provide McLean County with EJS. Voters agreed to finance EJS’s $3.3 million cost thought a bond issue. In 1995, TRW and the IJIS team began meeting every week in joint application development sessions to discuss the features that would benefit McLean County.

The Rollout

In September 1997, TRW’s product development and deployment teams began the first of a three-phase process to deploy EJS. Initially, TRW deployed the police-incident crime report and jail-management modules, E*Incident and E*Jail, respectively (see "Big Impact" sidebar). The sheriff’s department was the first to attempt an integration from the legacy to the new system.

"The McLean County Sheriff’s Department went ‘live’ on September 25, 1997, with E*Justice," said Kistner. "At that time, we loaded our previous jail-booking information and approximately 15,000 digital mug shots. Our older stand-alone system had been in use for digital mug shots for about two and a half years; this provided our knowledge base."

The new system made an immediate impact. "In the former jail system, ideally, one officer could book up to three inmates in an hour," said Zeunik. "In the new system, the information is already entered into the database by the arresting officer. When the suspect arrives at the jail, all the jail officer does is verify the information. Booking times have been reduced to eight minutes per inmate. It's truly seamless."

With the information entered early- usually at the time of arrest – fewer errors occur. Additionally, fewer people are needed to enter the data, and the data (with varying levels of security access) is shared throughout the entire justice process.
In October 1997, the county and TRW began the second phase of implementation. When complete, Phase II will allow the creation of warrants by the county circuit clerk, case management by the McLean County States Attorney’s Office, a banking system for the criminal justice system, and judicial calendaring.

Technical Baggage

Although Phase I is the realization of a long-time goal for the IJIS team, EJS comes with some technical baggage. For example, the learning curve is quite steep for those with very little computer experience, said Zeunik.
"The learning curve is manageable," Kistner said, "but we've found that comprehensive training is far more important than we first realized." According to Zeunik, "one of the system’s benefits is its ease of use, and we have spent some considerable time with a "train the trainer" program. However, some in the sheriff’s department had never used a mouse and a keyboard – just typewriters to enter information."
Kistner remarked the IJIS team also identified over 400 bugs in the Phase I modules. "This is normal for a massive system the size of IJIS," said Kistner. "As of this time, we have approximately 40 existing bugs that remain on our list to fix."

Looking Ahead

Kistner’s optimism for the software and relationship with TRW is evident.
"The software has helped us work more efficiently, but we expect this to increase dramatically as phases two [by December] and three [in 1999] are completed and we have worked out some of the bugs remaining in phase one," Kistner said. "We have a list of suggestions for improving the software, and [TRW] is acting on every single suggestion."

McLean’s IJIS has garnered attention from localities across the United States. "Other cities, counties and states have expressed a keen interest in our project and are watching to see if the software ultimately achieves our goals," said Kistner. "We regularly receive phone calls from these observers as they keep track of our progress and contemplate the integrated justice in their jurisdictions."
Myrna Gold is a Galt, California-based writer. E-mail mdingle-gold@usa.net.