article available at: Institute for Intergovernmental Research
Project selects Metatomix to create a new method of tracking of warrants, arrests, bookings
Crisp County, Georgia, August 7, 2007 — In 2004, the law enforcement and judicial communities of Crisp County, Georgia, began looking for an electronic solution to problems generated by mounting paperwork. The search for a means to streamline and ensure the accuracy of information in Crisp County’s criminal justice system attracted widespread attention and a flood of willing partners. One major concern, however, was the apparent conflict of maintaining the individuality of each office in the judicial and law enforcement systems while creating an electronic record-keeping process that allowed those offices to communicate with one another.
To remedy this situation, the Crisp County Data Exchange Project was born in 2005 with a menu of lofty goals, including improving the accuracy of criminal justice records, improving the efficiency and speed of the criminal justice process by allowing each agency to maximize its resources, reducing redundancy and duplication of data entry, providing access to real-time criminal justice data, controlling the jail population, and reducing unnecessary delay in court process. The project was funded by a $75,000 Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance grant—sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)—provided by the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council of Georgia, including a partial match in the amount of $25,000 from the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia and the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council.
The project selected software vendor Metatomix to install a new, computerized method of keeping track of warrants, arrests, bookings, and the flux of jail populations. This new computerized method is based on the Justice Information Exchange Model (JIEM), a tool that is used in planning and implementing justice integration projects utilizing the Global Justice Extensible Markup Language (XML) Data Model (Global JXDM). The project allows counties to tailor their systems to their individual needs, while also allowing information to be shared.
Ms. Jean Rogers, former president of the Georgia Clerks of Court Association and the current Clerk of Superior Court for Crisp County, who launched the effort, spoke about the benefits of the data exchange project in an article published in Georgia Trend magazine, saying, “Our basic core exchanges can be implemented anywhere, and other counties will not have to spend so much time mapping the exchanges between agencies; but the [software] may have to be tweaked to accommodate their business processes.”
Ms. Rogers further elaborated in the article on the project’s effectiveness: “This [new system] eliminated duplicate data entry—including errors—delays in timely decisions, and wasted personnel time, while providing knowledge about cases that was not previously known.”
Early reviews show the electronic mapping and exchanges are creating greater efficiency within the county’s justice system paper trail. In addition, the Association County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG) has honored Crisp County with a 2007 County Excellence Award for its Data Exchange Project.
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