Last year, Rusk County, Wis. Sheriff Dean Meyer dispatched a squad of deputies to transport inmates to the Brown County Correctional Facility in Green Bay. The deputies arrived at the jail only to discover that another squad from Barron County was also there to transport inmates. They had driven straight through Rusk County to get to Green Bay.

"This happens at least once a week in this state; two neighboring counties will go to the same facilities to pick up or drop off inmates, when we could have easily coordinated a transport," Meyer said.

Then, last fall, Meyer himself experienced the frustration of transport redundancy, when he drove to the Dane County Jail in Madison for a meeting. There, he bumped into a neighboring county sheriff who had driven to Madison to pick up an inmate.

"I could have easily driven the inmate back with me," said Meyer, who is now battling Wisconsin's prisoner transport inefficiencies with the state's new, online system.

The Prisoner Exchange and Transport Scheduling (PETS) system, a web-based program that posts law enforcement agencies' monthly transport schedules online so officials can coordinate joint-transfers, went statewide last November. Since then, every county sheriff's office in Wisconsin has signed up to use PETS.

Piloting System Yields Sheriffs' Approval

PETS is the brainchild of Emerald Systems President and Chief Executive Philip Brandsey, who learned of Wisconsin's transport issue through a former Douglas County sheriff two years ago.

Deputies in Douglas County, the westernmost county in Wisconsin, must travel the farthest out of any local agency to move prisoners, and costly transfers were taking a toll on the county's budget.

At no cost, Brandsey spent the next two months developing a pilot application that posted participating agencies' transport schedules online, allowing other agencies close by to request that their inmates be picked up or dropped off along the way.

Within 60 days of the program's introduction, 50 county sheriffs had signed up to test PETS. And by last May, Brandsey was presenting the current version of PETS at the Badgers State Sheriff's Association's spring conference.

"They were very pleased with it," Brandsey said.

The sheriffs were so pleased, in fact, that the association proceeded to acquire funding through Wisconsin's Office of Justice Assistance to roll out PETS statewide.

"We saw PETS as an opportunity for sheriffs and counties to share their prisoner transportation services, so that a county next door isn't making the same runs," said Wood County Sheriff Kurt Heuer, who is also president of the Badger State Sheriff's Association. "Those counties who tested PETS before it went statewide considered PETS a great benefit."

PETS Offers Multiple Services

The system's primary benefit to local agencies is its electronic request service. When one agency is interested in coordinating a transport with another agency, it can send out a "request of coordination" that is posted to the database and e-mailed to the transporting agency for confirmation.

The automatic e-mail service can also be used to notify agencies of accepted requests and cancellations, eliminating the extensive paperwork that plagued local law enforcement before PETS.

With an estimated 34,000 transports occurring in Wisconsin each year at $400 each, Brandsey said that the coordination of services is predicted to cut costs by 20 to 30 percent. Officials can track these costs, plus the savings accumulated from coordination between agencies, by logging onto PETS.

In addition, agencies can print out transport itineraries for all inmates, including transport destinations, pick-up and drop-off times, and any potential issues regarding the inmates being transferred.

"This makes the program a good front end for tracking sex offenders when they move across borders," Brandsey said. "The system maintains a historical record of movements of any inmate for any requesting agency."

Along with PETS' request and tracking services, the system offers a third advantage. A module of PETS allows jail administrators to manage bed space availability by matching overpopulated prisons with those who have excess bed space.

"The jail can post any bed space requirements and availability on the same web site so that not only does PETS save agencies money in transports, but it also manages facilities more effectively, more efficiently," Brandsey said.

Benefits Are Multiple

As far as local savings go, Heuer said PETS will eventually decrease his county's transportation, staffing and paperwork costs enough to bring the agency's expenses back into its designated budget.

"In any given day, if you can eliminate transports by combining them; it's a savings in salaries, benefits and the wear and tear of transport vehicles," Heuer said. "I know my county's and other counties' costs have hit the red tape, so this could bring our costs back within our proposed budgets."

Even with such financial gains, Heuer said PETS isn't just about the money. The system, which promotes "working together and sharing," is also creating new relationships between sheriffs and other agencies.

"We've got sheriffs and county departments working together, and it's taking down turf issues," he said. "We're working together toward a common goal and, hopefully, this will create better relationships."

A Work in Progress

In spite of its advantages, PETS has drawn a few criticisms.

Washburn County Deputy Sheriff Larry Avery, who manages the county jail's transports, said the system is a good idea, but coordinated transports are too difficult to organize and the savings are minimal.

"I've heard that some counties are planning to charge other counties for transporting their prisoners...and sometimes, your prisoners are not capable of traveling with theirs," he said. "We've put our transport information into the system once and haven't found a use for it since."

In regards to savings, Avery said the paperwork required from him will remain the same, and the system has not decreased any of the county's transport costs.

Meyer agreed that there are some aspects of the PETS system that have yet to be worked out.

For example, there are liability issues of transporting another county's prisoners in the case of a car accident, Meyer said. And, it is still up to individual counties to establish a nominal fee for transporting another agency's prisoners.

However, Meyer said these are all details that will be ironed out over time.

"We contract with the U.S. Marshall Services from other states to transport their prisoners, so there are ways to get over these liability hurdles," he said. "And even if other counties are going to charge a fee of even $100, it's still going to save me $300 to $400, and my staff will be available for duty."

As of now, if any agency requested a coordinated transport from his county, Meyer said he would not charge an additional fee.

Echoing Meyer's sentiments, Heuer said it is only a matter of time until all of the conflicts and confusions of coordinated transports are resolved.

"This is still relatively new to us," he said. "But with more use, things are going to come up and, at that point, the association will take a look at them."

Once agencies become familiarized with PETS, Meyer said, "They're going to see it as a great tool, a great value. In this day and age, where we need to be on the look out for cost savings, this is a no-brainer."

Resources:

To learn more about PETS, visit the Emerald Systems website at: http://www.emeraldsys.com/emerald/products/pets.asp