The Corrections Connection recently caught up with Lawrence Webster of the National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics (SEARCH).  Webster, the SEARCH Justice Information Exchange Model (JIEM) Project Manager, recently co-authored an article detailing the key milestones involved in the justice integration process.  He talked with corrections.com about the state of information sharing among criminal justice agencies today, some of the barriers to justice integration and what the future holds for justice agencies across the country.
 
Q: Where are justice agencies in terms of information sharing today? 

Webster: I guess my answer to that question is that it's pretty pathetic today.  SEARCH conducts a survey every other year of state criminal history repositories.  The 2001 survey [indicates] that [only] about 60 percent of felony convictions are accessible through the criminal repositories nationwide and that's not very good.  And, beyond that, there are other issues: the information that is [in the repositories] takes a long time to get there.  It takes about a month for arrest information to become available.  [For] corrections admissions, the lag time is about 26 days and [for] release [it] is about 30 days.  If you have a program to notify a victim when a guy is being released from prison and you don't get that information [to the victim right away], then that does not seem to do a lot of good.  The consequences of this are pretty astounding because so much [criminal justice] information is missing or outdated [and] we're making inappropriate decisions because [of it].

Q: What progress have agencies made towards justice integration?

Webster: At one point I went and tried to find all the information I could on integrated justice projects.  I did this in the mid-90s and from 1971 to the mid-90s [I found] about 200 or so integrated justice projects.  The number that succeeded you could count on one hand.

From the mid-90s on, [however], we've made a lot more progress.  There are a lot of good initiatives underway now, but its takes a while to work through those.  For example, in Minnesota and Illinois [there are programs that] look like [they are] going to work really, really well, but they just haven't gotten through the process, yet.  They're not done yet.

[Colorado, too, has made] steady progress and met [its information sharing] goals.  [But] if you talk to them, I think they would tell you [they]'re not done yet.  There are just a whole bunch of smaller hurdles to cross, like getting more involved in sharing information with local police and sheriffs' departments.

[Also], Pennsylvania has done some of the most impressive technology work of anywhere in the country.  They have a system that knows who [an offender's] probation officer is [and if that offender gets arrested in another part of the state], that probation officer will automatically get an email telling him about [it].  That is really impressive [in terms of] technology, but Pennsylvania still has a long way to go.

If the measuring tool [for how far agencies have come] is how much information justice officials actually have [in a] complete, accurate and timely [manner, the number is] still fairly low almost nationwide.

Q: What are some of the barriers to creating efficient information sharing systems?

Webster: We know we're not getting information, but the first question we have to ask is why are we not getting it.  We have to know what the problem is before we decide what the solution is.   Is it a technology problem?  I don't think it is.  [If] we [can] move a trillion dollars a day around in the financial market of our country and we don't lose any of it, [then why] can't [we] keep track of a few thousand offenders in a county?

It's not a technology problem.  It's a structural problem in the justice system.  There are over 55,000 criminal justice organizations in the U.S. and when you count the justice-related organizations, we're talking about almost a hundred thousand organizations that have information that we need to share.  Each of those organizations makes independent decisions about what [data] they're going to keep and how they're going to keep it.  It's part of the structure of government.  Organizations at [various] levels don't work for each other so they look at [it] independently when they make decisions about how they're collecting and storing information.  They make their own decisions and they don't realize that decisions they make to improve their internal efficiency actually hurt the overall performance of the justice system.

Q: What are some of the key building blocks in developing integrated justice systems?

Webster: First of all, we need to have a national standard.  We need to get people together saying when the information crosses organizational boundaries, it needs to be in this form.  We need to decide together [what that form is going to be].  The people that work in the justice [fields] need to adopt this enterprise concept.  [Data exchange] can only happen when you get all the leaders of these organizations to give up some of their [individuality] and work together and to design some of these integrated justice [systems]. 

[But creating integrated justice systems] is not just [about] getting [all of the organizations] to agree to do it.  It's getting them to agree in terms of understanding what integrated justice really means.  It's getting those folks together and having a common understanding of what integrated justice is and why its important.  [It's] helping them understand the problems [and] helping them to see the consequences of continuing to do business the way [they]'ve always done it. 

Q: Can you discuss some of the milestones of justice integration?  Are some of them more difficult to achieve than others?

Webster: The governance structure is the [first] piece.  We need to have a way to make decisions that we can all live with.  We've got to decide in advance how we're going to make those decisions.

The next step is a very high level plan [to show that] when we say we're going to integrate our systems, this is what that mean.  We need goals.

Once that high level policy group makes that plan, then they need to turn the work over to their staff, [like] teams of legal experts and technology experts.  [They] then go and flush out the [details].

[Most] of the [beginning] milestones really fall under that next step of getting this high level plan that everyone can agree to.  Then, they all go off on their own and start working on individual projects, [like] building and improving applications [and] if the infrastructure isn't there, then the infrastructure has to be created to move the information.

Q: What are some of the difficulties that agencies have been encountering in trying to create information sharing systems?

Webster: It's like a 400-meter hurdle race.  The first hurdle that you see there is that idea of getting the leaders together to understand what needs to be [done].  If they can't get over that hurdle, then nothing else is going to happen.  Most sites, especially those that have worked fairly recently have been able to do the structure and planning.  [But] they want to go out and build an infrastructure without resolving issues like whose codes [they] are going to use.  They're kind of skipping some of the more detailed planning phases.  Without building the proper foundation, it's very difficult to make the building happen.  Too often we're going ready, aim, fire and we're starting to build things without [an] overall architecture.  [Then] they're bound to architecture that may not be appropriate for some of those other exchanges.  [Agencies need to understand] that this foundation work has to happen if [they]'re going to be successful in the other areas. 

Q: Once states pass these milestones, what comes next?  Do you think that there will be a stronger push to integrate justice systems nationwide?

Webster:  There are some regional [information sharing] initiatives--there are three or four going in different parts of the country, but, for the most part, we're just thinking if we can make this happen at the state level, [then] that would be wonderful.

This integration stuff really happens at two levels.  Most of the processing of cases occurs at the county level [involving] complaints, sentencing orders [and the] key hundred or so justice documents.  Most of that just has to happen at the county level.  If we can get the heavy lifting in terms of moving forms and documents around within these county levels and then up to the state agencies that are involved, then the quality of our data will be much better.  [But, the other side of integration involves] query response, like I want to know who [an offender] is [and] what his current legal status is and I want this information from across the country. 

We have the case processing level and the information sharing level in terms of query response.   We've got to have that query response nationwide.  Part of the reason we've not been able to make [efforts to share information nationwide] better is because every state does [its] own thing.

Everyone knows it's not enough for me to know what is going on with [an] individual in [one] state if they are a criminal and have dozens of arrests and convictions [in other states].  I need to have that information if I'm going to make appropriate decisions as a justice official.

Resources:

To contact Larry Webster, call (916) 392-2550

For more information about SEARCH, go to www.search.org