State moving toward integrated state-wide offender management system

AUGUSTA, MAINE – xwave, a Division of Bell Aliant (TSX: BA.UN), announced today it is implementing a sentence-calculation system for the Commonwealth of Virginia's Department of Corrections.

“Virginia laws incorporate very complex historical sentencing rules that xwave has been able to successfully automate within CORIS to produce accurate offender time management,” said John Taylor, CTO, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Corrections. “Replacing a 25-year-old, locally developed system with a modern web-based solution helps mitigate risk for the Department of Corrections.” 

The sentence-calculation system replaces a 25-year old mainframe system and provides a customized solution for offender-sentencing in accordance with State laws. It is the first in a three-phase program that will result in a complete rollout of xwave's Corrections Information System (CORIS); this includes a Community Corrections system and an Institutional Corrections/state-prison system, to be implemented incrementally in 2007 and 2008. Currently, the sentence-calculation system is integrated with Virginia's legacy mainframe applications and will continue to operate in this way until the rollout is complete.

“Corrections workers are increasingly challenged to safely and efficiently manage large populations of offenders whose movements demand seamless tracking and monitoring,” said B.J. Carter, Regional Director, xwave. “CORIS provides these workers with the tools they need to assess risk, determine treatment, and ensure the information shared among various agencies remains consistent and accurate.”  

Virginia's legislature has changed its basic sentence-calculation process three times over the past two decades.  As a result, three different laws determine how sentences are calculated.  xwave's sentence-calculation system addresses these challenges, capturing a range of court-provided information including type of offense, offender sentence, length of time already served, conditions after release, and community service.  The system supports a population of approximately 33,000 incarcerated offenders and 50,000 offenders under community supervision.  It accurately records, maintains and shares with authorized users all sentence-related data for the current population, as well as housing ‘inactive' data for hundreds of thousands of former inmates.  Phase 2 (Community Corrections) will support another 1,000 users, and Phase 3 (Institutional Corrections) an additional 4,000.

CORIS is an integrated, web-based offender management system (OMS) that supports information needs for incarcerated offenders and offenders under community supervision.  The solution connects relevant stakeholders through a single electronic offender record and centralized database, thereby providing a complete and holistic view of the offender's status, history, and risk profile. In this way, offenders can be better tracked and more effectively managed as they move through the corrections system: Corrections practitioners equipped with accurate, real-time information are able to make more informed decisions regarding treatment and security. 

xwave will showcase its CORIS offender management solution at the American Correction Association's 136th Congress of Correction at the Charlotte Convention Centre from August 12th to August 17th, 2006.

About xwave
xwave, a Division of Bell Aliant, is a full-service business-solutions provider that serves clients through three service lines: systems integration and software engineering, infrastructure services and product fulfillment. These areas offer clients a broad delivery capability to plan, design, build and operate ICT solutions that span both corporate and operational systems, and to provide their infrastructure needs. xwave has more than US $300 million in revenues and employs 1,500 people with offices throughout New England, and in Washington, DC. More information can be found at www.xwave.com. 

For further information, contact:
Karen.Ewing@xwave.com   
877-332-4605