McLean County is updating it’s 20-year-old criminal justice software system. The existing software, written in house, will be enhanced by incorporating more modern off-the- shelf software.
The McLean County Board has approved spending $337,000 to hire Mission Critical Partners to assist with implementing Boomi software and developing a new database. The Boomi software will connect all of the pieces of the counties integrated electronic justice system which is also being upgraded at this time.
“That provides a data base for all of our criminal justice partners (all the police, all of our attorneys, states attorney, public defender, all of our probation officers, all of our courts staff, our circuit clerks staff, our judges) … in one space,” said county administrator Cassy Taylor.
With the help of the consultant, the old self written system will be upgraded using new software and everything will continue to be able to communicate.
Taylor said the county will see benefits in many different ways.
“Our problem solving courts (our drug court, our mental health court, our veterans court) all of those courts were developed since the inception of our original … system software. So we had no capabilities, no enhancements that were included in that original program that allowed us to capture the data and specifics of a problem solving court,” said Taylor .”So with this new system, with the new capabilities of newer software models, we will be able to then capture that data, analyze that data quicker and improve our programs.”
A typical arrest results in police records. That’s one system. If the person arrested spends time in jail those records go into a second system. Going through the court process involves a third system with several parts; public defender, states attorney, pre-trial officers, the judge and if given, probation (which is handled by the circuit clerk). After probation it may go to behavioral health, another system.
The integrated electronic justice system makes sure all of these records in different systems run by different software are integrated so all the systems can talk to one another and the proposed upgrades will ensure that these systems can continue to do that for perhaps another 20 years.
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