N.C. builds a better rap sheet

1-3-2010 North Carolina:

RALEIGH -- Wake County prosecutor Patrick Latour can search a defendant's criminal history through either of two computer programs. The difference is like switching between Pong and a Wii.

The current system presents page after page of dizzying white letters and numbers on a black background requiring complicated, tedious commands. The state's new system is as simple as ordering pizza online.

Latour, a drug prosecutor, is among a handful of Wake County law enforcement and court officials testing the new database. The system gives users quick access to criminal records across the state, probation information and state prison files; it soon will include county jail records. It even sends an e-mail alert to prosecutors if a defendant in a forthcoming case is arrested again, effectively a "You have jail" message.

Criminal Justice Law Enforcement Automated Data Services, as the system is called, is a direct response to the 2008 slaying of Eve Carson, student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill. Two men charged in the case were on probation. Their earlier offenses while on probation went unaddressed by probation officials partly because of the 1980s-technology computer system now in use that didn't alert them.

"If anything positive can come out of Eve Carson's death," said Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby, "this is attributable to folks in the legislature saying, 'What can we do?'"

What remains unsettling with the new system is that, though it will bring prosecutors light years forward in technology from where they are, it offers the sort of computer capability that online retailers such as Amazon.com deployed a decade ago.

A visit to Latour's office offers a look at both systems. The old program is an antiquated labyrinth through which prosecutors must navigate each day. To enter the database, Latour flips through six computer screens with their DOS-style white letters on a black background. He enters login information twice and then can get detailed information - but only about Wake County. For other counties, he has to log out and then log in to a different area.

"All I can get is what they're convicted of," Latour said. "I don't know if they're on probation, if they're in jail."

For jail information, he has to log out and go into a database that includes only information from the Wake County jail. He types the defendant's last name, a comma, first name and no spaces. If he accidentally puts in a space, he gets nothing. He uses a series of commands that sound like a computer programming class circa 1982: F2, put a slash next to the listing he wants, then F11 for the next listing. The computer freezes. He typed something wrong. Log out. Start over.

"If you use the mouse, you're going to get screwed up, quite frankly," he said. "I can get more information on my cell phone."

Such obstacles are incomprehensible to a public accustomed to shopping, trading stocks and tracking down far-flung high school classmates in a matter of seconds.

"People watch 'CSI' and say, 'Look at all that,' and they would be amazed at what we don't have in terms of automated computer systems," said Kay Meyer, program manager for data integration at the state controller's office, who is helping coordinate the new system.

Prosecutors handling major felonies such as homicide and rape must take the time to retrieve background information from the cumbersome system. They know the defendant's full rap sheet when they go into Superior Court. But district court prosecutors, with 150 or more cases in a single morning, are retrieving as much data as possible on a laptop in the courtroom as they go. These are the cases that will most benefit from the new system.

In the aftermath of Carson's killing, the legislature approved the data-sharing software as a means of giving law enforcement personnel statewide important details about warrants, arrests, prison conduct and more. A handful of Wake County officials are testing the program, built by software giant SAS of Cary. A countywide pilot program is expected to start by the end of June.

The cost business

The estimated cost over three years is $27 million, but the program has funding only for the $9.1 million that will carry it through June 30 and the end of this fiscal year.

For a glimpse of the new program, step back to Latour's office. He launches Internet Explorer, uses a secure login and is greeted with the sort of Windows-based, type-information-in-the-box page that is familiar to most computer users. In the old system, Latour needed a defendant's birth date. In the new one, age or an age range will do. Names are logically grouped together, and a red "VIO" marks defendants with a violent history. In one search, he sees 29 previous cases for a defendant, four pending charges and that the defendant was on probation and imprisoned in the past. Latour can retrieve details by clicking on any entry.

The prosecutor and, ultimately, a police officer on the street, can pop up a color-coded timeline of the defendant's entanglements with the courts -orange and yellow bars mark months in prison, for example.

"It's more intuitive and a quicker way to work," Latour said.

A maze of data

The struggles now lie in compiling the data. Records are being drawn from different counties and different levels of government that use inconsistent pieces of identifying information. Older records lack data that is now routine. The system's next step is to add all county jail information and, by June, driver's license records, juvenile court files and the state sex offender registry. A later phase will include sources such as concealed handgun permits. Officials must carefully navigate restrictions, such as confidentiality of juvenile records, along the way.

"There are literally hundreds of regulations, departmental policy rules and statutes that affect how this information can be shared," said Lorrin Freeman, Wake County clerk of courts, whose office is among those testing the program.

The accuracy and details are important because a mistake can put the wrong person in lockup or, conversely, set the wrong person free.

The system is being developed by state advisory teams on criminal justice information along with the steering committee overseeing BEACON, the state's data integration effort, which made news in 2008 for producing a series of state payroll errors.

Once the system is operating countywide in Wake, Meyer and others will evaluate how it is working before rolling it out in other parts of the state. ..Source.. MARK JOHNSON - Staff Writer