At-A-Glance

Customer Snapshot

  • 2,700+ Total System Users
  • Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office and Public Defender's Office
  • Parish Criminal Court
  • City of N.O. Magistrate, Criminal, and Juvenile Courts
  • City of N.O. Citations and Traffic Courts
  • City of N.O. Police Department and Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office

Solution Snapshot

  • CourtNotify
  • Interface Agent for Municipal Courts
  • Interface Agent for District Attorney
  • Interface Agent for Criminal Courts
  • Interface Agent for Juvenile Courts
  • Interface Agent for Sheriff Jail Management System (JMS)

Results for the Courts

  • Eliminated data entry processes
  • Improved attendance of law enforcement witnesses
  • Reduced case event rescheduling due to attendance conflicts
  • Eliminated outdated legacy subpoena platform
  • Reduced paper costs for law enforcement subpoenas

Results for the New Orleans Police Dept.

  • Removed last minute notifications for court attendance
  • Reduced OT for unnecessary court attendance
  • Reduced court attendance manual administration
  • Improved field strength due to disregard notifications

Results for Parish Sheriff’s Office

  • Eliminated deputy deliveries to police stations
  • Eliminated hand deliveries for short notices
  • Reduced delivery time and gas costs for civilian service
  • Reduced costs for service to incarcerated witnesses

NO Police and Justice FoundationNew Orleans, LA Police and Justice Foundation

Criminal Justice Practitioners Witness Management Success Story

 

CHALLENGES

In 2005 every criminal justice agency within Orleans Parish had its own independent approach to serving the public. Interactions included a poor understanding of other agencies’ business processes, willingness to change, and ability to embrace common technology solutions.  Computer based systems had historically been developed independently by each agency and were focused on isolated goals. Systems often duplicated the workflows of their paper-based processes and failed to use technology to reengineer business processes. For all these reasons, the New Orleans criminal justice system was characterized by separate “stovepipe” systems that shared limited information or were inadequate in a variety of ways.

What Orleans Parish needed was a solution that could:

  • Improve case and witness information sharing among multiple criminal justice practitioners
  • Increase court attendance of law enforcement and civilian witnesses
  • Centralize viewing of witness and case data from multiple systems for all agencies
  • Improve civilian administration, delivery and results tracking
  • Reduce administrative costs for civilian subpoena delivery

 

THE ORION SOLUTION

CourtNotify

As industry experts, Orion first documented the Parish's subpoena issuance process flow and work-a-rounds that dealt with short notices, critical appearance requirements, notifications for incarcerated witnesses and distinctions in the Criminal, Magistrate and Municipal Courts. The analysis included the court procedures, prosecutor, defense attorney and public defender involvement, as well as IT systems and network infrastructure.

Next, Orion's CourtNotify electronic subpoena software was deployed for the Criminal District Courts, N.O. Police Dept. and Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office. Within the first 48 hours, the NOPD received over 600 subpoenas and subsequently acknowledged receipt of over 584 subpoenas electronically. 

For the past 11+ years, CourtNotify has been used to transmit real-time subpoena notifications from the Orleans Parish Criminal Courts, DA and Public Defender's Offices to the NOPD and Parish Sheriff’s Office.  Based on their success the City’s Magistrate, Juvenile and Traffic Courts were soon added to the platform.  As a result, Parish and City Courts have been receiving timely information regarding officer's attendance, conflicts with appearances and those who have retired. What’s more, 100,000+ electronic subpoenas for civilians have been transmitted annually to the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office for service delivery.

"Timely, accurate and shared information is critical to the operations of every criminal justice agency in New Orleans. Post-Katrina manpower shortages made labor saving efficiencies like CourtNotify, even more important."

Dr. Heidi Unter, New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation

With the DA and Public Defender using the system, the court’s clerical workload has been reduced -- which has reduced administrative costs.  NOPD officers are no longer called unnecessarily to court for hearings that do not require police to be present. When cases are cancelled or deferred, officers receive real-time disregard notices informing them about their scheduling change. This has reduced overtime for unnecessary court appearances and enabled a better policing presence in the field.

Interface Agent

By using Orion's Interface Agent, integration between the Parish’s CSM and the Sheriff’s JMS duplicated data entries have been eliminated and civilian subpoena delivery results improved. Names of incarcerated witnesses are being red-flagged on witness case screens as part of the issuance process. Details regarding each participant’s jailed location are displayed.

All users view historical records of jailed court participants with previous incarcerations and/or court events. Correctional personnel generate listings of incarcerated witnesses for specific courts and dates.

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