The Shelby County General Sessions Clerks office wanted to change the way that they captured and distributed Case Jacket information to the many users that made requests. A Case Jacket contained the current Arrest Tickets, Affidavit’s and Warrants which had to be distributed to Pre-Trial services, the Public Defenders office, the District Attorney, the Records Department and others. The Clerks office was making up to five copies of the information, which took a great deal of time and paper. In addition this information needed to be tied to the criminal record information, that was stored on a mainframe system. Shelby County needed one system that would allow every department to have instant access to their information and eliminate the paper and handling costs.
CIMSgts worked to design a system that allows the clerks office to scan in all of the case information when it is sent to them. Then that information has to be indexed using the Booking Number, which is stored on their mainframe. CIMSgts developed the application that extracts this information from the mainframe application and stores it in a database, ensuring consistency between the different systems. This information is then combined with all of the imaged files that were indexed to that record. This combined information is what makes up the electronic version of a Case Jacket. This information is managed by a document management application that makes it immediately available to all of the users that need it. The application controls and manages the information to make sure it is presented accurately and consistently to all users.
By scanning and electronically distributing the Case Jacket information the clerks office estimates that it has eliminated the need to make 100,000+ copies per month, to satisfy all of the user requests. The clerks office is presently processing 35,000 pages of new information per month and keeping all of that information stored in the OnBase Document Management System.
CIMSgts used the OnBase Document Management application from Hyland Software as the core for this system, to provide the database and management functions. Scanning and indexing capabilities were integrated using the Ascent capture software from Kofax. Additionally custom programming was done by CIMSgts to develop a DLL application that interfaces to the mainframe and extracts the Booking Number information.