This year we are celebrating our 15th year in business and our 14th year of working in the field of juvenile justice. When I first started Handel, I had a vague plan of developing software for county governments. One of our earliest projects was to develop a database for a juvenile assessment center in a large county in Colorado. At the time I knew very little about the realm of juvenile justice, but I quickly became fascinated with the field. First, it appeared that it was severely underserved in the area of information technology. More importantly though, I felt it was a field where good technology could make a real difference. Until then, I had spent most of my professional career consulting for major corporations where the main focus seemed to be on maximizing profits. In the juvenile justice field I quickly learned that we could make a difference that would go a lot deeper than financial gain. We could actually make a difference in somebody’s life. As the phone started ringing from other counties who were hearing about our juvenile assessment center system I realized that perhaps we could actually build a business around this field. Today, our RiteTrack software is used by counties, states, and non-profits nationally. Thousands of staff members rely on RiteTrack every day for working with at-risk clients. This is the good news.

The bad news is that the majority of juvenile justice agencies in our country still function with very outdated technology. As individuals we live in a world with smartphones, tablets, apps, and social media that have made a dramatic difference in our personal lives over the past decade. Why has this technology not transcended into our professional world? Why are we still using outdated technology, sometimes dating back over a decade, to manage the kids we work with? What changes do we believe is on the horizon for information systems in the juvenile justice field? Those are questions that I hope to answer here.

This summer a team of MBA students from the University of Wyoming worked on a research project for us. They contacted over 100 different juvenile justice agencies nationally to learn about their information habits. The research covered both county and state juvenile justice entities. In the end, they were successful in interviewing individuals in leadership positions within 22 different jurisdictions. While this does not meet the definition of statistical significance (30) it still provides us with a few trends. The survey asked what type of tools they used in order to track juvenile clients, and we classified the responses into 5 categories: paper, spreadsheets, local database, web-based database and mobile solutions.

With regard to databases, this refers to any electronic case management system (whether homegrown or provided by a vendor) that stores data in a database. We distinguish between web-based and non-web-based in order to get a feel for the overall age of technology since most modern systems are web-based. Our definition of web-based is that the system can be accessed over the web and can integrate with e-mail and other web technologies. Each respondent may have responded more than once. In other words, they may use a combination of several tools such as paper, spreadsheets, and databases to track juveniles. It is also important to note that current RiteTrack users were not included in this survey as that would have skewed the results. Here are the results from our survey:

 

 

 

 

The survey indicates that the majority of the juvenile justice agencies we interviewed rely on a combination of traditional, non-web-based databases, spreadsheets, and paper to track their clients. Only one respondent uses a modern web-based solution, and nobody yet relies on mobile devices for this purpose other than for e-mail correspondence.

This survey is consistent with what we hear when we are out attending conferences or visiting with prospective clients. We frequently hear complaints from juvenile justice professionals that it is difficult to keep track of their clients because they have to enter data into multiple systems, they struggle with poorly designed user-interfaces, and it is difficult or near impossible to get good data out of their systems. We frequently hear complaints that they often spend more time doing data entry than they spend serving clients. Furthermore, with some agencies having to enter data into multiple systems, it becomes increasingly difficult to get a single-view or report on a client and his/her activities.

There are several reasons why we are in the situation we are in today. First, juvenile justice agencies have not had a lot of choices of software specifically designed for tracking juveniles. There have been basically two choices:  to either build a custom solution from scratch or to modify an existing system to meet the needs. Neither choice is particularly attractive. A custom solution typically comes with a very high price tag and a great risk that the system may not work as expected. Modifying an existing solution can also be expensive and can become a grueling project of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Often administrators must sacrifice the established workflow because, in the end, the new system works differently. Financing is also another reason agencies tend to stick with what they have already. In a time of ever tightening budgets, IT projects such as implementing new software are often put on the back burner.

If any of this sounds familiar, perhaps there is some comfort to know that you are not alone. Thousands of juvenile justice agencies across the country are dealing with similar issues. We are also realizing that the present situation has more to do with politics than it has to do with technology and security concerns, and fortunately we are starting to see a gradual shift towards technologies that can provide truly integrated information solutions with friendlier user-interfaces.

New Technology

As web technologies mature and gain trust, we expect to see more rapid adoption across the juvenile justice sector. A modern web-based juvenile justice solution such as RiteTrack will offer several benefits and will be

• Easier to use
• Easier to integrate
• Easier to access from different computers and devices
• Easier to provide access to others outside of your agency

Easier to Use

Newly hired caseworkers just out of school would be stupefied by an old system with a green screen that would require them to enter every single field on a form before they can go to the next “page,” and where they would have to enter the same data on different computers into different databases. New graduates are accustomed to getting e-mails and messages on their smartphones, they use tablets for most of their course work and they are active on social media. On the job they now expect an easy-to -use system where they can enter data once, upload documents electronically, have the system auto-generate notifications to others, set calendar appointments, and which, overall, works very much like the social media tools they use every day.

Easier to Integrate

Old databases are information silos wherein certain information lives in certain databases and does not interconnect with other data in other “silos.” A modern web-based architecture makes it easy to create web-services, interfaces which allow the data to communicate with other systems whether a financial system, e-mail, or perhaps, a database in a different jurisdiction.

Easier to Access from Different Computers and Devices

A web-based solution requires no software installation. Users can access the system from wherever they have an Internet connection. This makes it equally easy for staff to access and enter data whether they are in the office, in the field, or at home. It also opens up a number of other options.

Easier to Provide Access to Others Outside of Your Agency

Imagine allowing a teacher report truancy directly from the school. Imagine sending an outcome survey to the parents and having them complete it online. Having a web-based solution truly fulfills the promise of getting the right information to or from the right person at the right time.

The good news is that RiteTrack delivers on all of these accounts today. If you want to learn more about how RiteTrack can help your county, state, or non-profit organization, please do not hesitate to contact us. We would love to do a personalized demonstration of RiteTrack or put you in contact with other agencies which use RiteTrack. Our fundamental belief is that technology needs to be a tool that allows you to spend more time serving your clients, not a hindrance that gets in the way of that mission.