About the JIS

 

The Juvenile Information System (JIS) has been designed as a secure, internet-based application with a centralized database of juvenile information within Dallas County.  Historically, each of the 25 cities and municipalities in Dallas County maintained their own records and information systems and participated in a limited amount of information sharing and tracking of juvenile offenders.  JIS provides participating agencies with the capability to share offense and criminal history information and make informed decisions regarding the early identification, control, supervision, and treatment of juvenile offenders.

Dallas County’s JIS Project was conceived in 1998 and is currently in its fourth year of development.  The countywide, integrated juvenile justice information system was operational in the spring of 2000 and continues to evolve with further functionality and growth of the user community.  JIS provides a quick and efficient means of sharing, retrieving, tracking, and adding juvenile information among local law enforcement, judicial, and educational agencies.  Approximately 70 agencies are currently using the system.  Participating agencies include city police and county sheriff departments, municipal courts, school districts, as well as various county agencies including the District Attorney, District Court, Juvenile Department, as well as the Juvenile Intake Division.

Dallas County Commissioner Mike Cantrell assembled a cross-agency, cross-jurisdiction committee in 1998 to serve as the governance structure for this initiative.  The Committee’s mission was to design and develop the concept of creating an integrated information technology system to support the efficient sharing of critical justice information among participating municipal and county agencies.  In July 1999, 17 cities and municipalities in Dallas County agreed to collaborate and combine their funding from the federal Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grant Program (JAIBG) to fund the system design, development, deployment and ongoing operations.  The goal was to implement an integrated data system to link law enforcement, prosecutors, courts, probation, schools and social service providers.

The multi-year program is nearing the end of its fourth year of development.  The first year of the project funded the architecture design and development of an extended prototype and ended November 30, 2000.  Year two focused on scaling the system up to a production environment and building the final system design.  During year two, it was discovered that several police agencies wanted to use JIS as their “stand-alone” juvenile system where they could directly enter records, search for prior information, manage their cases and make appropriate referrals, as well as have the ability to meet their city reporting requirements.  Prior to the end of Year two, JIS was developed as a multi-purpose system for police agencies and moved into production on June 30, 2001.

Whereas year two focused on deploying the application to police and municipal court users, year three expanded the user community to include the county sheriff’s department, school districts, District Attorney, District Court, Juvenile Department as well as Juvenile Intake.  During Year three, additional functionality was developed to meet the business requirements and needs of these user communities.

Year four started on July 1, 2002 and expanded the user community to include Juvenile Divisions such as field probation as well as detention, victim services and mediation.  Year four has also focused on completing the requirements for electronic filing of cases with the District Attorney and other county departments and electronic arrest (EAR) and disposition (EDR) reporting to the State of Texas Department of Public Safety.  Under County Commissioner Mike Cantrell’s leadership this initiative continues to positively impact Dallas County’s juvenile justice system.

The goal of these changes to the existing system is to reduce redundancy in the entry, processing and distribution of juvenile justice information. Utilizing the Internet to access the JIS gives each user a quick and cost-effective means to share and retrieve juvenile information from a wide range of agencies within Dallas County. The resulting improvements in time and resource efficiencies are expected to greatly impact the juvenile crime rate in Dallas County. In future phases of the JIS project, it will be possible to integrate the system with State and Federal agencies making it possible for end-to-end case management via the Internet.