Decision support on the bench

Oregon is getting tough on criminals. Nowhere is it tougher than Multnomah County, which is implementing a decision support system to reduce the number of repeat criminal offenders.

Due to the state's increased pressure on criminals, Multnomah County "needed to take action to prevent and control over-crowding in our jails, starting with reducing the number of repeat offenders in the system," said to Dr. Suzanne Riles, Director of Research &;amp Administration for the county's Public Safety Coordinating Council.

Multnomah County is now deploying a system called DSS-Justice, which lets county officials access and apply information to criminal cases, aiding their decision in awarding sentencing. The initial rollout for about 100 users will occur this spring.

DSS-Justice will enable county officials to access information from nine different data sources maintained by Multnomah's disparate county agencies, viewed through Viador's E-Portal Web-based interface.

Ad-hoc reporting and analysis capabilities of all types of data will be available through desktop browsers, according to Keith Saari, Project Manager for Multnomah County's DSS-Justice.

"Users of all expertise levels [can] easily access the system without expensive user training, thereby lowering the total cost of ownership."

How will DSS-Justice help the county's crime-fighting efforts? Here's some examples:

• Probation/parole officers can directly access criminal records and information about the efficacy of available consequences, such as special programs or jail sentences.

• Judges can instantly view and analyze both historical and current information to determine the best sentences for offenders.

• Authorized program evaluators can also immediately access aggregate indicators of the effectiveness of various options in preventing repeat criminal behavior.

Without DSS-Justice, it can take weeks for users to gather and report on criminal case information. As a result, judges handed down sentences based on their own knowledge of programs and their purported results, not on actual data.

With DSS-Justice, officials will have immediate access to that information. County officials can then make better decisions regarding criminal cases, and reduce the number of repeat criminal offenders and increasing public safety.

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