The Legal Department is one of the most utilized and essential internal town services. This past year, Marana’s Legal Department and Technology Service Department paired up to create an innovative internal desktop application that improves various business processes for the town and delivers more efficient and effective methods to access and organize information.
Before this app, the Legal Department was using an outdated access database system to generate reports. This original application was not user friendly, and it involved the coordination of Technology Services to assist in accessing those reports. The department averages about 1,500 cases per year and the access database system was not an efficient means to manage that caseload. The new application helps manage two components of the prosecutor’s workload—the cases and the individuals involved. For cases, the Legal Department now has information readily available in one spot: including offenses charged, victims involved, evidence associated with cases, and other relevant details. For the individuals involved, there is information regarding demographics, charges, priors, preferred languages, pending cases, and other essential information. Having this information readily available has greatly assisted the legal team, especially having it available in the courtroom.
The new application has many useful features in addition to managing workload. The first of which is using stored information to auto-fill commonly used documents. For many cases, there are numerous documents such as letters, disclosure statements, motions, subpoenas, and other court papers. Sometimes these documents need to be generated during a busy courtroom session. With the new application, these documents can be produced at the touch of a button, affording the prosecutor the opportunity to focus on court proceedings and conferring with defendants, defense attorneys, and victims.
The application is most efficient when working with community partners. The victim advocates from the Pima County Attorney’s Office provides services for victims of crime in the Town of Marana. In order to best serve these victims, the prosecutor’s office provides a weekly report to the victim advocates so that they can proactively do outreach to assist victims of crime. This includes advising them of their rights, informing them of what to expect with the criminal justice system, and offering services like safety planning for victims of domestic violence offenses. Prior to the system, Marana staff would be individually filling out multiple forms with the pertinent information for each victim and making photocopies of relevant documents before sending the information to the victim advocates. Often, this meant excessive amounts of time transcribing all the information into the necessary documents. Now, the auto-fill component can complete it within minutes and send notifications or reports digitally.
Reporting capabilities have also been expanded with the new application. One important report that has improved business processes for both the Legal Department and the Police Department is the management of purge dates. Purge dates signify a date at which physical court evidence no longer has to be preserved for litigation. Prior to this system, there were stacks of paperwork that would require a staff person to regularly vet all documents for relevant purge dates. This meant more likelihood for mistakes, an immense input of time, and a direct impact on the evidence and property room in terms of space and storage. Now, the Police Department receives monthly reports about upcoming purge dates, and has the ability to remove items to ensure space for new incoming evidence, which was previously a major concern in the former police facility.
An important report that has assisted in community wide efforts in public safety is the tracking of convictions for individuals, specifically regarding domestic violence cases. This is monitored carefully for each individual because a person’s third offense for a domestic violence incident is considered a felony.
There are other features as well, such as a flagging system if a victim has invoked his or her rights, and a calendar that shows upcoming court dates for staff members. In addition, there are note sections where staff can track phone, email, and other communications about the case. This makes it easier for any staff to view the most current information and avoid creating callback lists for case inquiries.
The new legal application has provided insights to relevant department data that did not exist before. There are several new types of data, from number of cases per year to demographic details, which support the legal team by providing statistics that can help better articulate the department needs, such as workload and position requests. Equally important, this data will be required when the Town of Marana seeks grant funding.
Prosecutors are legally and ethically obligated to ensure victim’s rights are protected, and that any and all evidence associated with a case is provided to a defendant or a defense attorney. The application has significantly assisted in both these areas by providing templates for victim notification, as well as a tracking and disclosure log for evidence. This new system ensures more efficiency, effectiveness, accuracy, and compliance.
