CTC Session Articles
Education Session Article
This article was written in support of a presentation given at CTC6 in 1999.
Building LA's Consolidated Criminal History Reporting System (CCHRS)
By Ken Applegate, Kenneth Lee Chotiner
The Consolidated Criminal History Reporting System (CCHRS) is a unique, original computer system that allows the courts and criminal justice agencies in Los Angeles County to positively identify criminal suspects and defendants, and instantaneously obtain their criminal histories. All relevant criminal history information on an individual is obtained at the touch of a computer key and is displayed in an easily understood format selected by the user.
Overview
Prior to CCHRS, criminal history information for Los Angeles County was contained in nine incompatible state and county databases. These databases presented different user interfaces and contained significantly incomplete and inaccurate information. Obtaining an individual's criminal history required accessing each system separately, resulting in time-consuming, and often unproductive, searching. Thousands of suspects were not positively identified, resulting in the creation of multiple records, which often were not linked to the proper individuals. This prevented judges and criminal justice personnel from obtaining a person's complete criminal history.
CCHRS consolidates previously fragmented data into a central repository containing 200 million computer records related to more than eight million people with 20 million names. The system integrates criminal history information for use by the various criminal justice agencies in Los Angeles County--the largest municipal justice system in the United States--comprised of 50 law enforcement agencies, 21 prosecution offices, 24 judicial districts, and a probation department. The data in CCHRS is updated automatically whenever any of its source systems is updated.
CCHRS allows judges, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and probation officers to rapidly obtain accurate, complete, and current criminal history on a subject by using a personal computer. A complete criminal history can be constructed in two and one-half seconds, as opposed to the previous searching time of 45 to 90 minutes. Through a single inquiry, CCHRS provides the criminal justice community with a person's complete arrest and court case history. This history also contains information on custody, parole and probation status, physical description, numerical identifiers used in the past (e.g., driver's licenses, social security numbers, law enforcement identifying numbers, court case numbers), aliases used, gang monikers, gang affiliation, and previous addresses. The user is instantly alerted to outstanding warrants, whether the person is dangerous or suicidal, warnings of communicable diseases, information about investigations being conducted by other law enforcement agencies, and if the person is a two- or three-strike recidivist offender. Previous escape risk, suicidal, mentally disturbed, and dangerous custody warnings also are displayed, even if the warnings are not assigned to the current incarceration. This allows court and law enforcement personnel to implement appropriate safeguards.
CCHRS is based on livescan fingerprint technology and computerized fingerprint matching. Livescan employs a laser to read the fingerprints, which are then electronically transmitted to the Sheriff's master computer database, where they are classified. This technology ensures positive identification of an individual, thereby eliminating multiple records, under different aliases, which previously existed for the same person.
Genesis
Development of this system began in 1988. The CCHRS project grew out of the frustration of the Los Angeles County municipal courts' judicial officers in not knowing the identity of numerous defendants appearing before them. The judges were unable to obtain current criminal history information rapidly or receive information presented in an easily understandable format.
When Richard Ramirez, the infamous mass murderer known as the Night Stalker, was released from a Los Angeles County court several years ago because he had lied to a judge about his identity, it dramatically confirmed the need for a single source of complete and instantaneous criminal history information. Ramirez, who was appearing in court on a driving under the influence charge, was the prime suspect in a series of murders and sexual offenses extending across several Southern California counties. Neither law enforcement nor the court personnel knew his real identity when he appeared in court. One week after his release, he was finally arrested for his crimes. This incident graphically demonstrated that defendants were "slipping through the cracks" and provided the final impetus needed for the budding CCHRS project. Judges and prosecutors knew that defendants were going from court to court, even in the same building, under different names. They were not positively identified.
Los Angeles County's municipal court judges began to champion the idea of a computer system that would positively identify a person by using sophisticated, laser-based fingerprint technology. This information would be stored in a central database accessible to law enforcement officials across the county. The project's cost benefit analysis revealed that the previously used manual system of fingerprint classification failed to identify one-third of the criminal records and link them to the proper individuals. Thousands of people had multiple records under different names.
In addition, judges and other criminal justice professionals had great difficulty understanding a criminal history report, known as a RAP sheet. Four different RAP sheets, often containing different information, were used in the county. There was a compelling need for a standardized RAP sheet and its complete redesign.
Project Development
The project was conceived, implemented, and spearheaded by the county’s municipal court judges. The CCHRS judges' committee soon evolved into a multi-agency project, pooling the diverse talents of the municipal courts, application programmers, Sheriff’s Department, Probation Department, District Attorney, Los Angeles Police Department, and other criminal justice agencies to make the system responsive to the needs of the entire criminal justice community. The project brought the county's criminal justice agencies together in working toward a common goal. These agencies achieved a level of cooperation that had been unmatched previously. This level of interagency cooperation has produced continuing benefits, interaction and collaboration among the agencies in areas extending far beyond CCHRS. After years of extensive planning and development, CCHRS--the first such system of its kind in the United States--began a phased-in implementation in all of Los Angeles County's criminal justice agencies in December 1996.
A User Committee, composed of representatives from the municipal courts, Sheriff's Department, city and county prosecutors, Los Angeles Police Department, and Probation Department, was created. This committee met weekly for one year, examining and testing the final stages of each module, or feature, of CCHRS. These sessions resulted in a total redesign of the RAP sheet produced by CCHRS. Everyone was surprised to learn that many law enforcement officers, even detectives, as well as judges, couldn't understand a rap sheet due to its coding, organization, complexity, and lack of standardization. The new design was not approved until everyone agreed. The CCHRS RAP sheet provides the full criminal history of the individual, as well as summary information, and can be understood by anyone, whether or not that person has a criminal justice background.
CCHRS was designed and built for Los Angeles County by Sierra Systems Consultants, Inc. From the outset, the system's planning and design was undertaken with an extraordinary level of employee involvement. The municipal court judges sought to make the system responsive to the various needs of the criminal justice community--the end-users of the system. In a departure from past development efforts involving other county systems, the actual users of the projected system, not administrators who would not be using it, were consulted and played an integral role in the system's development.
The Steering Committee determined early in system development that it would not rely on what the committee thought the users would want and then hand the system to them, as has been done in the past. This traditionally resulted in the development of systems that did not meet the needs of the users.
The CCHRS Steering Committee implemented a series of joint application design (JAD) sessions, where judges, law enforcement officers and investigators, prosecutors, and probation officers met with the system developers to tell them what they wanted, exchange ideas, propose modifications, and fine tune each step of CCHRS development. This interaction required the participants to invest hundreds of hours in the project in addition to their regular duties. The employees played a direct and vital role in the development of CCHRS. The JAD sessions created a dynamic exchange of ideas, which ultimately resulted in a system specifically tailored to the needs of the criminal justice community.
The initial loading of data from the source systems into the CCHRS database took three months, running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A staggering amount of information was loaded: three million adult criminal subjects, 750,000 juvenile subjects, seven million court cases, and 200 million addresses, aliases, and physical descriptions.
To train their employees in operating the CCHRS system, the participating agencies adopted a "Train the Trainer" program. A core group of employees was trained, returned to their respective agencies, customized the training materials, and began training fellow employees. These newly trained employees became the "key trainers" who were responsible for training additional CCHRS users. This strategy maximized employee involvement and commitment by making employees responsible for their own training and education. It also produced a high level of enthusiasm for the receipt and use of the CCHRS system.
Comprehensive help screens have been incorporated into the system. This context sensitive help allows users literally to learn the system by themselves, should they so desire. The help screens also allow users to resolve usage questions without having to contact a help desk or use manuals. Training and user manuals have been produced. They are designed to be customizable by each participating agency should there be any unique aspects of their operation. Help desks to assist users have been created in the major participating agencies and a system-wide help desk has been developed.
CCHRS Technology
At the core of CCHRS is an Oracle database. The prototype user interface was constructed with Visual Basic. The final user interfaces were constructed with Sybase Power Builder. CCHRS runs on dual HP 9000 servers, which are configured for fault tolerance.
CCHRS is designed to operate on multiple computer operating systems, including personal computers using various versions of Windows, IBM 3270 dumb terminals and OS/2. This was necessary because there was not a common operating system used by the different criminal justice agencies in the county. The system is designed to be used by 10,000 users, with approximately 2,000 users logged on to the system at any particular time. CCHRS is adaptable to the individual user's environment and can be configured easily by the user.
CCHRS Impact
CCHRS is innovative in several ways. A state-of-the-art, flexible user interface was created that allows each agency to customize the appearance of the CCHRS data for its own needs. Each user can further customize the appearance on-screen easily, thus making the system more "user friendly." CCHRS receives data electronically from a variety of county and state systems. This data is consolidated automatically into the CCHRS database, where it is converted to the CCHRS format, making the data available immediately for retrieval.
Prior to CCHRS, a search for a subject's complete criminal history required a user to individually search many systems (multiple local and state criminal history, juvenile, jail, court, prosecution, and probation). Each system had its own method of access, password, and method of data storage. A search could take hours to complete. The searches were frequently incomplete, because it was extremely difficult to locate all records which pertained to the subject. Search results were not saved in any database. This resulted in each person seeking a criminal history having to go through the laborious, time-consuming search process for themselves, rather than being able to access previous search results.
CCHRS has significantly altered this situation. The system stores information by person, and it automatically associates arrest and case information with the proper person using positive identification based on the livescan fingerprint. A complete criminal history search now takes less than two and one-half seconds. The subject’s case history can be retrieved instantly, over and over again, without having to re-assemble the records.
CCHRS has produced a major impact on the administration of criminal justice in Los Angeles County. Courts and law enforcement agencies are reporting significant breakthroughs in their ability to track and identify criminal suspects and defendants.
An example from the Redondo Beach Police Department offers dramatic testimony to the benefits of CCHRS. Investigators from a nearby police department were baffled in attempting to identify a murder suspect. Information had been obtained connecting a possible suspect to a young woman believed to be his girlfriend. Law enforcement had only her general physical description: age, hair and eye color. The woman's first name was unusual.
After a time-consuming search, over several days, through all local law enforcement databases the investigation yielded no leads or suspects. Detectives from the investigating department mentioned their problem to a Redondo Beach officer who had recently completed CCHRS training. He queried CCHRS with the available information and, within seconds, received a match on three of the four identifying parameters for the young woman. CCHRS produced a full name and address. At her address, detectives learned that her boyfriend was their suspect. An arrest warrant was immediately obtained.
This unique search feature was incorporated into CCHRS at the request of law enforcement. It allows inquires to be made using information possessed by the investigator (e.g., physical descriptors, monikers, gang names, vehicle used, area in which the crime was committed). The system will present a weighted list of possible suspects from its massive database. CCHRS incorporates information from all criminal justice agencies in the county and from the California Department of Justice. This dramatic search feature did not exist prior to CCHRS and has fostered the sharing of information among law enforcement agencies. Previously, investigators had been limited to searching their own, or, possibly, an adjoining jurisdiction's database.
Another unique innovation for law enforcement has been the design of an "under investigation" function that allows investigators to post electronic "post-it" notes on a person's record. This hitherto non-existent capability allows information to be passed among different law enforcement agencies that a detective is investigating a person. This feature also produces automatic communicable disease alerts, posted by the Health Department, when a search subject has such a condition. This prevents the exposure of law enforcement officers, court staff, attorneys, juries, and the public.
Prior to CCHRS, judges could not be certain of the identity of defendants who were appearing before them. Only 20 percent of defendants seeking bail or own recognizance release could positively be identified. CCHRS has increased the accuracy in positively identifying these defendants to 98 percent!
CCHRS provides decision support to the criminal justice community. It assists judicial officers in rendering sentencing decisions. It automatically calculates in-custody credits. The system aids prosecutors in making filing decisions, determining case dispositions, and presenting appropriate information at sentencing. Because a defendant's criminal history is no longer scattered across multiple incompatible databases, judges and law enforcement officials can now rapidly obtain a current, complete, and accurate picture of that defendant's case history. Prior to CCHRS, it was possible for a probationer to commit a crime and be sentenced as though it was a first-time offense since the court did not know the individual was on probation to another court in Los Angeles County and did not possess immediate, current information. CCHRS provides the means to prevent this from happening.
A judge is now able to determine immediately whether there are outstanding warrants--nationwide--for the person appearing in court. Typically, the prosecutor is often unaware if there are outstanding warrants, especially if they were recently issued.
A court clerk can easily set CCHRS to be calendar driven. This makes it possible, with but a single inquiry, to see the criminal history of all defendants calendared for a particular day, thus producing additional efficiency by eliminating the need to individually search for each person.
From the earliest stages of its development, CCHRS has progressed as an interagency project. This has been one of its key strengths. Every decision reached in the development process has been through consensus in the Steering Committee. This has been unique among county interagency projects and has fostered a high degree of cooperation among the county's criminal justice agencies. This cooperation, engendered by CCHRS, has translated into numerous non-CCHRS activities, thus fostering closer working relationships among the agencies. While these agencies all share a strong desire to improve the efficiency of the criminal justice system, they had developed, over the years prior to CCHRS, separate databases and separate procedures. CCHRS has been the unifying force for all of these agencies. This unprecedented cooperation between governmental departments has made it possible for CCHRS to quickly replace the county's antiquated Personal History Information System previously operated by the Sheriff's Department. By replacing this system, CCHRS is eliminating thousands of multiple criminal records, vastly reducing inaccuracies in criminal history records, and reducing Los Angeles County's system cost by over three million dollars annually. Courtroom clerks no longer have to search multiple databases when researching an individual's criminal history. Independent non-county auditors have estimated that such pronounced improvements in efficiency will allow CCHRS to recover its eight year development costs of seven million dollars within just two or three years.
CCHRS has been shining a spotlight on all aspects of the criminal justice systems. The development of CCHRS has also caused participating agencies, and the state, to look at their systems more critically. Throughout the development of CCHRS, numerous areas for systems improvement were identified. CCHRS has served as the catalyst for projected improvements in the criminal justice systems. Based on the CCHRS development experience, it is apparent that similar beneficial results will be obtained by any jurisdiction that uses CCHRS. A jurisdiction, or agency, often will have a general idea of inherent system problems, but may not be fully aware of their depth and extent. CCHRS identifies many of those problems.
One example of a serious problem identified by CCHRS has been the extremely poor data quality contained in all source systems. This is a universal problem in all jurisdictions and is one that will be identified in any jurisdiction using CCHRS. CCHRS spotlighted the problem, causing the cleanup of data in all source systems prior to the data being merged into the CCHRS database. The system continues to identify newly developed data that is of poor quality in source systems, thus insuring high quality of criminal history data.
The latest statistics as of the writing of this article (early May 1999) illustrate the scope of CCHRS usage. During the month of February 1999, criminal justice users made 221,039 search requests or subject inquiries.
Several local federal agencies have been granted access to CCHRS, including the FBI, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Federal Marshal's Office, and the U.S. Probation Office.
The Consolidated Criminal History Reporting System is designed to be replicable in jurisdictions of any size and has broad applications in criminal justice systems on an international scale. Numerous court systems, prosecution and law enforcement agencies throughout the United States, and the world, have expressed a strong interest in adapting CCHRS to their local needs.
The unique advantage of CCHRS is that the same system is used for all agencies and functions. The users can format the appearance of the information on the monitor so that it is presented the way they want it. If they don't want certain information, it won't be presented. If they want to change the order in which information appears, it is simple to do. In short, CCHRS gives the users exactly what they want, the way they want it.
Ken Applegate
Contact:
Ken Applegate
Technology Attorney
Los Angeles County Municipal Courts
Los Angeles, California
Phone: (213) 974-6181
Fax: (213) 687-8986
E-mail: kapplegate@earthlink.net
Kenneth Lee Chotiner
Contact:
Honorable Kenneth Lee Chotiner
Los Angeles Municipal Court
Los Angeles, California
Phone: (213) 974-5891
Fax: (213) 687-8986
Biographical Information
This biographical information may date from as far back as 1999. Please keep in mind that it may no longer be accurate.
Ken Applegate
Technology Attorney
Los Angeles County Municipal Courts
Los Angeles, California
Kenneth Lee Chotiner
Los Angeles Municipal Court
Los Angeles, California