Putting GJXDM into Practice
Consider this scenario: An officer stops a car after the driver violates a stop sign. The driver is a 55-year old male and the passenger is a 13-year-old boy. The officer runs a warrant-and-wanted inquiry on the driver via an in-car computer with negative results and releases the driver on a traffic summons.
How would the outcome been different if the officer were informed upon running the inquiry that the driver had an outstanding warrant for his arrest for a probation violation pending in Washington, D.C.?
In this scenario, the warrant had been entered into the Probation Department’s database but had yet to be entered into the D.C./NCIC databases, and, therefore, the information was unavailable to the officer.
If the information had been entered into Probation Department’s database and automatically entered into the State/NCIC database, the officer would have arrested the driver.
As a result of that arrest the following sequence of events would have occurred:
- The officer would have conducted a criminal history check and ascertained that the driver was a sexual offender who had previous arrests and convictions for offenses against children and that, as a condition of his probation, the offender was not to have contact with minor children.
- Upon questioning the minor in the car the officer would ascertain the child was a runaway and had been sexual molested by the driver.
- The boy would then been turned over to Child and Family Services. The incident report would be entered separately into the police Record Management System (RMS) and the CFS case-management system. Using GJXDM, the systems could be integrated and much of the data could be electronically transferred from the police department to CFS, reducing time and labor while improving accuracy.
- CFS would determine that the boy was a good candidate for Youth Services and previously entered information concerning the child’s demographics would be re-entered into the Youth Services Administration’s software system. A GJXDM interface could again be used to electronically transfer the data between the two systems, thus preventing the need for duplicate entry.
- The driver would be booked on the new offense and a warrant sought at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Case information that was entered into the police RMS would be re-entered into the prosecutor’s database. Time could be saved and accuracy improved if the police and attorney’s systems were integrated using GJXDM.
- The U.S. Attorney’s Office would open a criminal case and file it with the Superior Court.
- Each agency would enter the information into its own case-management system, a process that could be made more efficient through an electronic interface.
- The court could electronically send to both the pre-trial and public-defender services selected case information to facilitate the pre-trial investigation and the assignment of attorneys.
- If the case resulted in a conviction or probation revocation, the case information could be transferred electronically to the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Probation Office to populate the prison’s inmate-management software and to update the probation office’s case files.
This scenario illustrates how the use of the GJXDM data standard could be used for sharing information throughout the criminal-justice system. GJXDM reduces the time to perform the data conversations required for interfaces between agencies and provides a substantial cost savings in doing so.
The widespread use of GJXDM has already contributed to the increased efficiency of the criminal-justice system. Its core and universal data elements are included in the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), which allows the electronic sharing of the data across domains.