Monroe, Louisiana
After evaluating multiple case management solutions, the Fourth Judicial District Court Probation chose JustWare | Probation & Parole to ease the management of their caseloads, deliver greater services to program participants, and provide increased protection to members of their community.
AGENCY IMPACT
The Fourth Judicial District Court Probation used an internally-developed application to track important client information. However, since its application, caseloads have significantly increased. The department now supervises approximately 1,500 clients and processes more than 1,400 financial payments every month.
With the increased workload, the Fourth Judicial District Court Probation’s case management application became obsolete. In fact, the act of creating a weekly court docket was taking an entire week to complete.
We needed a new system that would keep up with our increasing workload. New Dawn Technologies offered the best product and delivered what they promised. The support staff at New Dawn have been fabulous. I just would have never imagined that they would have provided the long term support after the purchase, but they have. If they have a strong selling point it’s their support—wonderful!
Larry Norris: Chief of Court Services
After an extensive search for the right case management solution, Fourth Judicial District Court Probation selected and implemented JustWare | Probation & Parole, from New Dawn Technologies.
“New Dawn Technologies offered the best product and delivered what they promised,” explained Norris.
Part of that promise included JustWare’s barcoding features to help process financial payments. As new financial obligations are created, the Court Probation office prints a sheet of barcode labels and defendants attach a barcode label to every money order payment. When payments are received, personnel in the office simply scan the barcode and the correct account automatically opens in JustWare.
“As long as defendants use these barcode labels, payments are processed,” said Norris. “No more deciphering difficult handwriting or associating unfamiliar names with cases. The number of unprocessed payments has decreased substantially.”
JustWare’s electronic filing cabinet is another benefit of the implementation. As the Fourth Judicial District Court Probation moves toward a paperless office, storing all case-related documents, correspondence, and notices electronically is decreasing personnel costs and drastically cutting the amount of necessary storage space (both in the office and in off-site storage).
COMMUNITY IMPACT
Rather than spending days to create dockets in preparation for the upcoming week, staff members can now generate a docket in a matter of hours, allowing them to spend more time working with probation clients and focusing efforts on reducing recidivism throughout their programs.
“Before we had four days to get ready, and it was all we could do to get ready for the next Wednesday,” said Norris. “We were constantly in a race against time from one week to the next,” said Norris. “[We were] literally reading that old database, which was mostly narrative information instead of event oriented. Court Probation staff were just reading it and making handwritten notes. Now, when it’s time to go to our review periods, you say ‘print me a document for whatever date,’ and it spits out a sheet of paper.”
Since its implementation, JustWare has made life a little easier for the staff of the Fourth Judicial District Court Probation. It has streamlined their daily processes and greatly reduced the workload required to manage each of their cases. In short, it has brought their agency one step closer to simpler times and one giant leap toward the efficiency required to better the lives of both those in and out of their office.