The population of the Dallas County Jail rose to its largest number since early March, and county staff say the culprits are two vital technology platforms that hold criminal case information.
Friday鈥檚 population number was 6,141, about 85% capacity. That was the highest since the jail held 6,157 people on March 6th.
In a regularly scheduled meeting about the jail population, multiple staff members said the slowness of the change to a new court case management system has led to a significant slowdown in their ability to do their jobs.
鈥淚n my opinion, jail population was definitely trending down 鈥� until Forvus transitioned to read-only on May 16,鈥� said LaShonda Jefferson, Dallas County鈥檚 jail population manager. 鈥淎fter that, starting May 18, we began ticking up. And we鈥檝e just been going up and up from there.鈥�
Jefferson said there was a 鈥渁 lack of integration, a lack of stakeholder access, and a lack of training to the new system.鈥�
Forvus is the county鈥檚 decades-old system for tracking and managing criminal cases. The Dallas Morning News the problem lies with the migration of case files from Forvus into a new system built by Tyler Technologies.
四虎影院 contacted County Clerk John Warren and District Clerk Felicia Pitre Friday afternoon about the migration from the old Forvus system to Odyssey, but neither had responded by the time this story was published.
Employees who work in the county court system identified a second problem, however: a lack of access to the Adult Information System platform used by Dallas County. The AIS contains information on anyone arrested in the county.
鈥淚 would refer to it as being blind and crippled,鈥� said Paul Blocker, the first assistant in the county public defender鈥檚 office. 鈥淭he things that were already taking twice as long are taking four times as long or longer.鈥�
Carla Gilkey, the manager for the county鈥檚 misdemeanor courts, said not having access to AIS 鈥渋s really putting a chokehold on us.鈥� She said she is working with the sheriff鈥檚 department -- which does have access to AIS -- to get one of its people to help process cases.
鈥淣onetheless, when you鈥檝e got, like, 70 people on the docket, and you鈥檙e trying to do dispositions, it鈥檚 kind of hard to have a sheriff鈥檚 representative on the phone鈥� for all of that work.
The Dallas County Sheriffs鈥� Department operates the jail.
It鈥檚 unclear what precisely changed that led to staffers in other segments of the system losing access to the AIS platform. A sheriff鈥檚 department spokesperson did not immediately reply to 四虎影院 on Friday.
Got a tip? Email Bret Jaspers at bjaspers@kera.org.
四虎影院 is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider today. Thank you.
