West Virginia presently lacks a comprehensive criminal justice database. Statistics are not readily available to track the path of a criminal defendant from the moment of arrest to arraignment and indictment, through sentencing and disposition, including completion of sentence. Data related to these stages of the criminal justice process is maintained separately in silos by agencies serving different functions for the state. This decentralized system poses a threat to public safety and prevents and precludes access to meaningful criminal justice data. Furthermore, the present assemblage of data sharing systems is duplicative, and thus inefficient. Staff time is wasted when the same information must be inputted (often manually) into several different systems for law enforcement, courts, and corrections, among others.
The lack of a centralized database prevents law enforcement at every level—from prosecutors to arresting officers—from accessing the information they need to keep the public safe. In North Carolina, a similar lack of real-time information resulted in a preventable murder in 2008. This incident catalyzed the creation of CJLEADS, a powerful system that provides a comprehensive view of an offender’s criminal information in a single, web-based application. Similar gaps in data have been identified by law enforcement in West Virginia and must be addressed. West Virginia is one of only six American states and territories that still utilize paper court disposition reports. Many law enforcement agencies still submit (via mail and facsimile) numerous paper documents to the courts. The timeliness of data entry by the courts into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) determines whether a law enforcement officer in the field will see that information when needed. Some officers can call the courts, but if the court is closed, they rely on potentially out of date information. In the absence of a centralized database, reports, records, and files must physically be retrieved if records are not automated or if case information from another county is needed. This also impacts criminal defendants who may be detained and held on outdated charges that have been resolved, albeit manually in another county.
The disconnected nature of criminal justice data in West Virginia additionally means that criminal justice stakeholders do not have data with which to make data-driven decisions. This lack of data extends to judges, the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) and other state agencies, legislators, and academics. For example, bond amounts and sentencing dispositions for the same criminal charge vary across the 55 counties in the state; each is at the discretion of the judge or magistrate. Some constituents have questions about disparities in bond amounts and sentencing dispositions, and there is no database for judges, magistrates, prosecutors, or defense attorneys to review for comparison or analysis. When DCR implements resource-intensive programs intended to support individuals and decrease recidivism, the agency lacks complete statistics about whether the program is effective. Similarly, legislators tasked with drafting criminal justice policy are met with a paucity of data related to the justice system. While academics in other states are able to conduct studies to examine issues such as the opioid epidemic and its effects on crime rates, such studies are not viable in West Virginia because of the lack of data. A comprehensive criminal justice database could address these deficits, support information sharing, and increase timely and efficient public safety measures.
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