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The Thin Blue Line

The State of Maryland helps law enforcement agencies improve efficiency with multidatabase access

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CUSTOMER: State of Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention and Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services HEADQUARTERS: Towson, Md. BUSINESS: Law enforcement HARDWARE: IBM System z 890 SOFTWARE: DataDirect Shadow from DataDirect Technologies and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition from Oracle CHALLENGE: Dealing with multiple databases on multiple platforms SOLUTION: Using the DataDirect solution to run queries against the mainframe system and the Oracle solution to gather and disseminate information from all databases

Some say the only thing protecting society from free falling into chaos is the thin blue line—and they’re likely right. Without the dedication of blue-uniformed local and state police officers, order might crumble—forcing law-abiding citizens to triple lock their doors and keep loaded shotguns at their bedsides.

Of course, these crime busters don’t work alone. Behind the scenes is a host of support personnel ranging from dispatchers, crime-scene analysts and senior officials. Together, they make the streets safe for average citizens, allowing them to go about their business with little fear.

Many people don’t consider IT’s role in law enforcement. The days of filing cabinets and boxes stuffed with paperwork are largely over, replaced with electronically held fingerprints, mug shots and criminal histories. This move to digital has made the thin blue line much thicker.

This transition hasn’t always been easy. Finding the right solutions and tying them together can be a chore. There aren’t many applications tailored to the criminal justice industry, and the appropriate solutions are often cobbled together based on the needs of individual entities.

As a result, information related to the safety and protection of officers and law-enforcement activities is typically held in siloed databases. The State of Maryland was one such organization. It had separate databases for its Division of Corrections, Division of Parole, State Police Gun Registry and Sex Offender Registry; each acted as a distinct and isolated data repository.

Realizing this hampered the capability of the state’s law-enforcement activities, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley directed officials to create a single view of people’s criminal backgrounds. As part of this effort, they deployed a business-intelligence (BI) tool from Oracle and a data-gathering tool from DataDirect Technologies to create what users call the Law Enforcement Dashboard, and the governor calls “security integration.”

Now, statewide law-enforcement personnel and agencies can view pertinent data across databases, without logging onto multiple systems.

Arrests and Convictions

The collaboration of two State of Maryland organizations—the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention (GOCCP) and the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS)—made this project possible. Using many funding sources, strategic planning, crime-data analysis and best-practices research, the GOCCP supports the education, connections and empowerment of Maryland’s citizens and public-safety organizations.

Working with GOCCP, the DPSCS’s overarching mission is to help keep individual communities safer and provide victim services. It also supplies law-enforcement agencies with current access to accurate information about criminal defendants and offenders—as well as ensuring the safety, security and well being of these individuals while they’re under the organization’s supervision.

Ron Brothers, CIO of the DPSCS’s Information Technology and Communications Division, explains the DPSCS runs Baltimore’s City Jail, City Detention Center and Pretrial Services. In addition, the division runs those facilities’ booking operations, as well as the booking processes for seven other counties. It also houses and maintains the Criminal Justice Information System, which acts as a repository for all of Maryland’s criminal histories.

This last, data-related part is key, because the DPSCS shares that data with the GOCCP and other agencies to help them analyze crime data and make better-informed decisions. “We’re almost joined at the hip,” Brothers adds. Much of this data-related activity goes back to the day when Maryland’s Gov. O’Malley was the mayor of Baltimore.

At that time, “the majority of people we were arresting for first-degree murder were under the supervision of the city’s Parole and Probation Department,” says GOCCP Director Kristin Mahoney, who used to work for the Baltimore Police Department. “We felt there was something lacking in the business practices of Parole and Probation, and that they could have more of a positive impact if we redesigned some of those business processes.”

This information drove then-mayor O’Malley to direct the State’s Division of Parole and Probation to develop real-life risk criteria, in an attempt to identify Maryland’s most violent offenders as part of parole or probation. Previously, the division evaluated these people almost solely on convictions. But as Mahoney points out, “Some of these criminals may have been arrested 22 times before a conviction. As they continued to beat charges in court, offenders were able to fly under Parole and Probation’s radar, the organization responsible for ensuring they didn’t engage in illegal behavior. So arrests were an important part of establishing our risk criteria.”

As a result of this effort, the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation was able to identify the state’s 2,000 most violent offenders who were on parole or probation. That knowledge, as well as other information, enabled local law enforcement to dramatically reduce the Baltimore City and Baltimore County murder rates.

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