The Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS) is a computer-based information system for public prosecution agencies. PROMIS was initially developed with funds from the United States Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) to cope with problems of a large, urban prosecution agency where mass production operations had superceded the traditional practice of a single attorney preparing and prosecuting a given case from inception to final disposition. The combination of massive volumes of cases and assembly-line fragmentation of responsibility and control had created a situation in which one case was indistinguishable from another and the effects of problems at various stages in the assembly line on ultimate case disposition went undetected and uncorrected. One unique feature of PROMIS that addresses these problems is the automated evaluation of cases. Through the application of a uniform set of criteria, PROMIS assigns two numerical ratings to each case: one signifying the gravity of the crimes through the measurement of the amount of harm done to society, and the other signifying the gravity of the prior record of the accused. These ratings make it possible to select the more important cases for intensive, pre-trial preparation and to assure even-handed treatment of cases with similar degrees of gravity. A complementary feature of PROMIS is the automation of reasons for decisions made or actions taken along the assembly line. Reasons for dismissing cases prior to trial on their merits can be related to earlier cycles of postponement for various reasons and the reasoning behind intake and screening decisions. The PROMIS data include information about the defendant, case characteristics and processes, charge, sentencing and continuance processes, and the witness/victims involved in the case. PROMIS was first used in 1971 in the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. To enhance the ability to transfer the concepts and software to other communities, LEAA awarded a grant to the Institute for Law and Social Research (INSLAW) in Washington, DC. The St. Louis PROMIS data collection is a product of this grant.

The Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS) is a computer-based information system for public prosecution agencies. PROMIS was initially developed with funds from the United States Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) to cope with problems of a large, urban prosecution agency where mass production operations had superseded the traditional practice of a single attorney preparing and prosecuting a given case from inception to final disposition. The combination of massive volumes of cases and assembly-line fragmentation of responsibility and control had created a situation in which one case was indistinguishable from another and the effects of problems at various stages in the assembly line on ultimate case disposition went undetected and uncorrected. One unique feature of PROMIS that addresses these problems is the automated evaluation of cases. Through the application of a uniform set of criteria, PROMIS assigns two numerical ratings to each case: one signifying the gravity of the crimes through the measurement of the amount of harm done to society, and the other signifying the gravity of the prior record of the accused. These ratings make it possible to select the more important cases for intensive, pre-trial preparation and to assure even-handed treatment of cases with similar degrees of gravity. A complementary feature of PROMIS is the automation of reasons for decisions made or actions taken along the assembly line. Reasons for dismissing cases prior to trial on their merits can be related to earlier cycles of postponement for various reasons and the reasoning behind intake and screening decisions. The PROMIS data include information about the defendant, case characteristics and processes, charge, sentencing and continuance processes, and the witnesses/victims involved in the case. PROMIS was first used in 1971 in the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. To enhance the ability to transfer the concepts and software to other communities, LEAA awarded a grant to the Institute for Law xand Social Research (INSLAW) in Washington, DC. The Rhode Island PROMIS data collection is a product of this grant.

These data were generated by the Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS), a computer-based management information system for public prosecution agencies, and contain information on all cases and defendants brought to the Superior Court Division of the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. The data were prepared for public release by the Institute for Law and Social Research, Washington, DC. The data contain selected variables, including type and gravity of the crime, a score reflecting the defendant's past record, and detailed records of the administration of each case. The 1974 data have only sentencing information.

The purpose of this data collection was to establish a current name and address listing of state and local government prosecution and civil attorney agencies and to obtain information about agency function, jurisdiction, employment, funding, and attorney compensation arrangements. The data for each agency include information for any identifiable local police prosecutors. Excluded from the study were private law firms that perform legal services periodically for a government and are compensated by retainers and fees. Variables cover agency functions and jurisdiction, agency funding, number and types of employees, compensation and employment restrictions for attorneys, agency's geographical jurisdiction, number of branch offices, and number of branch office employees.

This collection grew out of a prototype case tracking and crime mapping application that was developed for the United States Attorney's Office (USAO), Southern District of New York (SDNY). The purpose of creating the application was to move from the traditionally episodic way of handling cases to a comprehensive and strategic method of collecting case information and linking it to specific geographic locations, and collecting information either not handled at all or not handled with sufficient enough detail by SDNY's existing case management system. The result was an end-user application designed to be run largely by SDNY's nontechnical staff. It consisted of two components, a database to capture case tracking information and a mapping component to link case and geographic data. The case tracking data were contained in a Microsoft Access database and the client application contained all of the forms, queries, reports, macros, table links, and code necessary to enter, navigate through, and query the data. The mapping application was developed using Environmental Systems Research Institute's (ESRI) ArcView 3.0a GIS. This collection shows how the user-interface of the database and the mapping component were customized to allow the staff to perform spatial queries without having to be geographic information systems (GIS) experts. Part 1 of this collection contains the Visual Basic script used to customize the user-interface of the Microsoft Access database. Part 2 contains the Avenue script used to customize ArcView to link the data maintained in the server databases, to automate the office's most common queries, and to run simple analyses.

The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration File (PROFILE) System was designed for the automated storage and retrieval of information describing programs sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The two types of data elements used to describe the projects in this file are basic data and program descriptors. The basic data elements include the title of the grant, information regarding the location of the grantee and the project, critical funding dates, the government level and type of grantee, financial data, the name of the project director, indication of the availability of reports, and identification numbers. The program descriptor elements form the program classification system and describe the key characteristics of the program. Key characteristics include subject of the program, primary and secondary activity, whether the program covered a juvenile or adult problem, and what specific crimes, clients, staff, program strategies, agencies, equipment, or research methods were to be used or would be affected by the project.

Investigator(s): Pretrial Services Resource Center The National Pretrial Reporting Program project was initiated in 1983 by the Pretrial Services Resource Center with funding from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to determine the feasibility of a national pretrial database. Specifically, the project sought to determine whether accurate and comprehensive pretrial data can be collected at the local level and subsequently aggregated at the state and federal levels. Before this project began, there was no national system for regularly tracking information on persons and cases from the point they entered the local court system until they were adjudicated and sentenced, nor was it clear that such a system could be established. The project was developed in three phases and each phase has taken the program closer to its goal of providing BJS with reliable and valid data on the movement of defendants through the criminal court system. Phase 1 of the project, though limited to three jurisdictions, demonstrated that baseline data could be collected to describe how criminal defendants are processed through the courts. Phase II of the project not only focused on the collection and analyses of the data, but was also concerned with the procedural methods necessary to devise a national baseline data collection project. Although there were problems encountered and lessons learned in Phase II, the findings confirmed that a national effort could be undertaken. In the summer of 1987, Phase III of the program was developed. Changes incorporated in Phase III were a direct result of the lessons learned from Phase II, with the goal of achieving a more accurate and representative database. To accomplish this, significant changes were made, particularly in four areas: site selection, defendant sampling, site personnel training, and targeted charge. A more ambitious project was envisioned as well, with the project targeting 40 jurisdictions for data collection. Another major change in Phase III concerned the decision to target felony defendants only, since many of the ongoing BJS projects were limited to felony defendants. The data collected in the period 1988-1993 provide a picture of felony defendants' movements through the criminal courts and what happens during the course of their journey.

The Criminal Case Reporting System is designed to record and track criminal case activity.