The Will County Circuit Court clerk’s office, long known for its fouled-up files and out-of-date technology, is taking a giant leap into the 21st Century.
With a $1.2 million computer system being installed throughout the courthouse, officials say the days of misplaced information and miscommunication are forever gone.
According to Clerk Pam McGuire, the office that still uses shorthand notes and typewriters is about to reach the cutting edge.
“It’s a big leap,” she said.
Vasco Bridges Jr., senior partner of JANO Data Systems, which provided and is installing the new system, added, “When we’re done, we’re going to be a good step ahead of everyone” in other collar counties.
The key to the setup is integration.
The new system will combine four separate and highly unequal computerized areas of the courts: criminal, civil, traffic and child support. And it will link all phases of the criminal justice system, from the sheriff’s police to the county jail and the state’s attorney’s office to every judge’s chambers.
“The most important thing is that for the first time, we will have the entire courthouse on one system,” said Chief Judge Herman Haase. “It has been kind of a hodgepodge of different systems. (Now) it will be easier to support, cheaper to support.”
And it should prevent some of the record-keeping nightmares that plagued the Circuit Court clerk’s office a few years ago.
In May 1993, the Illinois Appellate Court ordered an inquiry into why the Will County office had fallen months behind in filing notices of appeals in criminal cases. About the same time, it was discovered that the Illinois secretary of state was getting late notices of court-ordered driver’s license suspensions and traffic arrests.
And the clerk’s office and sheriff’s police were being sued by people who were arrested and put in jail on warrants that had been canceled by a judge, but never removed from law enforcement computers.
All of this was attributable in large part to the computer systems.
“There was a time, but that goes back years to before we had holiday (weekend) court, when a person was arrested on a Friday and spent all weekend in jail” on an outdated warrant, Haase said.
But with the new system, information entered in a courtroom, the clerk’s office and the county jail will instantly be available to everyone on-line and with the proper security clearance.
Will County Sheriff’s Police Sgt. Bill Mort, of the records department, has been working on an interdepartmental panel that came up with proposals for the new system.
He said the best thing for police–and for those who could have been falsely arrested–will be the ability to scan criminals’ pictures into the computer system. An officer will instantly be able to tell whether he or she is arresting the right person and whether a suspect has given a false name.
“Bad people . . . come through the door saying, `That’s not me.’ And we have to do the legwork and find out,” Mort said.
In the past, that meant a trip to the county jail to pull a copy of a snapshot out of an arrest file. But with the new computer system, the photo will be available at area police stations with the click of a mouse.
The heart of the new setup is its direct link with the statewide Correctional Institute Management Information System, Bridges said.
As soon as someone is arrested, his or her vital statistics and photograph are entered into a CIMIS computer. That data is then tapped by the circuit clerk’s computer system and made into a court file. Indictments and other new information may be added by the state’s attorney’s office and the judge handling the case until it is disposed.
Current criminal cases have already been entered into the system, and will be followed in coming months with traffic, civil and child support files, Bridges said. Training is ongoing.
The entire criminal system should be up and running in about six weeks–and then it’s up to the judges, attorneys, cops and clerks to become accustomed to using it.
“Everybody hates change,” Mort observed. “But a year from now, when this thing is all implemented, they’ll forget how they ever did anything before. They’ll think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
