Travis lags in sending crime info to state database
By Tony Plohetski AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 5:21 a.m. Monday, July 11, 2011
Published: 5:19 a.m. Monday, July 11, 2011
Travis County is years behind in getting legally required information into a state database that is widely relied upon by law enforcement and state licensing agencies for criminal background checks.
The Texas Criminal Justice Information System, the state's primary repository for data such as arrest dates and case outcomes, is used by law enforcement and state agencies about 40,000 times a day to screen potential employees for criminal behavior and to help prosecutors figure out the best charge for offenders. So gaps in the database can be glaring.
Prosecutors — not only in Travis, but also in surrounding counties — say missing information could cause them to inadvertently be too lenient on repeat offenders. Suspects in crimes such as drunken driving and domestic violence might face harsher penalties if they have prior offenses — if prosecutors know about their past.
Investigators for state agencies that conduct background checks on potential hires fear that they could wrongly sign off on teachers, child care workers and others getting a license who shouldn't.
At the very least, investigators say, the county's poor performance costs extra time and money when they must spend additional hours researching the history of a suspect or applicant because the state database is missing information such as whether a person was acquitted or found guilty in a case. That can stall criminal cases or delay a prospective licensee from getting the nod to go to work.
"Frankly, getting things out of district clerks can take weeks, if not months, to come up with information, and sometimes it never happens," said Doug Phillips, who, as director of investigations for the Texas Education Agency, relies on the database for teacher background checks. "It keeps that educator hanging in limbo, and it makes our job more difficult."
Travis County officials said they have long been aware of the problem, which has persisted for years. They blame a mix of clerical errors and chronic technical glitches within the county and said it also is likely that many of the county's criminal cases have not yet been resolved, making it impossible to report final outcomes to the state.
Yet another reason for the county's dismal compliance appears to be that no single elected official or county office is responsible for entering information or ensuring that it makes it into the state database. The task is splintered among clerks and prosecutors, meaning no single person has sole oversight of making sure the system works.
"We are very close to having this solved," said Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir, who is one of several county officials responsible for the effort and whose office must submit the final outcome of misdemeanor cases. "We want to get this information to them. We don't want to be a problem child."
Yet despite the passage of time and prodding from the Legislature, the Texas Department of Public Safety, which administers the database, said Travis County remains among the state's lowest-ranked in keeping the database current with essential criminal information. Not only does it lag behind the state's other major counties, it also underperforms some of the state's most rural areas, where technology is often less advanced.
Delays concern state lawmakers
State lawmakers created the Texas Criminal Justice Information System in the early 1990s to give police and state licensing agencies a one-stop criminal history database, to increase the type of information counties must give the state and to allow the Legislature to better analyze the criminal justice system.
The law required DPS to create ways counties could electronically submit the information. It also described the information the database must include, such as suspects' names and dates of birth, actions that prosecutors take on a case and its final outcome.
Early on, the database was beset with incomplete information as counties, particularly those in deeply rural areas with limited technological capabilities, had difficulty sending information.
Officials were particularly concerned at the time that arrest reports were not getting into the database. The arrest records were the only pieces of information that created a new entry in the database, and when they weren't sent, the system could falsely indicate that a defendant or license applicant had a clean criminal history.
State officials, using federal and state grants, spent the next several years outfitting county jails with technology that guaranteed their arrest reports would get into the database. As a result, investigators consulting the database now would at least know that an applicant or suspect has an arrest history.
But other gaps remained, including action by prosecutors and the outcomes of cases.
In an effort to push local jurisdictions to comply, frustrated lawmakers in 2001 passed new rules requiring DPS to monitor how well counties submitted the data and to report their findings to the state auditor and governor. Yet the law did not impose any penalties on counties.
By 2009, state lawmakers were still alarmed that so many counties were not getting information, particularly how cases were resolved, into the system.
"It just became a public safety issue, and it looked like DPS had a setup to acquire the data, but there was no compunction on the part of the counties to deliver the data," said state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, who wrote and introduced a law that urged more counties to submit information.
According to the new law, counties that had submitted less than 90 percent of their information were to create special task forces to\u2002identify problems and submit to the state written plans for correcting them. That law also did not punish counties for not following through.
The majority of counties have since begun to comply. Each January, DPS evaluates counties by looking at the calendar year that began two years earlier to see whether it has complete information in the database for the cases opened that year.
According to a DPS report in January, most were keeping the database 70 to 80 percent current. By comparison, Travis County had submitted required information in only 48 percent of all cases from 2009. That meant the county was performing half as well as Harris County, which, even with a busier criminal justice system, was keeping the database current in 97 percent of its cases.
Other major counties ranged from 65 percent for Tarrant to 76 percent for Bexar.
Database gaps slow investigations
State officials said the database is used 1.2 million times a month. (That comes to nearly 30 times every minute of every day.)
Among state offices, the Texas Education Agency and the state Department of Family and Protective Services, which licenses foster and adoptive parents and investigates suspects in abuse cases, are some of the biggest database users, said Angie Kendall, deputy administrator for the crime record service at DPS.
Family and Protective Services spokesman Patrick Crimmins said the agency does not keep statistics for how often it encounters incomplete information on the estimated 1 million people it researches each year.
When the agency performed a recent spot-check for foster care licensing requests, however, it found that between September 2010 and June 21, 2011, about 900 of 15,455 database checks, or 6 percent, had unclear or incomplete criminal case outcomes, requiring further research.
He said when the agency runs into such gaps, it asks applicants to provide court records.
"It does slow the process," Crimmins said.
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Catherine Evans cited the case of Anthony Joel Casas as an example of the database's importance. In 2002, Casas was charged with two counts of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon after robbing two women in Houston.
But only after an investigator visited Casas' Hidalgo County hometown did he discover that Casas was already on probation for assaulting a police officer — information missing from the justice information database. Without that knowledge, prosecutors, judges and jurors could have concluded that Casas was eligible for probation on the new charges. Instead, he received a 75-year sentence.
The missing information was "a big, important piece of the puzzle," Evans said. "The notion that something like that could be out there and we aren't aware of it is concerning."
Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, whose county submits about 87 percent of the required records to the criminal justice information system, has a similar story.
He recalled a murder case from 2003 in which the database showed no prior convictions, even though the suspect had twice received probation on drug charges in two different counties — including Travis.
Prosecutors learned that only after a relative of the suspect's told them.
Information in the database often helps prosecutors decide whether to offer a plea or what punishment recommendations should be, Bradley said.
So "the last thing you want to do is make a recommendation and find out afterward it was a ridiculous recommendation because of (a defendant's) criminal history," he said. "If you don't have accurate information, you are going to make a bad choice, and it is going to endanger the public."
Travis performance shows decline
Unlike many counties that have steadily improved in submitted information, Travis County's performance has actually declined in recent years.
In 2003, DPS officials calculated that the county had submitted 58 percent of the required criminal case information. The next year, the number dropped to 30 percent. In 2005 and 2006, the rating dipped to only 16 percent, state officials said.
DeBeauvoir said the sharp decline was the result of a new computer system the county installed in 2005 and 2006. She said the problems have been corrected.
In the years since then, county officials said they have made other efforts to increase the amount of information sent to the database — including hand-correcting clerical errors that often resulted in the county's information not going through.
They said they also began redesigning a computer program to ensure that the right information lands in the database. Officials told DPS in a 2009 report that the new computer program would be in place this spring. Joe Harlow, the county's chief information officer, said the system should be ready by October.
He said through concentrated efforts, the county has already improved its reporting percentage so far this year.
County officials said they did not keep track of how much they have spent in efforts to more fully comply.
Travis County officials also say DPS is responsible for some of their problems.
How the agency wants the data is too specific and unforgiving, they said — even though all counties must provide information the same way.
"There are no allowances for anything that is different than how they are requesting it," said Travis County District Clerk Amalia Rodriguez-Mendoza.
Michelle Brinkman, her deputy, said problems might not necessarily rest with her office.
"You have to be perfect in your reporting on a case before you get credit for that reporting. If there is anything missing from say, the prosecution, but all our other data is there, Travis County is still the one getting the report card."
But Shapiro, the lawmaker responsible for the 2009 law, said she remains disappointed that Travis County still has so many gaps in its information.
"That is terrible," she said. "They are falling behind on their job."
tplohetski@statesman.com; 445-3605
Published: 5:19 a.m. Monday, July 11, 2011
Travis County is years behind in getting legally required information into a state database that is widely relied upon by law enforcement and state licensing agencies for criminal background checks.
The Texas Criminal Justice Information System, the state's primary repository for data such as arrest dates and case outcomes, is used by law enforcement and state agencies about 40,000 times a day to screen potential employees for criminal behavior and to help prosecutors figure out the best charge for offenders. So gaps in the database can be glaring.
Prosecutors — not only in Travis, but also in surrounding counties — say missing information could cause them to inadvertently be too lenient on repeat offenders. Suspects in crimes such as drunken driving and domestic violence might face harsher penalties if they have prior offenses — if prosecutors know about their past.
Investigators for state agencies that conduct background checks on potential hires fear that they could wrongly sign off on teachers, child care workers and others getting a license who shouldn't.
At the very least, investigators say, the county's poor performance costs extra time and money when they must spend additional hours researching the history of a suspect or applicant because the state database is missing information such as whether a person was acquitted or found guilty in a case. That can stall criminal cases or delay a prospective licensee from getting the nod to go to work.
"Frankly, getting things out of district clerks can take weeks, if not months, to come up with information, and sometimes it never happens," said Doug Phillips, who, as director of investigations for the Texas Education Agency, relies on the database for teacher background checks. "It keeps that educator hanging in limbo, and it makes our job more difficult."
Travis County officials said they have long been aware of the problem, which has persisted for years. They blame a mix of clerical errors and chronic technical glitches within the county and said it also is likely that many of the county's criminal cases have not yet been resolved, making it impossible to report final outcomes to the state.
Yet another reason for the county's dismal compliance appears to be that no single elected official or county office is responsible for entering information or ensuring that it makes it into the state database. The task is splintered among clerks and prosecutors, meaning no single person has sole oversight of making sure the system works.
"We are very close to having this solved," said Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir, who is one of several county officials responsible for the effort and whose office must submit the final outcome of misdemeanor cases. "We want to get this information to them. We don't want to be a problem child."
Yet despite the passage of time and prodding from the Legislature, the Texas Department of Public Safety, which administers the database, said Travis County remains among the state's lowest-ranked in keeping the database current with essential criminal information. Not only does it lag behind the state's other major counties, it also underperforms some of the state's most rural areas, where technology is often less advanced.
Delays concern state lawmakers
State lawmakers created the Texas Criminal Justice Information System in the early 1990s to give police and state licensing agencies a one-stop criminal history database, to increase the type of information counties must give the state and to allow the Legislature to better analyze the criminal justice system.
The law required DPS to create ways counties could electronically submit the information. It also described the information the database must include, such as suspects' names and dates of birth, actions that prosecutors take on a case and its final outcome.
Early on, the database was beset with incomplete information as counties, particularly those in deeply rural areas with limited technological capabilities, had difficulty sending information.
Officials were particularly concerned at the time that arrest reports were not getting into the database. The arrest records were the only pieces of information that created a new entry in the database, and when they weren't sent, the system could falsely indicate that a defendant or license applicant had a clean criminal history.
State officials, using federal and state grants, spent the next several years outfitting county jails with technology that guaranteed their arrest reports would get into the database. As a result, investigators consulting the database now would at least know that an applicant or suspect has an arrest history.
But other gaps remained, including action by prosecutors and the outcomes of cases.
In an effort to push local jurisdictions to comply, frustrated lawmakers in 2001 passed new rules requiring DPS to monitor how well counties submitted the data and to report their findings to the state auditor and governor. Yet the law did not impose any penalties on counties.
By 2009, state lawmakers were still alarmed that so many counties were not getting information, particularly how cases were resolved, into the system.
"It just became a public safety issue, and it looked like DPS had a setup to acquire the data, but there was no compunction on the part of the counties to deliver the data," said state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, who wrote and introduced a law that urged more counties to submit information.
According to the new law, counties that had submitted less than 90 percent of their information were to create special task forces to\u2002identify problems and submit to the state written plans for correcting them. That law also did not punish counties for not following through.
The majority of counties have since begun to comply. Each January, DPS evaluates counties by looking at the calendar year that began two years earlier to see whether it has complete information in the database for the cases opened that year.
According to a DPS report in January, most were keeping the database 70 to 80 percent current. By comparison, Travis County had submitted required information in only 48 percent of all cases from 2009. That meant the county was performing half as well as Harris County, which, even with a busier criminal justice system, was keeping the database current in 97 percent of its cases.
Other major counties ranged from 65 percent for Tarrant to 76 percent for Bexar.
Database gaps slow investigations
State officials said the database is used 1.2 million times a month. (That comes to nearly 30 times every minute of every day.)
Among state offices, the Texas Education Agency and the state Department of Family and Protective Services, which licenses foster and adoptive parents and investigates suspects in abuse cases, are some of the biggest database users, said Angie Kendall, deputy administrator for the crime record service at DPS.
Family and Protective Services spokesman Patrick Crimmins said the agency does not keep statistics for how often it encounters incomplete information on the estimated 1 million people it researches each year.
When the agency performed a recent spot-check for foster care licensing requests, however, it found that between September 2010 and June 21, 2011, about 900 of 15,455 database checks, or 6 percent, had unclear or incomplete criminal case outcomes, requiring further research.
He said when the agency runs into such gaps, it asks applicants to provide court records.
"It does slow the process," Crimmins said.
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Catherine Evans cited the case of Anthony Joel Casas as an example of the database's importance. In 2002, Casas was charged with two counts of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon after robbing two women in Houston.
But only after an investigator visited Casas' Hidalgo County hometown did he discover that Casas was already on probation for assaulting a police officer — information missing from the justice information database. Without that knowledge, prosecutors, judges and jurors could have concluded that Casas was eligible for probation on the new charges. Instead, he received a 75-year sentence.
The missing information was "a big, important piece of the puzzle," Evans said. "The notion that something like that could be out there and we aren't aware of it is concerning."
Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, whose county submits about 87 percent of the required records to the criminal justice information system, has a similar story.
He recalled a murder case from 2003 in which the database showed no prior convictions, even though the suspect had twice received probation on drug charges in two different counties — including Travis.
Prosecutors learned that only after a relative of the suspect's told them.
Information in the database often helps prosecutors decide whether to offer a plea or what punishment recommendations should be, Bradley said.
So "the last thing you want to do is make a recommendation and find out afterward it was a ridiculous recommendation because of (a defendant's) criminal history," he said. "If you don't have accurate information, you are going to make a bad choice, and it is going to endanger the public."
Travis performance shows decline
Unlike many counties that have steadily improved in submitted information, Travis County's performance has actually declined in recent years.
In 2003, DPS officials calculated that the county had submitted 58 percent of the required criminal case information. The next year, the number dropped to 30 percent. In 2005 and 2006, the rating dipped to only 16 percent, state officials said.
DeBeauvoir said the sharp decline was the result of a new computer system the county installed in 2005 and 2006. She said the problems have been corrected.
In the years since then, county officials said they have made other efforts to increase the amount of information sent to the database — including hand-correcting clerical errors that often resulted in the county's information not going through.
They said they also began redesigning a computer program to ensure that the right information lands in the database. Officials told DPS in a 2009 report that the new computer program would be in place this spring. Joe Harlow, the county's chief information officer, said the system should be ready by October.
He said through concentrated efforts, the county has already improved its reporting percentage so far this year.
County officials said they did not keep track of how much they have spent in efforts to more fully comply.
Travis County officials also say DPS is responsible for some of their problems.
How the agency wants the data is too specific and unforgiving, they said — even though all counties must provide information the same way.
"There are no allowances for anything that is different than how they are requesting it," said Travis County District Clerk Amalia Rodriguez-Mendoza.
Michelle Brinkman, her deputy, said problems might not necessarily rest with her office.
"You have to be perfect in your reporting on a case before you get credit for that reporting. If there is anything missing from say, the prosecution, but all our other data is there, Travis County is still the one getting the report card."
But Shapiro, the lawmaker responsible for the 2009 law, said she remains disappointed that Travis County still has so many gaps in its information.
"That is terrible," she said. "They are falling behind on their job."
tplohetski@statesman.com; 445-3605
