| Steve
Carroll Public Defender, County of San Diego, Public Defenders Office |
It
has been one of my goals since the mid-1990's to have a comprehensive
case-management system which was designed by and for the end user--the
trial attorney and his or her investigator. What I also wanted was
a product that would be powerful enough and flexible enough to interface
with the systems used by the courts, the prosecutors, the police
and probation and other criminal justice partners. And finally,
I wanted this system to be able to give management the information
it needs to help us solve problems for the trial attorneys. Canyon
Solutions' JCATS Defender succeeds in all these areas beyond all
of my expectations. Canyon has truly given us a state-of-the-art
product that is both simple to use and comprehensive in all its
dimensions. With their continued support, Canyon makes this already
wonderful product even better each time we ask for their help. This
is one partnership that has succeeded beyond any of our initial
expectations. |
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The
JCATS Defender system represents a giant leap forward in the capability
of public defender case management systems and is the most modern,
comprehensive, and powerful such system ever developed for a public
defender office. The various modules of this program, starting with
the Dependency module, were developed over a three year period through
the combined efforts of staff from the Public Defender, the Alternate
Public Defender, and Canyon Solutions, Inc. of Phoenix, Arizona.
JCATS Defender sets a new standard in the field and is likely to
advance the state of the art in case management systems for other
public defender offices as they adopt the program or develop systems
of their own with similar designs. JCATS Defender provides dramatically improved immediate access to detailed case information for all department staff. It has also replaced paper-based processes with more efficient electronic processes in many areas and has established a base for accepting data imports from the courts, for linking to document imaging software, and for mobile access and data input in the future. Expense authorization requests are now prepared, submitted, reviewed, approved for payment, and tracked electronically without the use of paper forms. Likewise, investigation requests are prepared, submitted, assigned, and completed within JCATS Defender. Document capabilities allow for the automated generation of subpoenas, motions, and orders with the necessary case-specific information merged in. In addition, more than 100 statistical reports incorporating flexible data parameters can now be easily created by average users without programming expertise. JCATS Defender uses a robust industry-standard Microsoft SQL 2000 database engine to easily support a large enterprise with over 500 users. JCATS Defender is also fully web-enabled and uses Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser as its familiar user interface. This approach dramatically simplifies both staff training and program maintenance. All updates are made once on the file server rather than having to make software changes to all desktops, as is the case in older client-server database designs. Hardware demands for desktops are also minimized, since the processing is all done on the server. |
Robert
Stall Chief Deputy, Public Defender - Central, County of San Diego, Public Defenders Office |