The Maryland Division of Parole and Probation for the first time will be using the juvenile records of violent adult offenders in order to allow parole officers to better monitor those with violent tendencies, according to an internal memo obtained by The Washington Times.

The memo detailed several changes in the process for screening those who are placed in the division’s Violence-Prevention Unit, an outgrowth of a 2007 initiative from [Gov. Martin] O’Malley. The unit was created to reduce violent crimes by identifying those with violent histories or who show tendencies to continue down a violent path. The unit then monitors and supervises them more closely than normal parolees.  Division Director Phil Pie said that the new screening process includes the ability to look at an offender’s juvenile record, according to the memo …

The changes follow legislative proposals by Mr. O’Malley this year to allow the sharing of juvenile court records with other states and the District, as well as with other state and federal agencies that serve juvenile offenders.  “It’s a response to the technology used to swap data, and the fact that there is now greater sharing of intelligence between the [parole division] and local agencies. In short, the division has become much more proactive in preventing violent crime by offenders,” said Rick Benetti, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services …

State officials said that shooting victims are put into the program because they are more likely to try to take vengeance on the person who shot them.  “The idea is, if you’re an offender, and you’re involved in a shooting, whether a victim or not, chances are you’re doing something wrong,” Mr. Benetti said.  Maryland Delegate Jill Carter, Baltimore Democrat, questioned the program’s effectiveness, saying that it was part of Mr. O’Malley’s tendency to favor “stat-based symbolism over actual substance.”  “I disagree with any policy that would brand a victim of crime as a future criminal,” she said.

A great deal more detail is available in the full article at The Washington Times.

vericatrajkova Data Sharing, Juvenile Justice, Maryland, Offender Information, Probation and Parole

The following is an editorial from the News-Journal:

Errors In Prisoner Release Go Deeper Into Managing Information

Delawareans, of course, were startled to read recently that over an 18-month period, 29 prisoners were let go too early. The released prisoners, while recaptured, put citizens and law enforcement officers in danger. The accidents also made a mockery of our penal system. But luckily, a tragedy did not occur … this time. All four candidates for governor rightly expressed outrage, and each duly promised to fix the problem.

The recordkeeping in the state prison system cannot keep up with the complexity of sentencing laws. Some records are still kept by hand. Calculations can go wrong. Department of Correction Commissioner Carl Danberg acknowledged the problem. Critics of the system said it goes back farther and deeper than the 29 prisoners prematurely released on Mr. Danberg’s watch.

No wonder.  The system is inadequate. It has to be thoroughly modernized, and up-to-date information controls must be put in place. In fact, it’s probably a good guess that the prisoner release is only the most dramatic failure of an outmoded information system.

While criticism from the four candidates for governor stings, it didn’t go far enough. The Department of Correction’s failure goes beyond human fumbling. The real trouble is too little is known about what state government does. Even the governor doesn’t know. Nor does the General Assembly. Delaware simply doesn’t make enough information available to its top management. For sure, some people like it that way. The different lower management silos in state government are free to operate with little supervision. The reports that are generated are often not combined and analyzed.

All an administration has to do is avoid a crisis, such as the death of a child in state care or the murder of a civilian by a prematurely released prisoner. Avoid that, and it’s business as usual. But for the new governor, the next crisis is in the data.  The next governor will have to deal with a crisis at some point, whether it is in a prison or mental hospital, the state police force or child welfare department. Once it is over, a blue-ribbon commission will lament that this crisis could have been prevented, if only someone had detected the signals.

Now is the time to monitor those signals. A system that routinely and thoroughly examines the information available can fix problems before they develop. The state government is moving into a more transparent accounting system. Citizens will be better able to see where the money goes. But the candidates for governor should push for a system that accounts for results as well as money.

vericatrajkova Data Sharing, Delaware, Early Release, Sentencing

Many of us, Syscon and Securus included, boast of being able to link streams of data into useful operational knowledge. The Baltimore Sun printed an interesting article this morning that describes the use of multiple databases in context.

Anne Arundel County detectives investigating the fatal shooting of a Baltimore man in a neighborhood near Arundel Mills mall last month had two solid leads: In the minutes before his death, according to charging documents, Derrin Davon Thomas had been in contact with someone identified in his cell phone as Dip, and records showed Dip’s phone had connected with nearby cell towers at the time of the killing. The next step was to figure out who Dip was. Detectives, tipped off that the shooter might have been from Prince George’s County, turned to officers there, who searched a database of nicknames and other identifying features of known criminals and their associates.

The rest of the story tells how they tracked him down. As one observer says:

“In today’s world, everybody thinks DNA is huge, but these are the old-fashioned traditional police techniques that are tried and true,” said Andrew Karmen, a criminologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “It allows you to cut to the chase and reach into a pile of a thousand suspects and end up with a handful, or sometimes just one.”

A useful reminder, I think, that our work has everyday implications.

vericatrajkova Data Sharing, Gangs (STGs), MD Anne Arundel County, MD Prince George's County

The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.

The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information — from palm prints to eye scans. Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI’s Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is “important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in.”

The FBI already has 55 million sets of fingerprints on file. In coming years, the bureau wants to compare palm prints, scars and tattoos, iris eye patterns, and facial shapes. The idea is to combine various pieces of biometric information to positively identify a potential suspect. A lot will depend on how quickly technology is perfected, according to Thomas Bush, the FBI official in charge of the Clarksburg, West Virginia, facility where the FBI houses its current fingerprint database. “Fingerprints will still be the big player,” Bush, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, told CNN. But he added, “Whatever the biometric that comes down the road, we need to be able to plug that in and play.”

First up, he said, are palm prints. The FBI has already begun collecting images and hopes to soon use these as an additional means of making identifications. Countries that are already using such images find 20 percent of their positive matches come from latent palm prints left at crime scenes, the FBI’s Bush said. The FBI has also started collecting mug shots and pictures of scars and tattoos. These images are being stored for now as the technology is fine-tuned. All of the FBI’s biometric data is stored on computers 30-feet underground in the Clarksburg facility. In addition, the FBI could soon start comparing people’s eyes — specifically the iris, or the colored part of an eye — as part of its new biometrics program called Next Generation Identification.

Nearby, at West Virginia University’s Center for Identification Technology Research, researchers are already testing some of these technologies that will ultimately be used by the FBI. “The best increase in accuracy will come from fusing different biometrics together,” said Bojan Cukic, the co-director of the center.

But it’s unnerving to privacy experts.

“It’s the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology and Liberty Project. “People who don’t think mistakes are going to be made I don’t think fly enough,” said Steinhardt. He said thousands of mistakes have been made with the use of the so-called no-fly lists at airports — and that giving law enforcement widespread data collection techniques should cause major privacy alarms. “There are real consequences to people,” Steinhardt said.

You don’t have to be a criminal or a terrorist to be checked against the database.

More than 55 percent of the checks the FBI runs involve criminal background checks for people applying for sensitive jobs in government or jobs working with vulnerable people such as children and the elderly, according to the FBI. The FBI says it hasn’t been saving the fingerprints for those checks, but that may change. The FBI plans a so-called “rap-back” service in which an employer could ask the FBI to keep the prints for an employee on file and let the employer know if the person ever has a brush with the law. The FBI says it will first have to clear hurdles with state privacy laws, and people would have to sign waivers allowing their information to be kept.

Critics say people are being forced to give up too much personal information. But Lawrence Hornak, the co-director of the research center at West Virginia University, said it could actually enhance people’s privacy. “It allows you to project your identity as being you,” said Hornak. “And it allows people to avoid identity theft, things of that nature.”

There remains the question of how reliable these new biometric technologies will be.

A 2006 German study looking at facial recognition in a crowded train station found successful matches could be made 60 percent of the time during the day. But when lighting conditions worsened at night, the results shrank to a success rate of 10 to 20 percent. As work on these technologies continues, researchers are quick to admit what’s proven to be the most accurate so far. “Iris technology is perceived today, together with fingerprints, to be the most accurate,” said Cukic. But in the future all kinds of methods may be employed. Some researchers are looking at the way people walk as a possible additional means of identification.

vericatrajkova Biometrics, Data Sharing, FBI, Facial Recognition, Federal Systems, Iris Scanning

The IowaVINE system that allows for the tracking of inmates for the benefit of victims is set to expand to all but one county in the State.

The system now includes information on all state prisoners as well as those convicted in 49 county courts. The IowaVINE system allows the public to track whether an arrested or convicted offender has escaped, has been released or transferred, or has died, etc. It was launched in June with information from 23 counties. Attorney General Tom Miller said Friday that adding information from the Department of Corrections means that about 8,700 more offenders will be traceable … The Department of Corrections, which has notified victims by regular mail since 1986, will now update its records on IowaVINE about 20 times a day. County jails will update every 15 minutes.

More from the Des Moines Register.

vericatrajkova Data Sharing, Iowa, Victim Notification Systems

A history of growth in the West Virginia corrections system. There are plans afoot to share biometric data around the world. Washington County MN receives grant to continue juvenile program. Brown County claims Wisconsin shortchanged the county by more than $100,000 on inmate fees.   Cumberland County PA Prison Board approves $10.7m expansion.

vericatrajkova Biometrics, Data Sharing, Grants, Juvenile Justice, MN Washington County, PA Cumberland County, WI Brown County, West Virginia, Wisconsin

The US Government set up 40 “Fusion Centers” to act as shared repositories of information on terrorism, a task that has been expanded to include “all crimes and hazards”.  The ACLU has many concerns about the work being conducted at these centers.   Their report — ignoring the political position taken — is a useful survey of the government’s efforts to collect and use data from multiple sources.

vericatrajkova Data Sharing

According to the Washington Post, the US Government has embarked on a huge program of biometrics data collection:

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad. Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

“Bigger. Faster. Better. That’s the bottom line,” said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills. The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people’s bodies will become de facto national identification cards. Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd. The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government .. [see balance of story at Washington Post]

Are they using NIEM, or at least making it compatible?

vericatrajkova Biometrics, Data Sharing, FBI 11, 16, 7