Wisconsin Prisoners Tracked By Software
The sheriff in Douglas County, Wis., grew irritated about law enforcement efforts being wasted as different counties had no way of alerting each other when they both had prisoners that needed to be transferred to the same place.
Emerald Systems CEO Phil Brandsey worked with 54 county sheriffs to develop the prisoners exchange and transport scheduling (PETS) system, which makes use of Microsoft.Net technology.
The system, which is accessible to all 72 Wisconsin counties, is estimated to save $3 million in expenses yearly for the transfer of prisoners between courts, jails, and prisons.
A comment space on the PETS application allows officers to put in pertinent information such as whether a prisoner is violent or has communicable diseases.
PETS was developed over about 18 months with C# and Microsoft Visual Studio.Net, and went live last December, employing a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database management system.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Government Computer News (02/27/04); Walsh, Trudy .