MCP's informational podcast series features the firm’s subject-matter experts and other industry leaders exploring a wide range of timely topics pertaining to mission-critical communications.

The sixth episode on the MCP Podcast Network is entitled “Data-Driven Criminal Justice.” This episode explores how data integration can improve the criminal justice process and result in better information and more effective and data-driven decision-making. Every criminal justice agency is dependent on its partners, whether it be courts, prosecutors, corrections, law enforcement, or any other partners for information to be there in a timely manner. Additional topics of discussion include:

In Summary

• The State of Iowa Criminal Justice Information System (Iowa CJIS) is a system of systems designed to enable the integration and sharing of information between the state’s criminal justice organizations, seamlessly and securely, in real time.
• URL Integration, who became part of Mission Critical Partners in 2020, built the Iowa CJIS from the ground up and today, continue to support the program, which is providing incalculable benefits
• The program has increased the amount of information being shared across the state’s criminal-justice community and has improved the data of accuracy being sent, among other benefits

Records-management is a cornerstone of effective policing. In today’s data-rich environment, a records-management system (RMS) with robust data-mining capabilities is critical to managing information and maintaining accurate records to keep communities safe. It is also critical for law enforcement agencies to have the ability to effectively share those records and data to support improved crime reporting.

In January 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will stop collecting Uniform Crime Report (UCR) summary data and only collect data through the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). There are many questions, both technical and operational, about how agencies can meet the compliance deadline, especially when it comes to the challenges of report validation, personnel training and developing new, effective workflows.

During this session, Mission Critical Partners discusses the following:

In Summary:

• Law-enforcement agencies nationwide are grappling with their migrations to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), an initiative to intended to improve the accuracy, timeliness and transparency of the nation's crime statistics, which could be used to help identify crime patterns and trends, and ultimately, prevent crime.
• Numerous challenges stand in the way of NIBRS compliance, and some agencies are at risk of not meeting the January 2021 deadline.
• This whitepaper identifies the benefits of the migration and explores tactics that could help them meet the deadline.

NIBRS is expected to foster greater consistency in the data that is being collected for each incident that occurs because it has defined standard ways of describing an incidentand collecting the data, so that apples-to-apples comparisons can be made at the national level. There are several challenges that exist for law enforcement agencies, including the need to retool their RMS to comply with the new rules that have been established, cost, and organizational change. This whitepaper discusses the following: