ALABAMA SUMMARY OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Alabama developed a virtual office for its Court Referral Officers called the Model Integrated Defendant Access System (MIDAS). Court Referral Officers (CROs) exist in all of Alabama’s courts, and they are assigned to alcohol and drug abuse cases to perform pre-sentence investigations, and to monitor the progress of defendants as they proceed thorough the system. MIDAS fully automates the CRO system and allows integration with existing criminal records, and the citation and driver records systems that will enable all jurisdictions to identify; charge and sanction impaired driving offenders based on their driving history.

1. The "dashboard" approach allows the CRO to access information and to easily navigate among the various input screens and provides standardization of business practices.
2. An assessment instrument that was developed and validated for use in Alabama by the CROs themselves. This instrument is on-line within MIDAS, and the results of the assessment are evaluated by the CRO to help determine the level of treatment. This assessment instrument is saving the State over $100,000 a year in reduced per defendant fees required by the former instrument.
3. Integration of several systems allows the CRO to access current information on the defendant from a wide variety of databases.
• Integration of all defendant CRO case records provides access information from other jurisdictions, thus eliminating potential redundant services and misplacement of the defendant in an improper level of treatment.
4. A training manual has been developed, and an on-line tutorial facilitates its use.
5. Automation:
• Web-based system enables system updates to be made centrally, eliminating the need for on-site updates.
• MIDAS produces automatic correspondence, reports, accounting information and receipts.
• An automatic search capability for the intake procedure requires the CRO to do a name search on the defendant to determine past history and to import the defendant’s information from any existing file into the MIDAS system, thus eliminating duplication in data entry and their accompanying errors.
6. MIDAS is distributed to the CROs through Alabama’s unified court system, which provides networking to the various state courts.
7. The cost of MIDAS development was kept low by utilizing expertise and computer resources at the University of Alabama’s College of Engineering, and by subcontracting through them to develop the MIDAS software; all software is owned by the State of Alabama.
• The system has generic applicability in that it uses Microsoft operating systems and was developed using .NET capabilities.
• The system has been extended to drug courts, and their personnel are not applying the same approach and software systems to their defendants.
8. Integration with Law Enforcement Tactical System (LETS).

Mike Carroll, Administrative Office of the Court
(334) 954-5010
mike.carroll@alacourt.gov