What is Case & Offender Management?
Administrative functions for case and offender management assure the Commission’s internal and external partners that the ICOTS data contains information that is accurate, valid, and reliable. Per the ICOTS Privacy Policy, states must have established policies and procedures to ensure regular review and cleansing of ICOTS data is done in a timely manner. Moreover, since the compact states are the ‘owners’ of the information that is submitted to ICOTS, the compact states are responsible for the accuracy of the data and should conduct regular self-auditing of data. Offender and case management responsibilities include correcting offender data elements, cleaning up junk and duplicate records (focus of Q1) as well as ensuring rejected cases do not remain on the compact workload if transfer will not be pursued.
What Case & Offender Management Issues Exist?
Data analysis in preparation of Offender Management Q1 discovered many ICOTS users (primarily those responsible for transfers from institutions) prematurely create ICOTS profiles never submitting activities leaving junk records. Users regularly creating records in this manner, should be instructed to change procedures and report any junk or empty profiles to the state administrator for clean up. In turn, state administrators should generate the 'Junk Offender Records' Dashboard regularly and ensure records without cases are sent to the ICOTS helpdesk for deletion.
While prior ICOTS enhancements (2018 & 2021) intended to instruct users to withdraw rejected cases if transfer is no longer to be requested, numerous cases remain on the compact workload as active compact cases. The 'Rejected Cases Never Transferred' Dashboard has been published to assist states in identifying these cases for clean-up. In addition, an ICOTS Report 'Rejected Cases Requiring Action' also exists to assist in these efforts.
Common deficiencies are:
- Users fail to report junk/duplicate records as required by the ICOTS Privacy Policy
- Administrators failure to impose corrective action with users regularly creating 'junk' records
- Lack of report usage and timely cleansing of data
- Timely processing of offender management functions.
- Move/merge of ‘junk records.’ Junk records should be deleted instead.
- Failure to withdraw 'rejected' cases no longer requesting transfer
- Failure of users to remove cases from the active workflow (junk or rejected that never transferred) via withdraw or 'remove interest' if no activities exist. See details for these user responsibilities here
What Objectives for Successful Case & Offender Management Should States Consider for their Policies and Procedures?
- Ensure reports are used to follow-up on rejected cases to ensure if no subsequent transfer request will be made, the case is withdrawn and removed from the active workload.
- Ensure processes and procedures are established for users to report junk and duplicate records. Not all junk records are duplicates.
- Proper training conducted prior to tasking staff with responsibilities.
- Establish at a minimum a weekly expectation to ensure any case and offender management items are processed (including a plan to coordinate and communicate with other state when pending items need to be processed by other states.)
- Accountability/corrective action for state administrators who fail to follow written instructions.
- Delete 'junk' or duplicate records. Never Merge/Move a 'junk' record. On your state's list of possible duplicates but inability to delete due to no activities sent to your state? DO NOT attempt to Move/Merge. As no activities were transmitted on these cases, the records should be deleted. Reach out to the originating sending state to delete the record. Note too, any offender records without a compact case should be sent to the national office for deletion as no state assignment exists on those records.
What Resources Exist for Offender Management?
Reports Available
Rejected Cases Never Transferred
Rejected Cases Requiring Action
Training article on utilizing this report
READ the training notes before using this report and NEVER use Move or Merge for Junk Records!
ICOTS Duplicate Offender List Report
ICOTS Pending Merge & Delete Report does NOT include pending Moves
Possible Duplicate Offender Report
Training Demos for Possible Duplicate Offender Report
Training
January 10th 2 pm ET
January 11th 10 am ET
January 12th 2 pm ET
OnDemand 350 Compact Staff Duties
Q1 Case & Offender Management Kick-off
Shared State Policies & Procedures
Have Policies or Procedures to Share? Email mspring@interstatecompact.org
Q & A
Q: For profiles in which no case exists, I am not able to create a delete request and have to be deleted by the national office. Do those need to be reported or does the national office automatically delete these records?
A: Offenders with no cases can only be deleted by the National Office and should not be involved in any move case or merge requests. These offender records should be sent to the ICOTS helpdesk for deletion and are not automatically purged.
Q: If an offender decides not to transfer, should these records be deleted?
A: If a reporting instructions request and/or transfer has been transmitted to a receiving state, those records should be retained. Simply withdrawing the case will remove those cases from the compact workload.
Q: What is the purpose of the ‘print all’ confirmation check box when state administrators create or approve offender management actions in ICOTS?
A: Although the original intent of this feature was to retain data in the event that a request was completed in error, the practical purpose is for states ensure compliance with their OWN state data retention requirements. States should be aware of their data retention requirements and use the ‘print all’ feature to save any records in order to comply with those requirements.
Q: What should we do with offender profiles appearing on the junk offender report that have both junk cases and historical case data?
A: Offender management functions only allow deletions for the entire profile. For profiles in which there are historical and junk cases, the junk cases simply need to be withdrawn or if no activities exist, remove interest in the case.
Comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.