Putnam County seeing improvement after implementing new technology in the criminal warrant process, saving officer time and resources.
Circuit County Clerk Jennifer Wilkerson said the electronic warrant process has gone well, increasing accuracy and saving money. Wilkerson said her office needed a better way to perform administrative functions and paperwork.
“The goal was to be more efficient, and we have certainly achieved that,” Wilkerson said. “There’s been a lot of benefits and impacts that we’ve had. This is helping us be more efficient, producing much more volume with much less time. And what we know is time equals money.”
Wilkerson said the office processes 3,600 criminal cases a year. Wilkerson said the county processes more warrants than cases per year. Wilkerson said the new technlogy helps the county do more with less.
Wilkerson said base pay for law enforcement is $25 per hour.
“If you saved one hour per case, using this digital warrants program, that’s a costs savings of about $90,000 for our county,” Wilkerson said.
Wilkerson said the county had a short amount of judicial commissioners able to find warrants, struggling to meet the need of many.
Wilkerson said the office has expanded the program to include judicial subpoenas and all types of search warrants, further saving time and cutting costs for the county. Wilkerson said counties not implementing electronic warrant programs require almost four hours spent on processing. Wilkerson said the electronic process takes about an hour, saving about three hours.
“You have officers that, you know, from the time that they’re deciding that they’re going to make an arrest, they’re calling a magistrate, that magistrate is getting dressed, coming into booking then they are writing a warrant, possibly writing that search warrant for any sort of blood drawls or any of those things,” Wilkerson said. “And then the booking process takes place and their getting someone checked into the jail.”
Wilkerson said the electronic process allows the officer to type information and submit it in the search warrant instead of the information being relayed through another party. Wilkerson said this helps keep information more accurate, as well.
Wilkerson said the electronic system helps her office, as she no longer needs to hire another judicial commissioner to help sign warrants. Officers do not need to come back to the office the next day, as they can stamp and file paperwork electronically.
“We should be able to respond to requests in a timely fashion and I think this program does just exactly that,” Wilkerson said. “It helps us respond to things in a much faster time frame. It helps us be more responsible and transparent with our records.”