Stark County, Ohio as many, began with the idea of linking all the existing criminal justice operating systems. A few major problems arose. Some of the systems were outdated, ready for replacement or upgrading, others were not 2000 compatible. Some of the entities in criminal justice who were under contract with vendors, faced major expenses and difficulties in retrieving their own data for conversion, or for statistical purposes. Although, most importantly, after study it was determined the cost of making all the different systems communicate and/or upgrading them, was greater than replacing them all with one new system. A new system could be much more efficient and be customly designed for each entity.
With this in mind, Phil Giavasis, the Clerk of Common Pleas Court, had just received a grant from the Office of Criminal Justice Services for electronically reporting case dispositions to B.C.I. He offered to share the grant with other Stark County criminal justice agencies and the project began to take shape. The three Clerks of Municipal Courts, the County Sheriff, the Police Chiefs Association, the Prosecutors office, Common Pleas, and all Municipal Court Judges agreed to participate. Stark County already had a Corrections and Planning Board in place and they created a sub committee to oversee the project. The following mission statement was written.
"To create one Stark County wide criminal justice computer network, for the purpose of sharing information, electronically transmitting information, and to reduce the duplication of data entries. To provide one source for warrant files, criminal histories, reporting of criminal dispositions, and the uniformity of forms generation."
Stark County is designing, writing, training, and implementing this system with their own analyst and programers. Further, five more grants have been awarded from the Office of Criminal Justice Services since the conception of the project totaling nearly 1 million dollars. The following internal individual programs are or will be included.
We welcome you to our web site, we hope you find it useful. Enjoy browsing around and if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions please feel free to E-mail our project coordinator Kody Gonzalez at kody.gonzalez@cantonohio.gov or call him at 330-438-4258.