Marathon County presents first justice-system key performance indicators; officials flag data limits and next steps

Marathon County officials on March 7 presented the county’s first consolidated key performance indicator reports for justice-system programs, showing 2024 service volumes and outcomes across diversion, pretrial supervision, treatment and testing programs.

County Administrator Lance said the KPI effort centralizes data from Attic Correctional Services and other partners so the board and public can see “how much we do, how well we do it and whether anyone is better off.” He framed the work as a starting point, not a finished product.

The reports pull information that previously lived in multiple systems and spreadsheets into Power BI dashboards that update as case managers enter data. Michael Schultz, Marathon County’s data officer, described technical work to standardize hundreds of event codes, build automated reports and push weekly case-manager summaries. Laura Yari, the county’s justice systems coordinator, described program-level findings and operational context for each KPI.

“Now that we’re able to pull information through lots and lots of coding, that black box … is just pages and pages of me manually programming what we need to pull out of these systems,” Schultz said. He said case managers now receive an automated Monday report that flags client files with no activity for 30 days.

Why it matters: County leaders said the KPI reports give the public and the County Board clearer visibility into programs the county funds or helps operate, and they flagged the reports’ current limits and the questions they raise about program design and referrals.

Key program findings presented (2024 data): - Diversion (deferred prosecution/deferred entry of judgment): one full-time case manager’s workload showed 81 admits and 133 served (carryovers included); a separate case load showed 53 admits and 82 served, with a notably lower success rate attributed in part to staff turnover. The report separates deferred prosecution (pre-charge) from deferred entry of judgment (post-charge plea-based agreements). - Domestic-violence diversion: 71 admitted, 92 served; extensions occurred in 14.8% of cases because placement into the closed-group curriculum can delay completion. - OAR/Driver’s-license programs (OAR = operating after revocation): 28 admitted, 46 served; 15 license reinstatements were recorded (9 of those were reinstated during the reporting period). - SSTOP (pretrial intervention for repeated OWI offenders): higher completion rates than historical baselines; in-program recidivism for new OWI charges was 6.76% in the presented sample. - Case Management & Treatment Services (CMTS) — high-risk, high-need outpatient services: 132 admitted, 188 served; dosage hours (face-to-face treatment) were substantial but the pass/attendance-based success metric was lower than county goals. - Pretrial (Public Safety Assessment pilot): 1,504 PSA assessments completed in 2024; the program assigns levels 1–4 and routes level 2–4 to pretrial services. Counts of reoffenses and failures to appear were presented by PSA level; staff said DOJ evaluation of the local implementation is pending. - Day Report (drug testing): 208 admitted, 301 served in 2024; 7,498 face-to-face contacts scheduled and 1,727 failed-to-report incidents; the program offers breath, urine and ETG urine testing and runs daily including holidays.

Speakers and roles in the presentation were limited to county staff and Attic Correctional Services staff who worked on data standardization: County Administrator Lance; Laura Yari, Justice Systems Coordinator; Michael Schultz, Data Officer; representatives from Attic Correctional Services; and Gary Olson from North Central Healthcare (present for a separate agenda item). The District Attorney’s office and Department of Corrections were referenced as referral sources for some programs.

Officials stressed limits and next steps. Lance said the KPI data are "accurate, not precise," noting human-data entry errors and inconsistencies in legacy systems. Schultz said the team reduced more than 600 event codes to about 250 standardized codes and produced automated reports; he and Laura said they will continue training case managers and refining reports for month-by-month filtering and program-specific breakdowns. County staff also plan to separate referral streams (for example, Department of Corrections referrals versus treatment-court referrals) to identify differences in outcomes and potential program adjustments.

County context: presenters emphasized that many justice services are partnerships across state, county and contracted providers. Several speakers noted the limits of county authority (for example, bond and pretrial conditions are judicial decisions) and that some program funding is shared with state agencies such as the Department of Corrections.

The committee did not take formal action on the KPI presentation; staff said they will continue building the dashboards and bring refinements to future committee meetings.