Berrien County court staff report yearlong backlog, ongoing JWorx interface work

Berrien County court staff told the Board of Commissioners on May 11 that the county’s transition to the JWorx court case management system remains incomplete and is producing sustained manual workload and data delays for law enforcement and court partners.

Julie (Staff member) summarized the status of the post–go-live work and said phase two of JWorx — which brought the criminal and juvenile courts onto the system on April 15 of last year — has exposed several continuing problems. “It’s not perfect. I don’t think any of our staff would say it’s perfect. I think it’s gotten a heck of a lot better over the last year,” Julie said, adding that staff continue to run manual reports and clean up data for state reporting.

The county’s reporting of criminal history and disposition data to state systems (referred to in the meeting as CHR/LEIN reporting) is significantly delayed. Staff described the lean reporting backlog as about 11 months and said they are manually submitting portions of the data while waiting for vendor and state-side fixes to interfaces. A court presenter said she is “up to June right now” for certain manual reporting tasks.

Why it matters: delayed and incomplete reporting to state criminal-history systems can leave first responders and other agencies without current records about warrants, dispositions or other law-enforcement-relevant items. Commissioners pressed staff about the extent and risks of the delay and asked what remains to get the interfaces fully operational.

What staff described: county staff and JWorx administrators said the remaining work includes: final vendor patches from Equivant so the county’s transmission format aligns with Michigan State Police requirements; data clean-up to prevent errors on state uploads; development of additional custom reports; and bringing multiple interfaces fully into production. Staff report they have run multiple test exchanges with the state and hold twice-weekly vendor meetings to move the work forward.

Staff also described operational impacts inside the courts. The county’s move away from the old mainframe required rebuilding decades of automated business processes; staff said changes in criminal-justice rules, recent “clean slate” legislation and new Supreme Court rules about personal-identifying information have added manual steps that increase file touches and staff time. “We touch files because we now have to do additional manual things that were just like a **** done,” a court staff member said when describing prior automation.

Staffing and business-process issues: presenters said the courts now need additional personnel across divisions. Managers and senior staff are performing specialized data-entry tasks (including lean entry) and do not have capacity to reassign work or create robust backups for key administrators. Staff named Amy Beebe, Dan Utrowski and Frank Samsel as employees who have taken lead roles on post–go-live tasks and said knowledge transfer and cross-training remain priorities. The clerk’s office also reported a current opening for part-time lien-entry staff; presenters said lien entry requires specialized training and that part-time hires cannot fully eliminate the backlog.

Commissioners’ questions and concerns: commissioners pressed staff on how close interfaces are to being fully functional and raised public-safety concerns about delayed reporting. Staff responded that a vendor patch is required on the production server before the CHR/LEIN interface can be turned fully to production; once that patch is applied the county is staged to transmit backlogged data. Commissioners also questioned licensing limits for JWorx access and whether data-sharing arrangements could be made more real-time; staff responded access levels are limited by contract and by security and licensing choices the county made at procurement.

What will happen next: staff said they will continue twice-weekly vendor meetings, complete data-cleaning batches and pursue the vendor patch needed to move the CHR interface live. Presenters asked commissioners to alert staff when constituents report specific case problems so staff can investigate case-by-case; staff also invited commissioners to visit the court office to view the backlog and the record queues in person.

Formal action at the meeting: the board approved minutes from the committee of the whole meeting held two weeks earlier. Commissioner Freeling moved to approve the minutes; Commissioner Werfel seconded the motion and the board voted to adopt the minutes.

Ending: county staff characterized progress in pragmatic terms — acknowledging continuing problems while pointing to incremental improvements and ongoing work with Equivant and the state to complete interfaces and reduce manual reporting.