DA’s Office selects NICE Justice to improve prosecutor and staff efficiency in the pursuit of justice
The Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office, located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is committed to pursuing truth, justice, and public safety in collaboration with the communities it serves. Under the leadership of District Attorney Francis T. Chardo, the office works closely with federal, state, and local police agencies to investigate, prosecute, and prevent crime. Additionally, the office employs co-responders who work alongside law enforcement to identify situations where behavioral health issues may contribute to an individual’s risk of arrest. These co-responders provide access to crisis intervention services when necessary. Dauphin County, located in South Central Pennsylvania, has a population of over a quarter of a million people.
Recently, the Dauphin County, Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Office announced it will be deploying NICE Justice, one of the AI-powered solutions in NICE’s Evidencentral platform, to enhance the efficiency of prosecutors and staff. With this implementation, the DA’s Office will be able to spend less time managing digital evidence and more time focused on the pursuit of justice, most importantly with respect to combating violent crime.
Dauphin County District Attorney Francis T. Chardo, said, “In our office, we work closely with our county law enforcement partners to protect the public by seeking justice, with a special emphasis on reducing violent crime. Successful prosecutions depend on digital evidence; however, the extensive and manual work required to collect and analyze this evidence, as well as to share discovery with the defense, can slow justice down. With the help of NICE Justice, our dedicated prosecutors and legal staff will be relieved of the routine manual tasks associated with managing digital evidence, allowing them to focus on prosecuting cases and proactively addressing violent crime.”
The cloud-based NICE Justice solution digitally transforms how district attorneys' offices receive, interact with, manage and share digital evidence. Freed from dealing with discs, drives, emails and logging into multiple systems to manage and prepare evidence, attorneys and staff are able to focus on building and presenting compelling cases. NICE Justice also features built-in AI and automation capabilities for object detection, automated case building, video and audio transcription and translation, optical character recognition (OCR), analytics and finding evidence connections.
The Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office employs 31 prosecutors, 14 detectives and 30 support staff, managing approximately 6,000 cases each year. They collaborate closely with 20 different federal, state and municipal law enforcement agencies. As the use of video evidence, particularly from body-worn cameras used by police officers and prison guards, continues to increase, the reliance on digital evidence in prosecutions is growing rapidly.
The intake of digital evidence is one of the most significant time wasters for the DA’s Office. Various law enforcement partners submit digital evidence in different and often convoluted ways, consuming excessive time and resources. Items such as CCTV footage, body-worn camera videos, documents, and crime scene photographs all arrive separately. In some cases, evidence is physically transported and hand-delivered on CDs by troopers and police officers. Legal office staff members with authorized access must manually log into other systems to download evidence directly. Once collected, digital evidence is uploaded to local storage (which has limited capacity for growing data), or is copied onto more CDs and thumb drives.
NICE Justice will simplify the process of evidence intake by providing a single, unified portal for every law enforcement agency to securely share digital evidence. Once uploaded, the evidence is automatically consolidated into digital case folders that are stored in the cloud, making it immediately accessible to assigned investigators and attorneys.
To further streamline the intake process, NICE is integrating NICE Justice with various body-worn camera and mobile video systems, as well as a shared drive for storing CCTV video. This integration allows digital evidence to flow directly into case files, eliminating the need for staff members to manually log in and retrieve evidence from these sources. Additionally, by integrating with the District Attorney's Office case management system, NICE Justice ensures that prosecutors always have access to complete evidence, regardless of the system they choose to work in.
NICE Justice will also provide attorneys with built-in tools to improve their self-sufficiency in analyzing and understanding evidence, including the ability to efficiently prepare and manage trial exhibits, transcribe audio and video, redact video, make proprietary video playable, visualize evidence on timelines or maps, create video clips, and electronically share discovery with defense (even for very large files) through a secure link.
Chris Wooten, Executive Vice President, NICE, commented, “When it comes to justice, the truth is a powerful force, and nothing reveals the truth more clearly than digital evidence. We are proud to support the Dauphin County District Attorney’s office and an increasing number of criminal justice agencies in their pursuit of justice and truth through innovative solutions and technologies like NICE Justice. With tens of millions of cases supported and over 200 million pieces of evidence collected, our Evidencentral suite, including NICE Justice, is already making a positive impact on criminal justice outcomes.”
