San Diego Electronic Probable Cause Declaration

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2014

The San Diego Electronic Probable Cause Declaration (PCD) project streamlines the way PCDs written by the arresting officers flow from the County’s three jails to a judge, who must read them and determine if an arrestee can be held in County Jail before an arraignment. The project was a joint initiative between the San Diego County Sheriff and the Superior Court. It involved creating an IT solution for increased efficiency, cost saving and timeliness. The process, which was implemented in September 2013, starts at the Sheriff’s three booking jails, where staff members scan the paper PCDs collected from arresting officers into an electronic repository. The repositories contents appear each morning on a password-protected internet site accessible by a Duty Judge, who accesses, review and electronically "approves" or "rejects" the PCDs with immediate feedback to Sheriff's staff. Rejected PCDs are then corrected by the arresting officer and resubmitted via the same process for judicial re-review and potential approval. Or, if the PCDs cannot be corrected, jail staff initiates the inmate’s release process. This Information Technology project was internally developed by the San Diego County Sheriff's Department's Data Services Division.