The St. Tammany Parish Jail is capable of housing 1,192 inmates, pre-trial, and adjudicated offenders. This southern Louisiana institution is committed to the highest standard of care, custody, and control of inmates. For an institution of this size with multiple departments and shared responsibilities, operational efficiency and overall institutional performance is critical to maintaining those standards.
The Jail Log Book is an essential tool of the Sheriff’s Office staff, who are required by law to record all activities that take place in the jail. These legal reports must be available upon request as official Sheriff’s Office documents. Because this tool plays such a critical role in the care and control of inmates and the sharing of inmate data, modernization is imperative to streamline supervision and simplify cooperative efforts among diverse departments.
Like many local law enforcement offices, the personnel at the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office were burdened with outdated technology ill-equipped to match the weighty workload. Though they’d long since replaced their paper logs with a digital data storage solution, their obsolete legacy software was stuck on desktop, making collaboration difficult and data management monotonous.
Regardless of the advantages of cutting edge, custom software, the implementation of new technology often adds to the strain of an already stressful occupation. Pivotal users must be able to quickly upskill, but often, these very users are the most taxed by task overwhelm, making the adoption of a new application a challenge in itself.
STPSO needed an up-to-date data management solution that was both cost-efficient and laborsaving. They also needed their designated users to gain a thorough understanding of the new software in an expedient, painless manner.
Antares specializes in custom enterprise software development, and the New Orleans-based company had partnered with several public institutions prior to STPSO, including the Louisiana Clerks Remote Access Authority, the Louisiana Clerks of Court Association, and the Department of Health and Hospitals. This combination of technical expertise and relevant industry experience equipped Antares to analyze, understand, and address the most pressing obstacles to STPSO’s institutional goals and operational efficiency.
To modernize and streamline data management, the Antares team created a web-based application and supporting database accessible from the Sheriff’s internal network. A web application saves large institutions like STPSO time from the outset as they don’t have to be individually installed and updated. Data can be easily accessed, shared and updated from anywhere at anytime on any device that is connected to the internet, boosting productivity.
The log book program created for STPSO is able to operate in three departments: bailiffs, jail and work release, which allows key users to collaborate more effectively. With the new software, trusted users in these departments can easily create and supplement log book entries, search the log book, generate reports, and manage administrative functions. User security levels, easy data entry screens and specific reporting functionality further enhance operations.
Once the software was ready for action, Antares provided comprehensive training to key users, empowering them to be leaders in the adoption and implementation of the system at a more widespread level.
With their new custom software, the hard-working staff of the STPSO can quickly book inmates, track data, and provide information that is always up-to-date. The application offers usability enhancements that have been welcomed by over-taxed users in the field, and moving to a webbased application has equipped the IT department to provide better services to its users and upgrade the old equipment in the field.
In the modern era, your enterprise is only as effective as the technology behind it. For a large scale operation like STPSO, legacy software may be a comfortable known, but it’s also an impediment to progress and an obstacle to achieving financial and operational goals. Antares helps institutions and enterprises tear down the barriers to forward movement by analyzing workflow and processes and providing custom solutions that meet budget demands and offer improved efficiency.
With three decades of award-winning custom enterprise software development experience, Antares overcomes the hurdles that legacy software and out-of-the-box solutions can’t. If your company can benefit from customized software solutions, contact us.
