Dallas County Sheriff’s Office to Upgrade Jail Software to Stop Release Delays

Tribune News Service — As ongoing technology problems contribute to delays in releasing people from jail, Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown is opting to upgrade the jail’s current software to solve the issue instead of replacing it with one that is compatible with the criminal courts system.

When county officials transitioned the criminal courts in 2023 to a new case management system called Odyssey, they spent $2.2 million on the twin software for the jail but never implemented it.

The jail’s separate interface, Adult Information Systems, cannot fully communicate with the courts’ Odyssey software, and the district clerk’s office has to hand-deliver paperwork to the jail instead of sending the information electronically. That process, even though the jail and clerk’s office are in the same building, has contributed to delays in releasing people from custody.

On Monday, a Dallas County Commissioners Court committee weighed two paths: whether to transition the jail to Odyssey’s twin software or update AIS to be more integrated with Odyssey — each bringing its own costs and logistical concerns.

Brown made clear she wanted to stick with AIS and implement updates, a decision backed by Dallas County Chief Information Officer Justine Tran. County Commissioner Andrew Sommerman and County Clerk John Warren raised concerns about remaining with AIS, but Sommerman said he would follow what the sheriff preferred.

“It’s already there, it’s status quo, it’s less risk,” Tran said of AIS.

But representatives of Tyler Technologies, Odyssey’s vendor, cautioned that its courts software is not compatible with the jail’s AIS. If it were, the two would have already been integrated, said Jamie Gillespie, Tyler Technologies director of client success.

“We’ve been trying to work … on an integration for well over two years between the two systems and that has not proven to be successful at this point,” Gillespie said.

The conversation came as county officials have called the jail’s swelling population a crisis — something the sheriff is also pushing back on.

The Dallas County Criminal Justice Department reported in its daily population emails that the jail hit “100 percent capacity” on two days last week. The department states the jail’s “total reduced capacity” is 7,119 after factoring in some inoperable cells.

But after multiple county officials stated at a meeting last week that the jail was at full capacity, Brown issued a statement Friday evening to the media saying “this was not accurate information.”

Brown said capacity with all operable cells is 7,200, but with a variance from the state to implement cots and portable beds, the capacity is now 7,364.

Jail population management assistant director LaShonda Jefferson could not confirm how many beds have been brought back online to date but her daily population report on Monday continued to use 7,119 as the total capacity. Jefferson reported the jail was at “100 percent capacity” on Monday with 7,086 people inside.

The jail population is rising despite monthly bookings being relatively in line with pre-COVID levels, according to Dallas County Criminal Justice Department data.

From January to July, the average monthly bookings were 4,824 while the average population was 6,748, the county reported. During the same period in 2019 average monthly bookings were only slightly higher at 5,305 while the average population was significantly lower at 4,857.

“This is a very important issue,” Sommerman said during Monday’s committee meeting. “We’re talking about people’s civil liberties. I think it’s important that we do everything we can to make sure that people are released on time.”

Brown said Odyssey was supposed to be compatible with AIS from the beginning. But the criminal courts’ transition to Odyssey in 2023 was disastrous, causing lawyers to be unable to access their clients’ cases and people to be released from jail after their time-served dates.

“We know Odyssey is flawed and it is not logical to surrender that reliability (of AIS) to the unreliability of Odyssey,” Brown said in her statement Friday.

Assistant County Administrator Charles Reed said he believes Odyssey is now working properly, with the exception of the inability to report some judicial data to the state.

District Clerk Felicia Pitre said one of the biggest remaining challenges is converting old data to the Odyssey system, prompting Price to raise concern about converting jail data to Tyler Technologies’ jail software.

Tran estimated that updating AIS would cost $5.3 million over five years but would be an incremental and continuous process as her department works on improving individual functions.

“This is what we do every day,” Tran said “I’m very comfortable building and developing what the sheriff needs.”

But Warren, the county clerk, worried that would be like leaving the foundation of a house while putting in new walls and electricity wiring, rather than overhauling AIS, which he said was put in place in 2003. Tran could not confirm how many times AIS has been updated over the last two decades.

“You really have to implode it and start all over again,” Warren said.

Tran said transitioning the jail to Tyler Technologies’ jail software would cost $6.6 million over five years, which already includes the $2.2 million the county spent to buy the software.

Gillespie told the Commissioners Court the jail software could be implemented immediately. She said it includes a dashboard that indicates the names of people who need to be released as soon as the district clerk’s office files a case disposition.

“That is all built in place as of today right now,” Gillespie said.

Tran said her department is working with the sheriff’s office to integrate AIS with the vendor that handles how to classify people as they enter the jail and where they should be housed. Price said these day-to-day operations are just as critical as handling releases.

Tran doubted the Odyssey jail software could integrate with this housing classification vendor, but Tyler Technologies senior account executive Jimmy Robbins said it has had that ability “for years.”

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