Tag: information sharing

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Criminal Justice Information Sharing-NCJA

February 3, 2016 by CSOSA

Criminal Justice Information Sharing-NCJA

DC Public Safety Radio

http://media.csosa.gov

Radio Show available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2014/11/criminal-justice-information-sharing-ncja/

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety; I’m your host Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen today we’re doing a show on the Mid-Atlantic Information Sharing Initiative, brought to us by the National Criminal Justice Association, the voice of the nation’s public safety community at www.ncja.org. In essence what we’re going to be talking about today is information sharing between states, to improve public safety, to improve officer safety. By our microphones today we have Tammy Woodhams, she is a senior staff associate with the National Criminal Justice Association, we have Mannone Butler Executive Director of the DC Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, and we have Ed Parker, Deputy Director of Operations for the Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention. To Tammy, and Mannone and Ed, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Tammy Woodhams: Thank you.

Mannone Butler: Thank you.

Ed Parker: Hi.

Len Sipes: I really appreciate you guys being here, because information sharing is one of the hardest things that we within the criminal justice system do, brings immense difficulties, and I’m going to read very quickly from a report sent by the National Criminal Justice Association.

Over the past few years leaders from Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia have been working the share information on offenders who move freely across jurisdictional boundaries to this end. These four jurisdictions form the Mid Atlantic Regional Information Consortium to secure justice information systems. These four jurisdictions as well as Virginia, New York, now exchange arrest information with Maryland to identify offenders who are on parole and probation who are arrested outside of that jurisdiction. Given the density and mobility of the offender populations in these jurisdictions, the sharing of justice information was deemed critical to the Administration of Justice and Public Safety, in this multi-state region.

The average person I think, and I’m going to start off with you Tammy, would believe that this is something that we do all the time. They watch a lot of television, and they see a lot of criminal justice people, on television shows, fictional television shows, sharing an immense amount of information with everybody. Is that the way it really works?

Tammy Woodhams: No it doesn’t, we fondly call this the CSI Effect. We wish it were that way, and we wish we could share information, and solve crimes as quickly as they’re able to in a 45 minute television show, but in reality it just doesn’t happen like that. The states that we work with have various information sharing at many, many levels, and we through NCJA have a grant to help advance information sharing with the states. That’s what we’ve done over the course of the last couple of years, to work with the nearest states as they move forward with their efforts.

Len Sipes: Well the National Criminal Justice Association, and again they’ve been around as long as I’ve been around in the criminal justice system, which is 45 years. You basically bring the states and jurisdictions, and county, and cities together to share information with each other. You’re essentially the information sharing experts within the criminal justice system, within the United States correct?

Tammy Woodhams: Right and we do that, we convene stakeholders from all across the country, justice leaders, practitioners and researchers, to advance information sharing and best practices. One of the specific areas that we’re working on is in the justice information sharing field. Specific to public safety.

Len Sipes: But we’re going to start off with one example, and that is, in, you know, I represent a parole and probation, federal parole and probation agency here in Washington DC. You go across the line in Maryland, you go across Southern Avenue, it’s right there, I mean it’s just walking across the street, and you’re in an entirely different jurisdiction. At one point, you know, people who were arrested in Maryland may not necessarily show up on our radar screen, what we do, is go in as a parole and probation agency, we do go in periodically and take a look at the National Crime Information Center system to see if somebody has been arrested. We now have a protocol in place where if the person’s arrested in Maryland, a person’s arrested in Virginia, we’re immediately notified. Ed Parker, Deputy Director of Operations for the Maryland Governor’s Office in Crime Control and Prevention, essentially that’s what is flowing through your state, the surrounding states feed information to you about parolees and probationers who have been arrested, and you disseminate it to everybody else?

Ed Parker: Yes Len that’s absolutely correct, and just to go back briefly and touch on a point that you made earlier. I think that there is, you know, a widespread belief and assumption that this type of information is seamlessly shared and coordinated, on a routine basis. It really is not, unfortunately there are a lot of information silos that need to be broken down. If, at least in my opinion, we are to be as effective as we can be in reducing crime, and supervising violent offenders. That’s a challenge both inside your own state, and it becomes even more problematic, as you can well imagine, when we’re talking about sharing information across jurisdictional boundaries, but to get back to your question about the arrests. One of the things that we learned, starting back in 2007, in conversations with our counterparts in Washington, is that a lot of offenders under supervision here in Maryland, were being arrested in Washington DC. And a lot of offenders under community based supervision, in DC, were being arrested here in Maryland. The problem was that offenders were essentially on the honor system to tell us about those new arrests and obviously it wasn’t working out very well for us. So we needed to come up with another tool. The solution that we came up with, was to initially exchange a daily arrest feed with our counterparts in Washington DC, and to match that arrest data against our parole and probation supervision files. If there’s a match between an arrest in Washington and somebody under parole or probation supervision in Maryland, an email alert is automatically sent out to the supervising agent, so that appropriate action can be taken. To just real quickly put this into some kind of context or perspective, since we started this process with, initially with Washington DC and now with Virginia, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, we’ve been able to identify over 15,000 offenders under parole and probation supervision in Maryland, that were arrested outside the jurisdiction.

Len Sipes: Now that’s amazing, that is absolutely amazing. 15,000 individuals arrested outside of the state of Maryland that you would have been under the honor system, before this information sharing exchange was in place. If they had lied to you, you wouldn’t know unless the parole and probation agent in the state of Maryland ran a National Crime Information Center check?

Ed Parker: That’s exactly correct, I mean theoretically yes it would have been possible to run a record check each and every morning, on every supervisee. But Len as you know through your own experience, that’s a practical impossibility.

Len Sipes: Yes you can’t do that. I understand that, but I mean this is the heart and soul in terms of protecting public safety, because you could have, I mean it’s a stereotypical example. But you could have a sex offender who basically says, you know, I’m pretty well supervised in Washington DC, I think I’ll do my crimes in Maryland, and with the idea that if he comes into contact with the criminal justice system or gets arrested. He thinks that he may get away with it, because his crimes were in Baltimore and not in the District of Columbia. But now what we’re saying is that he can’t, if he comes into contact with the criminal justice system, if he’s arrested, everybody else knows about it instantaneously.

Ed Parker: Yes correct.

Len Sipes: Right, Mannone Butler, Executive Director of the DC Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. Mannone you and I have known each other for quite some time. Your point is, has always been that we have to share information beyond the District of Columbia, we’re a city in essence. We I know, within the District of Columbia feel that we are a state, but we are a city, and at the same time we’re surrounded by Virginia, we’re surrounded by Maryland, Pennsylvania is a hop skip and jump away. We’ve got people commuting every day from West Virginia into Washington DC. So offenders being mobile, they can go any place, information sharing is a really important goal of the DC Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.

Mannone Butler: Absolutely critical Len, as you know working with our partners here in the district, it’s been one of our priorities, we are unique in that we’re working with both federal and local partners. So our partners have come to the table understanding, and also acknowledging that the fact that we have to work through as Ed put it, you know, through information sharing silo. So justice, our justice information system was really designed with that in mind. So locally the goal is to share information and work towards breaking through information sharing silos, but with MARIS this is really the opportunity to cross borders. We are a hop skip and a jump across, away from Maryland. Pennsylvania is right down the 95 Corridor, so it’s critical for us to really figure out how to more effectively and efficiently share information, in as real time as possible, so that we can address these Criminal Justice issues that are right in front of us. So working with our partners in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, who all really recognize the importance of the issue, we really do think that we’re making a lot of headway. But we also are real clear about some of the challenges that are not uncommon within a jurisdiction. We are now facing those things, the policy issues and the like, that have come up when we’re talking about trying to address information sharing, outside of our jurisdictions as well.

Len Sipes: I do want to remind our listeners that I think Mannone and the other people who have been in charge of the DC Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, are probably best suited for the State Department, after they have done their gig here in the District of Columbia. Because Mannone has to deal with my agency, which is a federal agency and the courts have been federalized, the prosecuting attorney has been federalized, the Public Offenders Office has been federalized. You combine that with a local DC police department, a local juvenile initiative, again at the DC level, and the jail which is the District of Columbia. So you have this combination of federal agencies and District of Columbia agencies, and now, you bring into the mix, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, the other states, and that becomes extraordinarily complex in terms of keeping everybody happy, and keeping information systems up and running. So Mannone you’ve got a real task on your hands.

Mannone Butler: Yes but you know I think at the end of the day, there’s some real common goals, and it really is to make sure that we’re focusing on public safety. That’s really our north star, so appreciating the fact that we have different audiences and I share this with our partners in Pennsylvania, in Maryland, and in Delaware, and we’ve been meeting. So folks understand that, you know, DC we have our unique, our composition is unique, but the reality is that at the end of the day we want to make sure that the public is safe. Information sharing is critical to get us there, so there are some real nuances to the information sharing realities that we’ve embarked upon with this project specifically. So we can’t be deterred by the jurisdictional issues that come up, internally or externally to be certain.

Len Sipes: I think Mannone you’re being wonderfully diplomatic and — but I’ll go over to Tammy Woodhams of the National Criminal Justice Association. Something before we hit the record button, Ed mentioned, Ed Parker from the state of Maryland, mentioned that look, you know, we’re the Criminal Justice system, we’ve been pretty secretive and we’ve been criticized after the events of 9/11 for not sharing information. We have basically kept all this information to ourselves, so I do, in the second half of the show want to get onto to the other parts of information sharing in terms of the Mid-Atlantic Information Sharing Initiative, but that’s true correct Tammy? That we traditionally have not been embracing of each other?

Tammy Woodhams: Oh definitely and you have the separation of powers that are involved in that. You have turf issues and traditionally in the criminal justice system, a sheriff did not want to necessarily share his information with the prosecuting attorney’s office, or the courts didn’t want to share that information. I think that, they’ve been very protective of that information, so the fact that Mannone has been able to pull off, getting all her partners together and willing to share information, really bodes well for Washington DC and with Maryland, and Delaware, and Pennsylvania and all of their stakeholders, who are willing to share. A lot of it really boils back down to traditional turf issues that have been invited [PH 00:14:29] in the criminal justice system for years.

Len Sipes: Well also there are information sharing issues in terms of the technology that everybody can embrace, and everybody can share information on. So it’s just not a matter of turf it’s a matter of implanting the right technology, the right information sharing technology, so everybody is not just onboard philosophically, but onboard technologically, correct?

Tammy Woodhams: Right and for many years the technology wasn’t there to be able to share, and in recent years, the Federal Government has been making a big push to encourage the adoption of the National Justice Information Caring Standards and Tools for their global advisory committee and they have come up with information caring standards, such as the National Information Exchange Model, Global Reference Architecture, Global Federated ID and Privileged Management. In essence a lot of acronyms and basically they boil down to the ability to be able to guide, and provide tools to allow that information sharing to occur. Promote cross boundary information sharing as well.

Len Sipes: Let me reintroduce everybody, because we’re right at the halfway point, and I’ll get back to you just momentarily. Ladies and gentlemen we’re doing a show today on the Mid-Atlantic Information Sharing Initiative, but we’re really talking about information sharing within the criminal justice system. The show is produced today by the National Criminal Justice Association, www.ncja.org our guests today are Tammy Woodhams, senior staff associate for the National Criminal Justice Association, Mannone Butler, Executive Director, DC Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, Ed Parker, Deputy Director of Operations for the Maryland Office, Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, Ed go ahead with your point please.

Ed Parker: Well Len I was just going to point out, we were talking before about some of the barriers to establishing effective information sharing protocols. One of the issues that came up was technology. I just wanted to point out, that it’s always been my experience that the technology barriers are the easiest ones to overcome. There’s always some very smart, you know, IT person out there who can work out a technological solution to almost any problem. But the policy issues in my opinion are far more challenging to overcome when you’re doing something like we’ve been trying to do over the last several years. Again, breaking down that culture of secrecy, addressing the policy and potential legal issues involved. Who can access what, and under what circumstances for example. The security concerns, controlling access to make sure that the inappropriate people don’t have access to sensitive information. Making sure that audit trails are built in, so if something does go wrong, we can track back and figure out who accessed what and when. Then the privacy issues to try to make sure that we are protecting the privacy of citizens so that no sensitive information is shared inappropriately with anybody, including law enforcement.

Mannone Butler: And Ed has actually just, I’m sorry, Ed really just has outlined I think critical areas for us as we again, we focus within your jurisdictions on issues around information sharing, those are hallmark issues for us. Now you’re talking about policy and jurisdictional lines, they are then, they become even more critical because we’re talking about policy issues that have implications that, here before, they may not even have been mapped out. So I think that we really, the technology piece oftentimes heard from our IT folks in my office, in the district, we can take care of the technology, it really is making sure we have the business, the privacy, the policy, issues mapped out. That’s really where the rubber meets the road.

Len Sipes: Well that’s difficult, and it’s fairly complex, I guess I just keep going back, you know, what I always try to phone a couple of people before doing shows. One person was, telling me, he said, you know you want NCIS, you watch all these television shows and you have the sense that there’s information flowing. There’s information sharing, a portion of it is free flowing, it happens every day, it’s seamless and there really are no issues. In reality we’re just beginning to set up these technological and legal, and ethical protocols between states, we’re just starting this movement to be sure that the right information is shared, and that it’s ethical, and legal, and that we have the technical pieces in place. We’re just beginning this process, am I right or wrong?

Ed Parker: I think you’re absolutely right Len.

Mannone Butler: Yes.

Len Sipes: Let’s talk about some of the things that we are talking about because somebody listening to this program is going to go, okay I get it, the offender, A who is being supervised in Washington DC, goes to the state of Maryland, goes to Pennsylvania, goes to Virginia, goes to Delaware and then DC wants to know whether or not he’s been arrested. Fine I’ll give you that, but in this day and age of privacy concerns, I just want to give people a sense as to what else that we’re talking about. There’s law enforcement data, there’s intelligence data, in some cases a license plate recognition, fusion centers, where law enforcement and correctional people get together and share information, and make sure that the right information is being transferred from one jurisdiction to another. Scrap metal, pawn and secondary property databases, I mean these are all some of the things that I’m reading from in terms of the executive summary of the report on the Mid-Atlantic Information Sharing Initiative. So something as simple as, somebody steals a tremendous amount of metal, and crosses the state line to sell it, it would be nice for that police department in Pennsylvania to be able to say, ah it went into Virginia, and that’s where they sold it, and now we can follow up. I mean that’s pretty commonsensical stuff.

Ed Parker: Absolutely Len, I mean it would be critical to know that someone with a Pennsylvania address is pawning materials in another jurisdiction. It would also be interesting to note frequent pawners, if people are going to multiple pawn shops in a relative short period of time, which maybe innocent, but then again it could be indicative of criminal activity. So it’s a perfect example of why we should share yes.

Len Sipes: You know offenders float, people involved in crime, are going to float from one jurisdiction to another. Especially when you’ve got — you know you can go from the state of Maryland to the District of Columbia, into the state of Virginia and what, Mannone, 15, 20 minutes?

Mannone Butler: That’s right.

Len Sipes: So there has to be information sharing.

Mannone Butler: Yes there has to be information sharing, and so we talked about some of the challenges, but I also want to just highlight that as we’re going through this process for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Information Sharing Project, we also are really in the process of identifying, so what does it mean, what are the policies that you have within your own jurisdiction? That’s really critical and we want, we can’t lose sight of, you know, Ed mentioned privacy. We can’t lose sight of some real practical issues, the goal is to ensure public safety, right?

Len Sipes: Right.

Mannone Butler: But we also need to be real clear about what it means when we’re talking about sharing information. So each of our respective portals, our IT systems have rules of the road if you will. So part of the work here is mapping our systems so that the rules of each jurisdiction, can be followed in a way that really is appropriate. So that is no small feat, we’re not going to be deterred by that, but we want to make sure that folks really understand, that that work is something that also has to be done. You’re balancing our public safety with privacy, the information sharing piece is something that we can’t lose in this conversation.

Len Sipes: And the Federal Law to remind everybody, we being a federal agency, in terms of medical information, psychological information, that is protected, it’s protected by the Federal Privacy Act, which means that I can sit down with the police department in the metropolitan police department in Washington DC. Or the Maryland State Police, or the Virginia State Police, and discuss this offender, and what he’s doing right, and what he’s doing wrong. But there are certain things by Federal Law we cannot violate, and there’s certain information that we cannot transmit. So that’s what you’re talking about Mannone correct?

Mannone Butler: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: And whether people like it or not, that is the Federal Privacy Act is something, I mean we’re a law enforcement agencies, we’re supposed to uphold the law. So for those people out there listening to this, and saying well gee this is just another example of big government sharing information on individuals. We take those privacy concerns very seriously, Ed?

Mannone Butler: And it really does —

Ed Parker: Yes?

Mannone Butler: — I’m sorry it just goes to the purpose of this really for us is to figure out, and it’s kind of you’re threading that needle. How do we get to sharing information as we started this conversation in a way, that really makes sense for all our jurisdictions. So we can address the information that’s out there, and so that we can again protect the public. But in the same token there are basic policy and privacy considerations that are federal in nature, but there are also some local jurisdictions, or local laws that we also have to be mindful of, and that’s a process that we have to navigate as well.

Len Sipes: But if you’ve got somebody who is considering an act of terrorism, you want that information shared with the state that it happens to be right next door to you. So there are all sorts of benefits to making sure that Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and all the other states involved in the Mid-Atlantic Information Sharing Initiative, that we are sure to share the right information with the right people.

Ed Parker: Len, you’re absolutely right Len, I mean in this day and age, we have more information available to law enforcement and public safety agencies, than we’ve ever had in history. You’ve been in this business a long time, and so have I, and the technological advances that we’ve made recently are just phenomenal. I mean, to give you an example, we have our law enforcement, or criminal justice dashboard in Maryland. It’s a web based data consolidation tool that’s accessible to anyone with a valid NCIC user ID and password. It enables a person with the appropriate credentials to search information from over 115 different data sources, but Pennsylvania has a similar system, Delaware has a similar system, their Deljis System. The district has a similar system, their Justice System, but linking all these systems together to share information in a seamless way, is challenging and Mannone just pointed out, one of the big challenges that there are legal differences between the laws that govern DC, and the laws that govern Maryland, and the laws that govern Pennsylvania and Delaware for example. So when we first started embarking down this road, we finally came to the realization that we were not going to be able to share everything with everybody. Instead each jurisdiction was just going to have to make available the information that it could make available, pursuant to their own policies and laws. That’s fine, it’s a start, and we can build on that.

Len Sipes: Now somebody has to coordinate all this, somebody has to bring everybody together, and again Tammy that would be the role of the National Criminal Justice Association. I’m assuming that somewhere along the line, the Department of Justice, through probably the Bureau of Justice Assistance is involved in this correct?

Tammy Woodhams: Yes correct. DJA funded, NCJA to serve as a convener, and advance the information sharing efforts throughout the country. We’re working closely with MARIS, to staff the meetings, bring them together, track what’s going on, we have bi-weekly calls with the technical team for MARIS. Document all of that and track the decisions that are made along the way. So we’ll be hosting a MARIS meeting in the near future in Baltimore to sign up a government structure for MARIS. We provide that guidance, we also bring in other training and technical assistants provided to help us move this along, and ensure the implementation and standards along the way.

Len Sipes: Well we’ve got just about a minute left, anybody want to add in on this, because we could — just license plate recognition, if there is a license tag wanted by Pennsylvania, and they’ve just abducted a child, and they’re found in Virginia, again that’s yet another example, when I’m taking a look at your executive summary, as to the power of information sharing. Of getting that information back to the state of Pennsylvania immediately.

Ed Parker: Len you just hit the nail on the head, it’s immediate access to the information. If the detective working that case that you just described in Pennsylvania, has to wait until nine o’clock the next morning to pick up the telephone and call somebody in Maryland, or the District or Delaware to get the information. It’s not very effective, but instead if a search, an automated search can be launched, a federated search against all of our jurisdictional databases, to pull back that information instantaneously. Then that’s a real accomplishment for all of us that are involved in trying to reduce crime and improve public safety.

Len Sipes: The state of Pennsylvania could say to the state of Virginia, don’t stop that car, follow them, and lead us to where we believe that other children are held. So that information flow could be just operational, it could be conclusion or it could be ongoing.

Ed Parker: Yes.

Len Sipes: Alright so, I really do appreciate all three of you being here by our microphones today, because I think this whole concept of information sharing is so important to the criminal justice system. Tammy Woodhams, senior staff associate National Criminal Justice Association, Mannone Butler, Executive Director of DC Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, and Ed Parker, Deputy Director of Operations for the Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, ladies and gentlemen this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your compliments, we even appreciate your criticisms, and we want everybody to have yourselves a very pleasant day.

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Technology, What Works Tagged With: criminal justice, information sharing, NCJA

Information Sharing With Law Enforcement and Parole and Probation-APPA

May 19, 2015 by CSOSA

Information Sharing With Law Enforcement and Parole and Probation-APPA

DC Public Safety Radio-Podcast

http://media.csosa/gov

See radio show at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2014/10/information-sharing-law-enforcement-parole-probation-appa/.

LEONARD SIPES: From the nation’s capital this is DC Public Safety. I am your host Leonard Sips. Our show today ladies and gentleman Information Sharing Between Parole and Probation and Law Enforcement, back at our microphones is Adam Matz. He is a Research Associate with the American Probation and Parole Association, www.appa-net.org and we have Yogesh Chawla. He is an Information Sharing Specialist with SEARCH and the Nation Consortium for Justice Information Sharing. The website for SEARCH is www.search.org. Adam, welcome back. Yogesh, welcome to our microphones at DC Public Safety.

ADAM MATZ: It is great to be back.

YOGESH CHAWLA: Thanks it great to be here Len.

LEONARD SIPES: Well it is great to have both of you. Adam, I thank you for doing these shows with the American Probation and Parole Association. Always great shows; some of our more popular shows. All right, we are talking about information sharing between parole and probation and law enforcement and you wrote an article that is currently being submitted addressing the Offender Transfer Notification Service and I want to start off with establishing some of the definitions that we are dealing with here. Essentially, Adam tell me if I’m right or wrong, we have a prototype program that electronically sends out information on offenders being transferred from one state to another to a law enforcement fusion center and when they get that information they can disseminate that to everybody else in that law enforcement fusion center or in that state correct.

ADAM MATZ: Yeah that is correct. The information exchange project: APPA American Probation and Parole Association has been working with SEARCH who is the technical partner on this particular exchange. We partner with the Interstate Compact for Adult Offender Supervision and what we have done is developed a project where a subset of the state transfers, folks deemed potentially dangerous, whenever their transfers are approved and they are ready to be relocated to another state, the idea behind this exchange is that that state will receive notification so that the Fusion Centers in that state will receive notifications of these individuals. And it’s just basic information. And then those fusion center are then able to turn around and distribute that information through their channels to the local law enforcement in that state.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay now we do have and for our none, it is mostly a criminal justice audience, but for the non criminal justice audience I always use the same example to the aid of the mayor of Milwaukee who is looking for information about information sharing between parole and probation and law enforcement. The states transfer people under supervision to each other all the time and there’s hundreds of thousands of people moving from one state to the other for a wide variety of reasons. That state, through the Interstate Compact, the receiving state must accept this individual and it happens routinely. Correct?

ADAM MATZ: Yeah that’s right.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay and so the idea is to be sure that law enforcement, through a fusion center, and describe to me what fusion center is.

ADAM MATZ: Yes, the fusion center, the State fusion centers and there is roughly 70 of them across the country but basically after 9-11 there was concern about information sharing across the country and the Department of Homeland Security was a big part of developing these Fusion Centers and they are maintained by the individual states and they are basically responsible for compiling information on various different, it could be criminal, it could be disaster related type of information, compiling that information and making folks in that state aware of those.

LEONARD SIPES: So that was in reaction to the criticism after 9-11 that law enforcement agencies and criminal justice agencies were not talking to each other.

ADAM MATZ: That’s right, exactly right.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. So the idea here and the idea behind the article, is that they are pilot testing this in New York State but this is something that’s going to be expanded to the possibility of it being expanded to all the other states throughout the United States?

ADAM MATZ: Yeah that’s right and in fact the Interstate Compact as you know is national in scope, so it takes care of basically takes care of all the exchanges, for all the transfers for all the states in the country. Now where we are at with this exchange we’ve had a pilot in place with New York State intelligent centre and a New York State Fusion Center to receive notifications of individuals transferring into that state and that can include anyone across the country, any of the other 49 states. And that’s been going on for about a year. Now on average they get basically maybe 10-15 notifications per week.

LEONARD SIPES: This is in New York State?

ADAM MATZ: That’s right.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay, because they are not talking about every offender, they are talking about those deemed to be of most concern; those are the people of the highest risk?

ADAM MATZ: Yeah that’s right and to kind of expand on that, one of the conversation points we had early on, we had work group meetings several years ago on this, was there’s no standardized risk assessment across the country and that was kind of an issue. So we couldn’t really go by a risk level, if you will, because it varies depending on what instrument folks use. So because of standardization what we ended up doing instead was relying on primary offence, NCIC codes – so basically the primary offence, what level that is and the seriousness of that. And we worked with obviously the fusion center in New York to develop that specific list as well.

LEONARD SIPES: All right, so the bottom line behind all of this though, is that this is the program that we are going to be talking about or the issue. The Interstate Commission for Adult Offender Supervision is what we are talking about today but I just want to make it clear to the listeners that the vast majority of information exchange between law enforcement and parole and probation and corrections is done at the local level like here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency and for those who don’t know we are a federal agency. We provide parole and probation services to Washington DC. We’re in constant contact with law enforcement anywhere from the FBI to the Secret Service to Housing Authority but principally the Metropolitan Police Department. We’re in touch with them on a daily basis exchanging information. Our parole and probation agents, known here as community supervision officers, are constantly exchanging information with police officers at the street level. So I don’t want to give the opinion or the sense that the bulk of this information exchange happens through this sort of mechanism, that the bulk of information exchange happens at the command level and between individual police officers and parole and probation agents. Correct?

ADAM MATZ: Yeah that’s right and to kind of build on that a little bit, you know. and we have had prior shows about police and probation and parole partnerships, and sort of informal information sharing that happens. This exchange is new. There is not any previous sort of attempt to share information like this between the Interstate Compact and the law enforcement, so it is kind of a nice opportunity to kind of automate, because it is automated. There is no manual aspect to it. Once the exchange is established, the information and notifications go out basically as soon as they’re ready. And usually it’s once a week but it is kind of configurable depending on you know the fusion center and how they want to receive it and how they want to disseminate. So there is some flexibility in there as well.

One thing that I want to point out too, is the goals of this exchange in particular. One of the primarily goals of this exchange, from the very beginning, has always been about increasing officer safety, particularly police officer safety and situational awareness. And there is obviously different examples of where maybe law enforcement go into situations where they are not fully prepared or maybe they are not fully aware of the individuals they’re dealing with. So the genesis behind this exchange is twofold. One is officer safety and two, it is really about encouraging more dialogue, more coordination between police and probation and parole agents.

LEONARD SIPES: Which is a good thing. Which is a necessary thing. Yogesh Chawla, I apologize for not getting to you. I am looking down at my time clock and we’re close to 9 minutes in the program and you and I haven’t even talked yet. But let me give something in the article that both of you wrote along with Harry Higman is it and Gloria Brewer. The one example that you provide in this article is a Washington State parolee by the name of Maurice Clemens was involved with the murder of four police officers back in 2009 and your article says, “Still it’s unclear whether such a tragic complicated incident could have been prevented. It was understood that there was a need for greater information sharing between law enforcement and the community corrections.” Do you want to comment on that?

YOGESH CHAWLA: Sure, one thing I’d like to point out is that a lot of the challenges we have with information sharing exchanges is the cost and the scope of them. So one nice thing about this particular project, when we started it, is that we had a national focus in mind. We couldn’t be thinking in silos or in state to state or point to point exchanges. When we built this exchange, we said, “How can we get this information to all 50 states, get all 50 states sending and receiving these offender transfers so we can scale our officer safety, so that it is not just limited to certain jurisdictions?” So what we did is, what we had in mind with this exchange is, in the initial pilot is to build as much functionality as we can and then we’re basically in the process of rolling this out to other states and if states want to receive this information, they can do it at a very low cost. Basically all they’d have to provide is an internet connection and a server which would receive it and then they would be receiving these transfers and once they get them they can disseminate them to their local partners as they wish to do so. So we do have this national scope in mind and cost is a really important thing especially when we are looking to scale out to the entire country.

LEONARD SIPES: You know I have taken up so much of the program just trying to form a base line for the person listening to the program but let me do the final baseline issue, and we’re probably coming close to halfway through the program. Adam, The American Probation and Parole Association is the premier organization in the United States providing information for the rest of us in community supervision, providing us with information and research and guidance in terms of what good parole and probation, what state of the art parole and probation, what evidence parole and probation is correct?

ADAM MATZ: Yes.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay Yogesh, give me – you are with, you are an information sharing specialist for the National Consortium for Justice Information Sharing and you were also with SEARCH. So give me a sense as to what the National Consortium for Justice Information Sharing is, and then give me a sense as to what SEARCH is.

YOGESH CHAWLA: Sure, SEARCH is basically the National Consortium for Justice Information Sharing. We are a membership based organization and we have representatives from all 50 states and we are non profit and we have been around since 1969. So we have being doing justice information sharing when it was originally done with paper and pen or telephone and we have seen that all the way through to a lot of the advances that we have made with justice information sharing in technology. What we try to do is we try to provide local jurisdictions, states, even national public safety organizations with the tools to do justice information sharing: and that’s planning, design and implementation and support. So if you have a justice information sharing problem we are here to provide a solution basically from point A to point Z and in this specific exchange we partnered up with APPA to provide the technical resources to actually write the software which is doing the exchange here and to do it in such a way, since it is funded by federal grants, in a way that it can be reused in, for example, other exchanges.

At the time this exchange was being written there was also a sex offender exchange which is very similar that was being written where sex offenders move from one state to the other where there could be a notification in place for that or the Adam Walsh Act. So one of the great thing about this project is that not only are we allowing it to scale when we are adding different states to it, we have also created an infrastructure out there nationally so if states want to do information sharing projects in the future there is basically a cloud infrastructure out there. So they have a place to put their information exchanges and we are looking to expand that as other information sharing needs become available.

LEONARD SIPES: You know I go back an awfully long time. I have been involved in the criminal justice system for 45 years, for 35 years in terms of doing media related endeavors for the criminal justice system and I can remember SEARCH from the very beginning of my career and I can remember the American Probation and Parole Association from the very beginning of my career. So I just wanted to give the listeners a sense that I am talking, they are listening to representatives from two organizations that have been around for decades.

ADAM MATZ: Yeah.

LEONARD SIPES: Alright so we are more than half way through the program, are we, no. We are a minute before we get to the half way point, before I reintroduce you. So the Interstate Commission for Adult Offender Supervision is what, Yogesh, give me a very brief synopsis of that.

YOGESH CHAWLA: Sure, I’m actually going to throw that question over to Adam he has been very involved with that.

LEONARD SIPES: Yeah go ahead.

ADAM MATZ: So the Interstate Commission for Adult Offender Supervision, they obviously, there’s Interstate Compact officers in every state but there is also a sort primarily headquarters if you will that is also in Lexington, Kentucky. APPA partnered with ICAOS to develop this exchange. It is obviously to support their work. It is all the data we are talking about is ICAOS, ICAOS data.

LEONARD SIPES: Let’s stay away from acronyms again, if we could, for the general audience. The Interstate Compact for Adult Offender Supervision, right?

ADAM MATZ: Yeah the Interstate Compact. Basically they are the ones that facilitate the transfers of probation and parolees across state lines.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay, and we are talking about, I said hundreds of thousands, I was wrong because I am looking at the article itself, we are talking about 150,000 transfers a year from one state to the other?

YOGESH CHAWLA: Yeah, and since there is such a volume of transfers 150,000 you know as we stated before, we are focusing just on the high risk offenders here.

LEONARD SIPES: Right okay let me reintroduce both of you because I find this to be a fascinating program. The concept of information sharing between parole and probation and corrections and law enforcement, we have two people. Back at our microphone Adam Matz, Research Associate with the American Probation and Parole Association. www.appa-net.org is the website for the American Probation and Parole Association. Yogesh Chawla is an information sharing specialist for the Nation Consortium for Justice Information Sharing or SEARCH www.search.org. Both Adam and Yogesh and two other people put together an article that is currently being considered for national publication talking about using information technology to share information about high risk offenders as they move from one state to the next. Again, with the idea that most of this information exchange does occur on a day to day basis between law enforcement and parole and probation agencies and correctional agencies and that happens automatically, but this is really exciting because what we have here with the Interstate Commission for Adult Offenders Supervision is the idea that we can eventually bring every state in the United States into this concept. It’s being field tested with the State of New York, bring every state in there. So all high risk offenders, when they are being transferred from one state to the other, they don’t fall through the cracks. Law enforcement is notified through something called a fusion center and that fusion center distributes that information to all other law enforcement agencies in the states correct.

ADAM MATZ: Yeah, that’s right and just to kind of chat on that a little bit. We are kind of using the term “high risk” but that is kind of used loosely. As I mentioned before there is no standardizes risk assessment across the country so I think probably the best way to refer to it would be “potentially high risk or potentially dangerous.”

LEONARD SIPES: Based upon the crime that they are being supervised for.

ADAM MATZ: Correct yes.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. And so the goal of the information sharing is officer safety and public safety, right?

ADAM MATZ: That’s correct and it is also to encourage more partnerships, more collaboration between police and probation and parole. I also want to throw in real quick. This project is funded by the Bureau of Justice, funded by the Department of Justice and those incidents like the Maurice Clemmons case, those are kind of the incidents that help kind of bring this to the attention at a national level and that is really what kind of created the genesis for this kind of exchange and all this work that we are doing so I wanted to plug that in there too.

LEONARD SIPES: Now you have here NIEM, what does National Information EM stand for.

YOGESH CHAWLA: Sure you know in the technical arena we often run into lots of acronyms and one of the things that the US DOJ and the Bureau of Justice Assistance provided was something called the global reference architecture. Many times, as IT practitioners, it seems like we are speaking a language but then when we speak to each other we are also speaking a different language. And what we really saw a need for in the justice arena and in the information sharing arena just in general, was the need for standards and standardization and the Global Reference Architecture really provided that. One of the building blocks for that is called The National Information Exchange model and that is basically the vocabulary that we use to talk to each other. When we’re defining what an offender is, an offender obviously has a first name, a last name, an address that they are going from, an address they are going to and what the National Information Exchange model allows us to do is to package these up into, the language its built on it is called XML, some of the tech people out there might know that but it allows us to package this up and allows us to basically speak the same language.

So if computer A and computer B are talking to each other, they are both speaking with the same language and same vocabulary and what you can do with this is, for example, right now we are using this specific exchange for offender transfer notifications. However, if you wanted to use this same information in a different way you wouldn’t need to go and reprogram everything, you can say, “Hey, we have this offender transfer profile that we have developed here how else can we use it? Would we like to use it to create more statistics? Would we like to use this to, you know, for a web portal so people can go search around and see who is moving into their neighborhood, things like that?” When you use NIEM and you use the Global Reference Architecture the whole purpose of it is to reduce cost and to take one exchange that you write and make it applicable for multiple purposes. That way every time we need to do something new in IT we are not going back and asking for more money to write something new. So BJA has been very instrumental in leadership and developing the Global Reference Architecture and that was the building blocks for the exchange that we have developed here.

LEONARD SIPES: But that has always been the problem for SEARCH across the board, because you know, you are dealing with 50 states and in some of our information systems that we have created, it goes way beyond 50 states. It goes into every law enforcement agency, every parole and probation agency. So there has to be an architecture that is common to almost every jurisdiction out there and that they understand and can be properly maintained so the entire country can talk to each other instantaneously if necessary. I mean that is the heart and soul behind SEARCH, I would imagine throughout the decades, is building those architectures that work from one criminal justice agency to another.

YOGESH CHAWLA: Absolutely, absolutely, and that is really instrumental here. And you know a couple of things I want to point out. I just want to give the listeners here a concrete example of what we are talking about. When we’re exchanging this information, this information all goes over the internet so there is a certain level of security that we need. Obviously we want to use encryption so anything that goes across the wire, no one can read it. You know we don’t want, you know if you read about a lot of these credit card breaches and what not, you know a lot of this encrypted information gets out there. The other thing we want to do is we want to digitally sign every message so if somebody takes one little piece of the message, they try to change the offenders name or the risk profile, that message would get rejected. The other thing we do is we put a time stamp on a message so it is only valid for a very short period of time. Now if you look at these requirements that we have right here, trying to get everyone to decide on how to program these specific things would be very difficult to do unless we had a reference architecture. So the Reference Architecture provides us guidance and says hey, “If you want to time stamp your messages, this is how you would want to do it. If you want to encrypt your messages this is how you would do it. If you want to sign your messages this is how you would do it.”

LEONARD SIPES: got it.

YOGESH CHAWLA: And the nice thing about it, it’s built on already existing IT standards. So it provides us a clearing house, a place where we can look to say, “Okay here are our requirements. How do we do this in the justice arena?”

LEONARD SIPES: Adam so you are pilot testing this in the state of New York how is that pilot test been going

ADAM MATZ: The pilot test has been great. We implemented it, I believe it was September of last year, so September 2013. We only have had a few maybe technical hiccups but very minor little issues and basically it’s been automated for practically a year. We have been keeping tabs on basically how many notifications would go to other states if they were connected. So we have some data on that as well it sort of helps us priorities. One thing I want to mention too, with that pilot, in that we did do just a few small interviews with a couple of different jurisdictions in New York to kind of get a sense of how is the information is used, is it helpful and one of the things I will note is that most folks agree pretty unanimously that the information is great, it’s helpful. We mentioned a little bit about local partnerships and information being shared. Now in some cases that’s true. There is some of this information being shared already. What’s kind of interesting though, is from the comments I got, a lot of times that information was isolated to just that jurisdiction. What they like about this notification is they get information about people going across the state. Not only that, they get a little bit more information. So this information exchange includes pictures with it. Those are types of extra elements that they are not getting already at the local level. So not only is it great nationally but also builds on any sort of local information sharing.

LEONARD SIPES: And it’s important, again, because what we are talking about is a) expanding this from New York to every other states through, I am assuming, funding from the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the US Department of Justice which is right up the street from me, and the possibility of using this for other endeavors, correct ? Or have we gone that far?

YOGESH CHAWLA: We’re currently in talks with four or five states right now who are really excited about this. And you know and when we brought up the existing pilot and the level of effort [INDISCERNIBLE 00:25:07] a lot of the states are really happy to hear that. Based off the work that we have done in New York we can basically just take what we have in New York and basically just drop it onto their server and they should be able to connect it at a very low cost and that allows us to scale the grant money that we have left as well and that was one of the advantages of using the Global Reference Architecture. So if there are any listeners out there who are working in local law enforcement or who work at a fusion center or are working in information sharing in a state you are looking for a very simple project, a very easy win and a very easy way to provide additional information to your local law enforcement for public safety, this would be a really good exchange at looking at joining since the cost is so low and since you can see results so quickly.

LEONARD SIPES: Well, I would image in terms of any information sharing across state lines, that they would automatically go to SEARCH considering the fact that SEARCH has been around for a decade. What else could the system is used for?

ADAM MATZ: Yeah, just to build on that a little bit. The Interstate Compact actually, right now the focus is obviously sharing information with law enforcement but the Interstate Compact may find other uses for this or other means of sharing information with other organizations like the courts and so on and so forth. So there might be more application for this for the Interstate Compact than what we are currently using it now even though our focus is fairly specific at the moment.

LEONARD SIPES: Uh huh. But I mean the idea of people at a, I’m sorry I don’t know how else to put it, at a certain risk level – I know we are not using an objective risk instrument to judge risk, but if you are transferring, if a person is transferred from Nabraska to Maryland and the person has a homicide charge, that sort of person is something that the State of Maryland is going to want to know about.

ADAM MATZ: Exactly, yes.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay, so the idea here is that instead of just going to Baltimore and Baltimore and the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation sharing that with Baltimore police well that offender can easily go across state, I mean county lines, four or five counties away and so that is the beauty of not just local information sharing between local police and local parole and probation officers, that is the beauty of sharing of it through the fusion center so the entire state is notified that George Smith, who was convicted of homicide but now he is going to be supervised in the state of Maryland – and we do want to do this by the way, for the casual person listening to this we do want people to go through the Interstate Compact and be transferred from one state to the other because we don’t want that person taking off on their own. We do want that person, if that person has a legitimate reason to be in that other state for family or for job or for whatever reason, if they have a legitimate reason for being in that other state we want them supervised. Thus the Interstate Compact, right?

ADAM MATZ: Yeah that’s right and the other really nice thing about the way that this exchange is set up and the information is being shared is that along with each of those individuals, the information and it’s just the basic information about who they are and where they are located and what they, you know if there is gang affiliation and those kind of things; it doesn’t include all their background. It doesn’t include that. It is just very specific you know. Here is an individual who is coming in and here is where they are going. And it also includes the contact information for the supervising officer, if that’s a probation or parole officer which is great.

LEONARD SIPES: So they can get the information they need because if a county, I am going to use the state of Maryland again, if a county three counties away from Baltimore City where that person is going to live suddenly has, if a sex offender has been transferred and suddenly starts getting sex offender sort of crimes and they have no leads, maybe a call to that parole and probation agent asking for information about that person and does he have any contact with my particular county, may be a good call.

ADAM MATZ: Yeah, exactly. And that’s exactly what we are hoping that this exchange will do. It will make folks aware, so obviously increase situational awareness, but we really want to encourage that dialogue.

LEONARD SIPES: And dialogue is the heart and soul in terms of the exchange of information between law enforcement and corrections and parole and probation and you have got about five seconds. Right?

YOGESH CHAWLA: Yeah great and what we are really looking to do is just to get additional fusion centers and additional states connected. So once again if you represent a state and you would like to get this information, please go ahead and get in touch with us at either search.org or appa-net.org as well.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay Yogesh, you’ve got the final word. Ladies and gentlemen we are doing a show today on information sharing between parole and probation corrections and law enforcement. Adam Matz and Yogesh Chawla has been by our microphones. We really appreciate both of you being here. Ladies and gentlemen we really appreciate you listening to DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments, we even appreciate you criticisms and we want everybody to have themselves a very pleasant day.

Filed Under: Interagency Cooperation, Parole and Probation, Police, Probation Tagged With: information sharing, law enforcement, Parole and Probation, Police

Intelligence and Information Sharing in the Criminal Justice System-UMUC-DC Public Safety

March 1, 2012 by CSOSA

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2011/09/intelligence-and-information-sharing-in-the-criminal-justice-system-umuc-dc-public-safety/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. We have a really interesting program for you today, ladies and gentlemen—intelligence, intelligence sharing, what’s happened within the criminal justice system, the larger arena of national and local and state intelligence sharing, the lessons we’ve learned since 911, the lessons we’ve learned in terms of an exchange of information between law enforcement, corrections, parole and probation, and the national intelligence apparatus. We have at our microphones, back again, Doctor William Sondervan. Doctor Sondervan, or Bill Sondervan, is the executive director for Public Safety Outreach, University of Maryland University College. They have an astounding 94,000 students there at the University of Maryland University College. And also joining him at our microphones today is his colleague Peter Oleson. Peter is an associate professor of intelligence studies. Let me give you a little bit of background about Peter. Senior intelligence policy advisor to the Secretary of Defense, Assistant Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, he was a CEO for his own consulting firm for quite some time. So we have a true expert to talk to us about this whole issue of intelligence and intelligence sharing within the criminal justice system, in the larger society. And with that introduction, Bill and Peter, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Dr. William Sondervan: Thanks, Len.

Peter Oleson: Happy to be here.

Len Sipes: Alright Bill, let me give you the first go round. Just set up University of Maryland University College. You have students throughout the world. 94,000, that’s quite a few people.

Dr. William Sondervan: Yes, actually we do. UMUC is one of the 11 universities in the University of Maryland system, and we have classes all through Maryland. We do most of the on-line learning for the university system, and we also have an agent in a European division. We have people on the ground teaching in about 26 different countries, to include Iraq and Afghanistan.

Len Sipes: That’s amazing. Peter, you’re an associate professor there at UMUC, so you have this mix of people that you and your other professors teach in terms of intelligence studies. Give me this larger sense. We were discussing before the show that the listeners to this program may be a bit confused in terms of intelligence studies. What we have is the CIA, Central Intelligence Agency. We have the FBI, we have lots of organizations throughout the country at the federal level who gather intelligence information. But we’re principally, today, talking about criminal justice system, how agencies share information with each other. My agency, the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency, we share information all the time regarding high risk offenders, regarding those offenders who pose an obvious risk to public safety. We share that information with the metropolitan police department, we share that information with the FBI, we share that information with the Secret Service, we share that information with the U.S. Park Police and other law enforcement agencies. So the bottom line in all of this, I’m presuming, is the public safety; despaired agencies getting together and sharing information to protect public safety. That, to me, is the bottom line. Am I correct?

Peter Oleson: Oh, I think very much so. I mean, the whole investment in intelligence in the United States really was an outgrowth of the surprise at Pearl Harbor, and you know, the conviction that we should never let that happen again. And yet, of course, in 911, it did. There are really many communities when you think about intelligence. You mentioned CIA and the FBI, both of which are probably the best known for the simple reason that that’s what you see on TV and in the popular novels. But I like to think about their being indeed four different communities that deal with intelligence, and certainly the national intelligence community is one of them that comprises those that you mentioned, as well as the intelligence activities within the Department of Defense and the military services, and several other department levels of the federal government. The second community I’d really think about is the Homeland Security Community, which of course is headed by the Department of Homeland Security, and which uses intelligence, of course, for very specific reasons of keeping not only the United States safe, but our citizens overseas and our allies. The third is really the law enforcement community, which has traditionally used intelligence in limited senses to drive intelligence-led policing, but which of course has expanded greatly since 911, when we have learned that we really need to deal international terrorists, and also with international criminal organizations that will deal in drug trafficking and money laundering and many other illicit activities. But what a lot of people, I think, don’t recognize is that intelligence also is used very extensively in the private sector in large corporations, in international corporations to understand their environment, to understand their market, to understand their competitors; and in a defensive sense, to protect their own intellectual property and products from espionage by others. The Chinese seem to be particularly adept at this at present.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Peter Oleson: And also against counterfeiters.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Peter Oleson: Yeah, I’ve worked with a large international pharmaceutical firm that uses intelligence to identify who is counterfeiting their products so that they can go after them with law enforcement; so that when you open a bottle of whatever is their medicine, you can be guaranteed that it’s not gonna poison you.

Len Sipes: And we go on for the next half hour in terms of the IT community and Apple computer and all the rest –

Peter Oleson: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: – that are very jealously guarding their secrets and making sure that their products that are released without their competitors knowing about them. Bill, let me go back to you for a second. One of the things that you mentioned in prior conversations with this sense of sharing intelligence within the correctional community, you were the Commissioner of Corrections for the – the Division of Correction – for the Maryland Division of Correction, part of the Maryland Department of Public Safety. Both of us worked there in terms of full disclosure, and Bill, you, in terms of running the prison system, you discovered a lack of intelligence sharing and sought to rectify that with both federal and local law enforcement agencies for a wide variety of reasons.—Number one, to keep your prisons as safe as humanly possible; number two, to share that information with law enforcement and community corrections, to be sure that those people coming out of prison, who again posed a clear and present risk to public safety, that that information was shared and that the law enforcement and parole and probation community knew how to keep an eye on that person.

Dr. William Sondervan: Exactly right, Len. You know, I retired from the military police in the Army, and the last job I was on the joint staff when General Powell was the chairman. And you know, we share a lot of information, a lot of intelligence all the time. And then there was a point that initially, as Assistant Commissioner for Corrections, in charge of security operations, and I came to Maryland, and it just really dawned me, it just hit me right between the eyes, that we had so much going on in these prisons. We had 27 prisons with 24,000 convicted felons, and they were doing all sorts of things, but we all worked in stovepipes. The prisons didn’t talk to each other. The prisons didn’t talk to parole and probation. We didn’t talk to the jails, we didn’t talk to the local police, we didn’t talk to the federal authorities, and it was all in stovepipe. All the information that we gathered was very informal and it was through informants and snitches and things that the warden would pick up. And there were several big incidents that happened that just really embarrassed me as being responsible for security, and I go into a lot of them. But one of them specifically, I had one of the federal agencies came to see me, and they closed the door, and they said, “Did you realize that one of your contract chaplains happened to be an imam who was also a co-conspirator in blowing up the World Trade Center the first time around, is working in your prison as a chaplain, and he’s recruiting disaffected inmates to be terrorists.” I just about fell out of my chair! We confirmed that, and that was going on along with several other things; and we got to the point where we decided we had to do something about it. So we partnered up with the high intensity drug trafficking area, the Washington-Baltimore area, and they helped us with funding. The whole idea was to collect the intelligence, to analyze it, and disseminate it the best we could. So they gave us money, we hired two former NSA intelligence analysts to help us get going. I started a security threat group office, I appointed a captain, hired a civilian. We hired two retired civilians from the National Security Agency to help us, and we appointed a lieutenant in every prison. We started this whole process of finding out what was going on in prisons, finding ways to deal with it, taking a look at it and disseminating to others. So we were able to do a lot of really important things. Just a couple of examples, but one of the things we did was we were able to take back the inmate phone system, which goes out on a bid to the Department of Budget and Management. We were able then to record inmate phone calls, and once you record inmate phone calls, the software exists to be able to go in and use it for intelligence purposes, to capture whatever you wanted to do. So we started doing those things, and from there, it all kind of grew, and we all started working together. We went out and we talked to police departments, we talked to the other prisons, we talked to the jail administrators, and we started partnering with everybody. We started getting onto intelligence committees. We started finding ways to work with each other, and it was really a start, and it’s really grown since then. One of the things we also did is we were able to validate gangs in the Maryland prison system. Just as an example, what we would do is every month we would put together a list of validated gang members who were going home to particular communities, and we would share that with parole and probation, and with the local police.

Len Sipes: You know, the bottom line in all of this is because an individual hearing this program, who is not part of the criminal justice community, may say to themselves, “Oh, wait a minute, this sounds very oppressive. This sounds almost scary.” We are talking about, and I think we need to constantly bring the program back to this focus, we are talking solely about individuals who are engaging in acts while in prison – still engaging in acts, organized crime, still ordering homicides, still ordering murders, still ordering people to be victims of violent crime while in prison. And at the same time, through that intelligence apparatus, we knew that once they were released, we could no longer legally hold them when they went back into the community. We know through intelligence that they were gonna go straight back to being involved in very violent crimes, to the point where we had people followed through the law enforcement community. So I think the focus on the whole program has to be in terms of the criminal justice or the corrections community, to remind everybody, again, we’re talking about some bad actors. We’re not talking about everybody within the prison system. We’re talking about people who pose a clear and present danger to our either national security or to our local security, correct?

Dr. William Sondervan: Absolutely, Len. And –

Peter Oleson: And I would add a point, Len, if I could [OVERLAY]

Len Sipes: Yeah, Peter, please.

Peter Oleson: – Bill, is that, you know, for those who might think along the lines of civil libertarians, that you know, once a person has been convicted and put in prison, he does not have the same rights as you and I would, as law abiding citizens in our homes. Being monitored by the appropriate authorities is both legal and most appropriate, as I think you’ve pointed out.

Len Sipes: And something we’re obligated to do.

Peter Oleson: Yes.

Len Sipes: To, once again, protect public safety.

Peter Oleson: Absolutely.

Dr. William Sondervan: Some of the issues that also came out of that, is, you know, once I retired after serving 10 years in corrections and being a Commissioner of Correction, I came to University of Maryland University College, and was asked to put together a state of the art criminal justice program for practitioners. So the way we did that is we established an advisory board with very, very senior people in the community. And we took a hard look at our curriculum, and one of the things that everybody said unanimously is that we don’t have an intelligence component for criminal justice. We really need to have that. We need to get out of stovepipes. We need to trust each other, we need to work with each other, and we have to start collecting, analyzing and sharing intelligence if we’re gonna win and the bad guys are gonna lose. So that’s kind of – that’s what we did. And as a result of that, we put together a certificate program in our undergraduate criminal justice program that focuses on the art and science of doing intelligence. And by going through that process, that’s where I met Peter Oleson. My background is police and corrections, and I’m not really an intelligence person, except for being a consumer of intelligence while I was in the military. I had the good fortune of meeting Peter Oleson through mutual friends, and Peter then came on board, and he became the advisor of UMUC in terms of intelligence, and he’s been a great help to us in not only perfecting that undergraduate certificate in intelligence, but also a master’s program in intelligence management.

Len Sipes: Well, I’m sitting here in what is affectionately known by those of us who work here, ground zero. I’m sitting one block away from Pennsylvania Avenue, I can see the Washington monument, I can see the Supreme Court, can’t see the Whitehouse. The Congress is hidden by a building in front of me, but this is – you know, we within the Washington community, are extraordinarily grateful of everything the intelligence community does, because we know that every day, every single day when we come into downtown Washington DC—and I would imagine New Yorkers feel that way, I would imagine people through the country feel this way—is that we are extraordinarily grateful to the intelligence community in terms of protecting us. And that larger intelligence community extends to parole and probation agents, extends to police officers, extends to middle management. It extends to the national agencies, and there are many. I mean, if it wasn’t for the intelligence community, our lives would be at risk.

Peter Oleson: Oh, absolutely, and I think what he public doesn’t know, of course, is the number of times when intelligence has in fact frustrated a plot that could have resulted in significant casualties or damage to Americans. You know, the challenge of course is that you have to be on top of it all the top, and you know, a terrorist only has to be successful once. You know, that is a very high standard. It’s one of the issues we always have in intelligence, you know, when you’re accused of an intelligence failure, that sometimes people apply an impossible standard to what’s success and what’s failure.

Len Sipes: We’re halfway through the – oh, I’m sorry, Peter, let me just cut you off for a second.

Peter Oleson: Sure.

Len Sipes: We’re halfway through the program, and let me re-introduce the both of you, and hold that thought for a second. Doctor William Sondervan, Executive Direction of Public Safety Outreach, University of Maryland University College. Peter Oleson, associate professor of intelligence studies, a man with an extraordinary, extraordinary background, probably the most senior intelligence person I’ll get to talk to in my career. I want to thank you both for being on the program. Both can be reached at www.umuc.edu; www.umuc.edu. I’m sorry, Peter, I interrupted you. Go ahead with your thought please.

Peter Oleson: Well, I was talking about how do you judge success. I think one of the important things for anybody thinking about intelligence, is to realize that intelligence is prospective. It’s looking at what might happen in the future, and trying to give decision makers the information they need to take the appropriate action. You know, it’s not an investigative ex post facto activity. And so you’re never always fully knowledgeable of what might happen. As a matter of fact, in intelligence analysis, I always like to use the analogy with students that it’s like putting together a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Peter Oleson: – only somebody tore the picture off the cover of the box, so you don’t really know what the picture’s supposed to look like. And when you open up the box, you find that anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of the pieces are missing; and yet your job is to describe in detail what is that picture. That’s the challenge that intelligence faces.

Len Sipes: And Bill, that same intelligence package comes down all the way to the local level in terms of people in prison who we know. I mean, we had, when I was working for the Maryland Department of Public Safety while you were there, there was all sorts of instants, all sorts of times where we had individuals followed as soon as the person was released from the gate because we knew, we had hard, strong intelligence that person was headed straight towards a series of violent crimes in terms of an associate or in compliance or – he had accomplices; that as a group, they were gonna go out and commit violent crime. So it’s just not keeping a dirty bomb from going off on Pennsylvania Avenue, it’s keeping individuals who are avowed violent criminals from going out and hurting other human beings.

Dr. William Sondervan: Well, it’s even deeper than that, Len. It’s not only when they leave, when they go on the outside, it’s also like you alluded to earlier, what they’re doing while they’re still in prison. They can commit crimes from behind bars, and I think a lot of people in the police field think that when an inmate gets locked and he goes behind the walls of the prison, he automatically puts on a halo and he becomes a good doobie. But that’s not the case at all. What we uncovered is that people were running drug empires, they were putting hits on people, they were intimidating people, they were defrauding people, and it goes on and on. So a big piece of that as a corrections professional–and that’s really my expertise–is to prevent that from happening while they’re in there; and in being able to share the intelligence we have with the parole and probation people, with the police people in the community, so that they can prevent the violent acts when they go out.

Len Sipes: And I just want to be, again, re-emphasizing certain points, that what we’re talking about is not all prisoners. We’re not talking about 50 percent of prisoners. We’re talking about a sub-set that we know are engaged in acts that are obviously dangerous to public safety.

Dr. William Sondervan: That’s true. A lot of the inmates don’t do that, but it’s a small percentage of them. But that small percentage can cause a lot of damage.

Len Sipes: Well, one of the interesting things about the custodial setting, the prison setting is that the best sources of information we have are fellow inmates, because they don’t want the problems. They don’t want any trouble. They don’t want violence erupting, nor do they want violence erupting in their own home communities. The best source of information we have are the inmates themselves, because they see the intelligence sharing process as something that keeps them safe, and something that keeps their community safe.

Dr. William Sondervan: You’re absolutely right. The majority of inmates just want to do their time. They want to be safe themselves. They want their families to be safe, and they just want to do their time, be productive. A lot of them want to work, they want to go to school. So quite frankly, a lot of the inmates want to be informants, and a lot of inmates tell prison officials what’s going on, and it’s really a good source of intelligence to put together that piece of the puzzle that Peter was talking about. You know, you have to gather intelligence from a variety of different sources, and try to make it all fit, and try to get a good picture of what’s really happening.

Len Sipes: Peter, now, you know, there are so many intelligence related agencies that we have in this country –

Peter Oleson: Mm-hm.

Len Sipes: – ranging anywhere from probably a dozen federal agencies—I think I read at one –

Peter Oleson: 17 actually.

Len Sipes: 17 federal agencies, all the way to the New York City police department that’s sending their own people overseas to gather intelligence. And they’ve been able to stop crimes, acts of terrorism from happening in New York because of that. So it’s a huge –

Peter Oleson: Indeed.

Len Sipes: – apparatus, and the criticism before 911 is that we weren’t sharing information. Are we now sharing information?

Peter Oleson: Well, I mean before 911, there were actually legal restrictions in sharing information–that you weren’t allowed to do it. And part of that grew out of the investigations of the intelligence community in the 1970s with the Church and Pike Committees, the subsequent executive orders and laws. And nobody in the intelligence business wanted to be criticized for doing things wrong, so, you know, they were overly conservative, in my view. Much of that has changed. The prohibitions and sharing certain kinds of information, such as grand jury information with intelligence people, has been swept away with subsequent laws. The imperative to share is being emphasized very much by senior managers. The current Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper, his major theme for managing the federal intelligence community is related to integration, which really means sharing and getting the information that somebody needs to them, either for analytical purposes or for making some kind of executive decision. And I think he has pushed that ahead rather well and rather dramatically. Jim’s a strong manager. I’ve known him many, many years. The importance about sharing really has two things, and in my view, if you spent a lot of time and effort collecting intelligence and you don’t use it, you frankly wasted that time and energy.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Peter Oleson: And worse yet, you may be sitting on something that somebody else really needs. The ex post facto investigations that we have had, of 911, even back of Pearl Harbor, we had the information oftentimes that we needed, but we just didn’t put it together properly; and it didn’t get into the right hands. That was truly the case at Pearl Harbor because neither General Short nor Admiral Kimmel, who were the commanders out there at the time, were privy to the fact that we were reading Japanese diplomatic communications, and that clearly indicated that hostilities were…

Len Sipes: About to break out. Yes, yes, yes.

Peter Oleson: And so they were caught unprepared, and pilloried for it, and I think somewhat unjustifiably.

Len Sipes: Yeah, they turned out to be scapegoats, yes.

Peter Oleson: But, you know, this is not a unique problem. It’s happened many times. In the intelligence business, you also – you always have a conundrum between the secrecy of your source and your desire to protect that source –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Peter Oleson: – whether that be an individual or a technical means that can easily be thwarted, and sharing the information. And frankly, the risk of revelation or leak goes up with the amount of sharing you do. You know, that’s the inevitable problem you have, and how you balance those takes decisions every day by a lot of people.

Len Sipes: Well, the same thing, we have the same problem here, that a community supervision officer—what is commonly known as a parole and probation agent in the rest of the country—will gain information and it’ll be that a person is about to engage in a series of violent crimes, part of a gang retribution, share that information with MPD, at the same time having to protect their source. So, all of us at all levels of the criminal justice system suffer through that sort of ethical decision in terms of protecting the source while sharing the information.

Peter Oleson: Absolutely. There’s an interesting observation I would make also, and that is sort of how intelligence and law enforcement activities are merging since 911. I mean, it used to be in the Cold War that intelligence focused on foreign armies and foreign countries, but since the terrorist attacks, and with the growth of international criminal organizations, intelligence is increasingly focused on what the intelligence community calls sub-national groups. You know, you can say it’s individuals or small groups of individuals, which has always been the focus of law enforcement. And what you’re seeing in the case of New York City, as you pointed out, is an organization that is a police organization using intelligence, I think, quite effectively. And I might comment that Ray Kelly’s positioning of New York City police officers overseas, brings the expertise of a cop to the scene of foreign terrorist incidents, which really gives us insight and better analysis than you’re gonna get say from a CIA officer who’s stationed in the embassy, who is not a trained investigator. I mean, his purpose is entirely different. And so I think that that has benefitted not only New York, but because New York does share information, it’s benefitted all of us.

Len Sipes: We have three minutes left in the program. Either one of you can address this question. To me, the intelligence sharing apparatus is absolutely necessary to protect me, to protect our communities, to protect our children, to protect our welfare, to protect our jobs. It’s absolutely critical, absolutely necessary. The information has to be shared, but yet many within the larger American community are a little frightened and a bit overwhelmed by the intelligence gathering and sharing process. They see it as a bit Orwellian. They see it as overbearing, that there’s a fine line to be walked in terms of protecting the public and being overly zealous in terms of the collection of information. There are endless examples of criminal justice organizations and intelligence communities who did go overboard, who did collect the wrong intelligence from the wrong people at the wrong time. So how do you address that?

Peter Oleson: Well, Len, that’s why oversight by independent groups is absolutely essential, whether it be from the intelligence committees in Congress or whether it be things like the Intelligence Oversight Board in the Whitehouse, or shall I say, an independent group at a local community level that has all the appropriate access and who can always be a check and balance. I mean, that’s the basic nature of our government is checks and balances, and when you deal with civil liberties, checks and balances are critically important.

Len Sipes: But I do want to emphasize in the final minutes, is that the individual intelligence officers, the individual police officers, the individual parole and probation agents also understand their constitutional duties in terms of the privacy of individuals and when it’s necessary to gather information to protect public safety. They understand that as well, correct?

Peter Oleson: They are basically well trained but, you know, you can face ethical questions every day. This is not a simple world. It’s a very complex one, and the fact that we’ve done so well at the individual level, I think, is a remarkable testament to the American law enforcement community and the intelligence officers who support them.

Len Sipes: Okay, Bill, we got about 30 seconds left. Go ahead and wrap up.

Dr. William Sondervan: Len, I just wanted to add that UMUC, we’ve taken on the mission to prepare people to go into a multitude of agencies, all the criminal justice agencies, and be intelligence specialists and analysts. And part of the program, we’ve incorporated the legal and ethical issues involved in intelligence, besides the theory into practice. So our whole goal is to produce graduates that can go out in the field and be advisors to leaders of agencies and help them do these things, and do them properly.

Len Sipes: Everybody pretty much understand the limitations and understand the roles. I think that’s what you’re trying to say. I mean –

Dr. William Sondervan: Exactly.

Len Sipes: And that’s what everybody who’s listening to this radio show needs to understand, that it’s just not Congressional oversight. The individual officers pretty much know where they can go and where they can’t, but they gotta go where they gotta go to protect public safety.

Dr. William Sondervan: Exactly.

Peter Oleson: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: All right, ladies and gentlemen, I really want to thank you for listening today. Our guests have been Doctor William Sondervan, the Executive Director for Public Safety Outreach, University of Maryland University College, www.umuc.edu. 94,000 students, that’s a huge university. Joining him today is Peter Oleson, associate professor for intelligence studies; again, a person with an extraordinary background, and to Peter, you can look at the web site. Once again, it’s the same for the University of Maryland University College, www.umuc.edu. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We thank you for your interest and calls and letters, and please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Corrections-Prisons, Interviews with Policy Makers, Police, Probation, Violence Reduction Tagged With: information sharing, intelligence, UMUC, University of Maryland

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