Juvenile Firearm Database
The prosecutor’s office creates a case file for each delinquency case filed in juvenile court. The case file contains a copy of the police report, copies of all court documents, information on each juvenile’s offending history, a complete record of the incident, and details of what happened procedurally in the case. The DPA designed a computer database system for tracking firearm offenders through the court system. This database supplemented the court’s existing computer system (Juvenile Justice Wide Area Network) and contained additional descriptive information about the juvenile and his or her offense.
The database included all cases where a firearm either was used in the commission of a crime or was unlawfully possessed by the juvenile. It allowed the prosecutor to quickly and easily monitor, evaluate, and prepare cases for court hearings and identify serious, violent, and chronic offenders. Data were collected during the first 9 months (September 1, 1996, to May 31, 1997) of the DPA grant period. The database also included information on all King County juvenile firearm cases for the preceding 3 years, information that was used to generate baseline statistics to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The database helped the DPA to identify problem areas and common weaknesses in the prosecution of these cases that he could then address in his legal research and training sessions. Using the database, the prosecutor analyzed police reports from hundreds of firearm cases to determine how investigations could be improved.
| Previous | Contents | Next |
 |
|
| Seattle’s Effective Strategy for Prosecuting Juvenile Firearm Offenders | |