Case Studies

Broward County, FL

The Agency	Broward County Sheriff’s Office Department of Community Control Broward County, Florida
Population Served	1,750,000
The Goal	Implement a state of the art case management system to replace an in-house program.
The Solution	Monitor Probation & Parole Monitor Pretrial Monitor Community Corrections
System Users	200 +

The Department of Community Control (DOCC) provides a variety of community based and in-custody offender programs including Probation, Pretrial Services, and Day Reporting. The Department employs over 200 staff and supervises between 10,000- 12,000 persons daily including approximately 7,000 on Probation and 3,000 on Pretrial with approximately 18,000 defendants interviewed by Pretrial each year.

Originally operated by the Court, the Probation Program was transferred to the Broward Sheriff’s Office where it is administered by the Department of Community Control. As part of the transfer Probation continued to use an in-house case management system. Functionality of the system, however, was limited with many essential operations (case notes, case plans, etc.) needing to be completed by hand. Realizing Probation needed a state-of the art system the Sheriff’s Office released a Request for Letter of Interest. Over seventeen companies issued proposals. Loryx Systems was selected as a finalist and according to the selection committee it became clear during the product demonstration that Monitor not only easily met the functionality requirements but was the easiest of the reviewed systems to use.

Monitor Probation went live in Broward County in October 2005. The successful implementation of any large scale software program requires a strong partnership between the agency and the vendor. “Loryx was outstanding during the implementation process,” reports Project Manager Paula Smith. “They have the technical knowledge to work through any and all issues. During the go live process, Loryx was always available to assist, train, and troubleshoot.”

Since going live Department managers report that Monitor is making a difference in Broward County by giving the staff a systematic, organized, and easy way to document and track client information. Staff now spends more of their time on the critical function of interacting with clients, and less time on managing paperwork and scheduling. Automated alerts make sure that no client “falls through the cracks” and interfaces to other data systems save time by eliminating redundant data entry.

Broward County benefits at every level of management. Management reports help senior administrators make policy decisions about populations and program outcomes. Supervisors are able to view staff caseloads at a glance. Perhaps most importantly, the staff members who primarily work with clients have all the information they need to do their jobs from their desktops. Everyone shares in the benefits. According to Day Reporting Manager David Scharf, “as an administrator of the system, what I like most about it is that staff loves the system. That makes everything easier. The most common quote from staff when mentioning Monitor is, ‘We love it.’”

Based on the success implementing Monitor Probation, the Department of Community Control has signed additional contracts with Loryx to use Monitor Community Corrections by the Day Reporting Division and Monitor Pretrial by the Pretrial Services Division. The three systems work together seamlessly as one giving each program a complete picture of an offender in real time while enforcing security permissions as to what information is shared among users.

From understanding the needs of Broward County, configuring Monitor to maximize the benefit to the Sheriff’s Office, working through training and go live, to continuing support, Loryx Systems and Monitor are meeting the goals of the Sheriff’s Office and making a difference to staff and clients.

After four years of experience using Monitor and working with Loryx, the bottom line according to Project Manager Paula Smith is that “Monitor is an excellent product developed, designed, and supported by an excellent company. If other companies would take lessons from Loryx on their customer service, integrity, dedication, and knowledge they would all be successful. Each and every staff person from Loryx that any of us have interacted with is always knowledgeable, helpful, pleasant, and go the extra mile. It is obvious that everyone at Loryx is serious about delivering the best product possible and meeting the client’s needs. Everyone is open to suggestions and uses client recommendations to improve their product. It is truly a partnership between Loryx and the client.”