Title
Sheriff's Office recommending the Executive Committee discuss and approve additional Fiscal Year 2024/2025 budget considerations for El Dorado County's portion of a Transportation Application Development Fee to the Community Corrections Training, Planning, and Implementation budget in the amount of $4,367.
Body
In California, Prison Realignment (AB109) transitioned a large amount of incarceration responsibility from state prisons to local jails. As a result, county jail populations have changed and capacity limitations have incentivized the release of lower level offenders on supervised release or lower bail amounts. Unfortunately, failures to appear in court are not uncommon, resulting in bench warrants for the offender. When the subject of a bench warrant is re-arrested in another county, they are booked in that county jail. Once local charges are resolved or if the offender waives a local court appearance when they are informed of the out-of-county warrant, the county-to-county extradition process starts. The sheriff from the County that has the warrant has 5 days to pick up the prisoner and return them to the originating county. Statewide, on any given day, dozens of Sheriff transportation vans from all over the geographic areas of the state or moving north-south, east-west, to pick up prisoners from other jails. Along the way, they may be crossing paths while driving empty transport vehicles and missing opportunities to assist one another.
Over the years, and organically through relationship building, various deputy sheriffs have been able to call one another ask for, and do, “favors” to lessen their driving burden. In 2023, California State Sheriffs Association (CSSA) set out on a project to work with the tech industry and build a software solution that will leverage Artificial Intelligence, Communication, and data-sharing to build upon what some deputies have been able to do organically. The vision was to have a software solution that does the route management and review, and helps task the “favors” in a more efficient, and cost-effective manner.
The goal is to do accomplish several things, including:
• Reduce hours and miles driven by deputies when they need to pick up an inmate in another county,
• Reduce the number of days an inmate spends in a county jail, awaiting pickup from the agency holding the bench warrant
• Reduce wear-and-tear on sheriffs transportation vehicles (fuel, brakes, tires, etc) and extending the life of those vehicles
• Reduce vehicle emissions by making better coordinated, shorter trips, and reducing the amount of miles driven by empty transportation vehicles.
Stakeholders from Transportation teams of various Sheriffs offices, along with I.T. experts from several Sheriffs offices, worked together to develop a statement of work document, which was then put out to the tech community for proposals. As a result, CSSA received several proposals ranging from $250,000 to $485,000. The IT team then reviewed all the proposals and selected the $485,000 proposal from Insight Solutions.