Indiana SAVIN 2008 Enhancements

The Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification (SAVIN) program ensures victims of crime receive accurate and timely information regarding the status of offenders and events related to their case. Through SAVIN, victims are able to participate in the judicial process and make sound decisions to protect themselves from further victimization while maintaining total anonymity. This information-sharing capability is also available to courts, corrections, and law enforcement officials.

The Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC) will use this 2008 SAVIN award to enhance their existing SAVIN program. This project will allow Indiana to make four essential improvements to its current SAVIN system: 1) The addition of offender photographs to the SAVIN website. This will allow victims to more positively confirm who they are registering against when using the system. Photographs of all IDOC offenders and select counties' offenders will be posted. By allowing victims to view photographs of offenders at the time of the offender's booking, devastating mistakes may be avoided; 2) Develop and deploy software adapters for electronic court management in Indiana's three largest counties. Information from Marion County, Lake County and Allen County must be collected in an automated fashion that will not require the submitting agency to manually initiate any part of the process. The SAVIN vendor will use these software adapters for each of the electronic court management systems and forward those transactions to the central data processing and notification facility. The SAVIN vendor will ensure these adapters adhere to the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM); 3) Increase the range of current notification events to include parole violations and post-release parole board hearings. The parole event service will provide victims with information on supervisory status for parolees via telephone or internet. Victims will be able to register to be automatically notified when supervisory or other status changes occur; and 4) Implement a user satisfaction survey tool to measure the success of the program and monitor the need for adjustments or improvements. This will integrate seamlessly with current SAVIN phone and internet processes, and will be available as an option to telephone and internet users of the system. Enhancements will be accessible statewide in English and Spanish, and will be available to all applicable Indiana residents.

CA/NCF