The criminal justice process—from arrest through correctional supervision—in any jurisdiction is generally complex and typically involves a number of participants, including police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, courts, and corrections agencies. Because of the large number of agencies involved, coordination among agencies is necessary for the process to function as efficiently as possible within the requirements of due process. That is, all involved agencies need to work together to ensure proper and efficient system operations, identify any problems that emerge, and decide how best to balance competing interests in resolving these problems. The unique structure and funding of D.C.’s criminal justice system, in which federal and D.C. jurisdictional boundaries and dollars are blended, creates additional coordination challenges. As shown in table 1, the D.C. criminal justice system consists of four D.C. agencies principally funded through local D.C. funds, six federal agencies, and three D.C. agencies principally funded through federal appropriations. According to most officials we interviewed and our own analyses, an overarching problem within the D.C. criminal justice system has been the lack of coordination among all participating agencies. Typically, federal and nonfederal criminal justice systems include the following stages: (1) arrest and booking, (2) charging, (3) initial court appearance, (4) release decision, (5) preliminary hearing, (6) indictment, (7) arraignment, (8) trial, (9) sentencing, and (10) correctional supervision. Most stages require the participation of several agencies that need to coordinate their activities for the system to operate efficiently while also meeting the requirements of due process. That is, all involved agencies need to work together to ensure that their roles and operations mesh well with those of other agencies and to identify any problems that emerge and decide how best to resolve them. Table 2 shows the stages in D.C.’s criminal justice system and the agencies that participate in each stage. As shown in the table, 7 of the 10 stages typically involve multiple agencies with different sources of funding, which results in different reporting structures and different oversight entities. For example, as many as six agencies—one D.C. (MPDC), three federal (the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (USAO), U.S. Marshals Service, and D.C. Pretrial Services Agency), and two federally funded D.C. agencies (Superior Court and Public Defender Service (Defender Service)—need to coordinate their activities before the arrestee’s initial court appearance for a felony offense can occur. At the latter stages of the system, an offender’s sentencing and correctional supervision may require the participation of as many as eight agencies— one D.C.-funded agency (the Department of Corrections (DOC), five federal agencies (USAO, Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Parole Commission, and the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (Court Services)), and two federally funded D.C. agencies (Superior Court and Defender Service). At any stage, the participation of other agencies might also be required. In addition, the reporting and funding structure for these participating agencies often differs. For example, USAO, the U.S. Marshals Service, BOP, and the U.S. Parole Commission ultimately report to the U.S. Attorney General and are funded by the appropriations subcommittee that funds the Department of Justice; MPDC and the Office of the Corporation Counsel (Corporation Counsel) ultimately report to the D.C. Mayor; and Superior Court, Defender Service, Pretrial Services, and Court Services are independent of both D.C and the U.S. Department of Justice, submit their budgets to Congress, and are funded by the appropriations subcommittee for D.C. According to most officials we interviewed and our analyses, an overarching problem within the D.C. criminal justice system has been the lack of coordination among all participating agencies. Agency officials pointed to several major problem areas, each the subject of recent studies that have identified coordination issues. The areas included scheduling of court cases, which has resulted in the inefficient use of officer, attorney, and court personnel time; information technology, which uses more than 70 different systems that are not linked to facilitate the sharing of information; correctional supervision, in which poor communication among agencies has led to monitoring lapses with tragic consequences; and forensics, in which the sharing of responsibilities among agencies increases the possibility of evidentiary mishaps resulting from lapses in coordination. The scheduling of court cases has had adverse affects on several criminal justice agencies involved in case processing. As shown in table 2, MPDC, prosecutors, Defender Service, U.S. Marshals Service, Pretrial Services, Court Services, and Superior Court could be involved in the court-related processing of a case from the preliminary hearing to the trial and subsequent sentencing. Representatives from several of these agencies are typically required to be present at court trials and hearings. Because specific court times are not established, individuals who are expected to appear in court are required to be present when the court first convenes in the morning. These individuals might be required to wait at the courthouse for some period of time for the case to be called, if (1) more trials or hearings are scheduled than can be conducted, (2) any one of the involved individuals is not present or prepared, or (3) the case is continued for any number of reasons. MPDC recorded that during calendar year 1999 its officers spent 118 full-time staff years in court-related activities such as preliminary hearings and trials. While MPDC officials stated that officers often spent many hours at court waiting for cases to be called, data were not available on the proportion of the 118 full-time staff years that were attributable to actual court time compared to the time spent waiting for cases to be called, including cases that were rescheduled. CJCC selected the Council for Court Excellence and the Justice Management Institute to conduct a detailed study of criminal justice resource management issues, with particular emphasis on court case processing and the utilization of police resources. In its March 2001 report, the Council for Court Excellence and the Justice Management Institute concluded that major changes were needed in the D.C. criminal justice caseflow system to improve the system’s efficiency. Among other things, the report found inefficiencies and counterproductive policies at every stage in case processing. The report also concluded that little use was being made of modern technology in the arrest, booking, papering, and court process that could improve system operations. The Council for Court Excellence and the Justice Management Institute identified priority areas for system improvements, such as redesigning court procedures in misdemeanor cases, improving the methods used to process cases from arrest through initial court appearance by automating the involved processes, and improving the systems used to notify police officers about court dates. Congress provided $1 million for fiscal year 2001 to implement some of the recommended case management initiatives, such as a differentiated case management system for misdemeanors and traffic offenses, the papering pilot project between MPDC and Corporation Counsel, and a mental health pilot treatment project for appropriate, nonviolent pretrial release defendants in coordination with the D.C. Commission on Mental Health Services. D.C.’s criminal justice system is complex, with more than 70 different information systems in use among the various participating agencies. These systems are not linked in a manner that permits timely and useful information sharing among disparate agencies. For example, it is very difficult to obtain data to determine the annual amount of time MPDC officers spend meeting with prosecutors about cases in which prosecutors eventually decide not to file charges against the arrestee. We determined that such an analysis would require data about: (1) MPDC arrests, (2) MPDC officer time and attendance, (3) charges filed by USAO or Corporation Counsel, and (4) Superior Court case dispositions. Such data are currently maintained in separate systems with no reliable tracking number that could be used to link the information in each system for a specific case and no systematic exchange of information. This lack of shared information diminishes the effectiveness of the entire criminal justice system. For example, according to a CJCC official, there is no immediate way for an arresting officer to determine whether an arrestee is on parole or for an arrestee’s community supervision officer to know that the parolee had been arrested. Such information could affect both the charging decision and the decision whether or not to release an arrestee from an MPDC holding cell. In 1999, CJCC attempted to address problems with D.C. criminal justice information systems by preparing, among other things, an Information Technology Interagency Agreement that was adopted by CJCC members. The agreement recognized the need for immediate improvement of information technology in the D.C. criminal justice system and established the Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC) to serve as the governing body for justice information system development. ITAC recognized that it was difficult for a single agency involved in the criminal justice system to access information systems maintained by other agencies, and pursued developing a system that would allow an agency to share information with all other criminal justice agencies, while maintaining control over its own system. ITAC devised a District of Columbia Justice Information System (JUSTIS). In July 2000, CJCC partnered with the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer in contracting with a consulting firm to design JUSTIS based on modern dedicated intranet and Web browser technology. When completed, JUSTIS is to allow each agency to maintain its current information system, while allowing the agency to access selected data from other criminal justice agencies. Effective correctional supervision, which includes probation, incarceration, and post-prison parole or supervised released for convicted defendants, requires effective coordination among participating agencies.