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Electronic Case Filing System

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Tarrant County, Texas
Map
Location in the state of Texas
Texas's location in the USA
Statistics
Founded	1849
Seat	Fort Worth
Largest City	Fort Worth
Area - Total - Land - Water	897 sq mi (2,324 km²) 863 sq mi (2,236 km²) 34 sq mi (88 km²), 3.80%
Population - (2000) - Density	1,446,219 1,675/sq mi (647/km²)
Time zone	Central: UTC-6/-5
Website: www.tarrantcounty.com

Electronic Case Filing System (ECFS) is an automated system developed in Tarrant County, Texas that enables Law Enforcement Agencies, Criminal District Attorney, County Criminal Courts, Criminal District Courts, and the Defense Bar to process and exchange information about Criminal Offenses.

1 History
2 Future
3 Project Contributors
4 Links and References

History

ECFS was conceived in November 2002 in Tarrant County, Texas . Initially, the purpose of the system was to enable Law Enforcement Agencies to submit Offense Reports to the Criminal District Attorney's Office for possible prosecution. In July 2003, the Criminal District Attorney's accepted the first electronic case filing via ECFS. Since that time, more than 100,000 cases have been filed in ECFS by the 47 Law Enforcement Agencies located in Tarrant County, Texas. Building upon the initial success of the Intake process, ECFS was expanded in June 2004 to incorporate the Grand Jury function. The Grand Jury is now able to return Indictments to the Criminal District Courts on the same day that a True Bill is decided. In January 2005, ECFS was extended to enable the Judges and their Court Staff to effectively manage the docket (case load) for each of the nine (9) Criminal District Courts. Since the implementation of ECFS, Tarrant County has been able to control the Jail population, despite a significant increase in the number of cases being filed. In August 2005, ECFS was extended to enable members of the Tarrant County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association to browse and view defendant, offense, and evidence via ECFS. Through this process, defense attorneys are no longer required to visit the Criminal District Attorney's Office to view and copy files. Since January 2006, the Criminal District Attorney's Office has been completely paperless and all Offense Reports are submitted via ECFS and made available to Law Enforcement Agencies, County and District Courts, and Defense Attorneys. In July 2006, ECFS was extended to allow criminal defendants to be masgistrated electronically. This process also allows the Office of Attorney appointments to be notified that the defendant has requested that defense counsel be appointed which triggers a business process that captures financial information, facilitates a determination of indigency, and when appropriate appoints defense counsel.

Future

Tarrant County is currently exploring a significant upgrade to ECFS. Discussions are under way with the Conference of Urban Counties about the possibility of creating a collaborative project via the TechShare Program. Conceptually, ECFS will be re-architected to support a multi-county implementation. In addition to the current functionality available in ECFS, it is expected that the following features will be incorporated into future release(s):