The King County Office of Information Resource Management (OIRM) is excited to announce the availability of the Booking and Referral System. Also known as BARS or eSuperform, this application will automate the exchange of information from regional law enforcement agencies with the county when a suspect is booked into a county jail, or when a criminal felony case is referred to the Prosecuting Attorney's Office.

In summary, BARS has five major components:

The "eSuperform" application - eSuperform is a web-based application used by regional police to create a the paperwork required to book an individual into jail, and/or refer a case to the prosecutor. The new eSuperform interface automates much of this process, pre-populating known information about the suspect, and automating agency approval cycles. The result is the ability for police to eliminate paperwork during field arrests, and expedite their preparation of cases for the county.

The Jail Intake Queue - To make it easy to understand ... the Jail Intake Queue functions similarly to a hotel reservation system. When the police submit an eSuperform to the county for a jail booking, the record enters the jail queue. When the officer arrives at the jail facility with the suspect, the jail is ready to automate the acceptance process. Overall this will greatly streamline the interaction between the county and municipal police when assessing a suspect booking and exchanging control of the suspect.

The Jail Booking Queue - With the data created by police, submitted, and accepted by jail intake, the booking queue now supports the ability for the jail to edit and accept the data into the existing legacy "jail management systems" at the county. No more manual typing and re-keying data. This will allow jail guards to better ensure the safety of the inmates and expedite their transition into secure detention, and less time simply typing and creating more paperwork.

Prosecutor Case Queues - Again, with data submitted by the police and processed through the jail, the next step for a felony is to create a case file in the Prosecuting Attorney's Office and begin working with police on the felony case. The last component of BARS automates the case creation, getting the case into the hands of a deputy prosecutor faster, and improving efficiency in filing and managing court cases.

Felony Investigation Filing in District Court - Finally, within BARS, the eSuperforms will be electronically filed in District Court when applicable. The net result is that, instead of the police, jail, prosecutor, and court all manually processing paperwork, the entire process is automated without a paper document being generated.

The BARS project is a component of King County's long-term Law, Safety and Justice Integration Program.

One of the key features of the BARS eSuperform application is for field police officers to be able to better identify suspects at the time of arrest, and thus automate the creation of the jail booking paperwork. BARS supports this improvement though a powerful search feature, which works as follows:

A police officer will now be able to search the full King County database of known individuals - approximately 600,000 individuals.

The officer will receive possible matches to their search, which includes the last known mug shot for the individual, along with other identifying information such as date of birth, state and federal ID numbers, known aliases used, and last known address.

Using this detailed information, the officer will be able to positively identify the suspect. Then, when creating the Superform, all known information will be pre-filled, alleviating the police officer from typing routine data.