Date of Conferral

2016

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Information Systems and Technology

Advisor

Anthony J. Lolas

Abstract

Public safety is negatively affected when arrest warrant information is not available to law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors, and other criminal justice practitioners. The U.S. Government and the criminal justice community have advocated for electronic warrant systems (e-warrants). Peace officers know that when e-warrant systems deliver warrant information to them immediately from multiple jurisdictions, their safety is increased. However, the factors that cause these e-warrants systems to improve safety are not known. The purpose of this historical data analysis study was to determine if the use of e-warrant systems resulted in shorter clearance times than the use of legacy paper-based systems. Stakeholder theory, open systems theory, and service-oriented architecture theory were used to guide the quantitative research design. This study compared 2 years of historical arrest warrants from 6 sheriffs' departments organized into population matched sets. Two-way ANOVA tests and nonparametric tests were conducted to analyze the impact of the independent variables warrant system type and case type on the dependent variables mean service days and percent warrants served. The study showed that operating e-warrant systems in similar size sample agencies did not ensure shorter mean service days and higher percent warrants served over legacy systems, and it confirmed that more research is needed to determine other factors that will lead to an improvement in these variables. The findings of this study may assist agency executives and justice practitioners to identify other variables that may increase effectiveness of e-warrant systems, thereby improving public and officer safety, both important social benefits.

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