Sheriffs’ agencies and departments across the country continue to do one of the most difficult jobs by operating and managing jail facilities. In more recent years, this work becomes increasingly difficult as the public demands transparency on what its law enforcement agencies do and how they do it. (Russo, Vermeer, Woods, & Jackson, 2020). Legislative members at various grantors often need data and accurate information when making laws or regulations that impact jails and law enforcement agencies (Justice Counts, 2023).

Leaders in your agency similarly face recurrent pressures to allocate funds effectively knowing that they may not receive the local or federal funds they want. This leads to a critical part of effective jail operations and functions: data driven decision-making (Russo, Vermeer, Woods, & Jackson, 2020). The value of tracking and using data for aspects such as jail security, programming, recruitment/ retention of staff, training, uses of force, and many other important issues cannot be overstated. But this work requires not just obtaining data, but obtaining the right data, understanding what the data reveals, using the right tools/ technologies, and developing a mindset, and methods that can use the data for improvements and changes as needed.

What Does Your Data/ Information Reveal

Data and information you already have need to be critically reviewed to not only understand what it says, but what it doesn’t say. For example, for the programs an agency provides to those in their custody, this means getting answers and data to show which programs are utilized and how much (Hariharan, 2016). Similarly, jails can use their jail management system or other internal tracking mechanism to track who is receiving therapy sessions and know what the results of those programs are.

For recruitment and retention efforts, agencies can leverage technology and data tools to track your contacts with recruits, track where their successful hires come from, and commonalities the agency sees amongst its successful hires, time to hire, and results from recruitment and retention efforts. Even for the mental health services an agency provides, it can track what services are being requested, identify the trends and patterns in utilization, and results from those efforts. The results of that will show which areas are worth investing in, and which may not deserve as much attention from leaders. Although larger agencies (such as my own department in Denver) may have greater capacity to do this review with dedicated staff, many existing staff can be leveraged to look at its data. The key is making sure all the appropriate people can see and understand the data including the subject matter experts, sworn supervisors, watch commanders, and civilian supervisors.

Review Your Data Tracking and Reporting Tools

But all of that will not help an agency if it doesn’t track data in an effective way. Therefore, it is important to leverage your technology-savvy staff (civilian or sworn) and, ideally, have an easy way to track these data points. A key consideration will be how much time and effort it takes to track this information on an ongoing basis, which can be significantly reduced via electronic processes. Many jails and jail administrators may want to default to paper-based processes, but these generally don’t allow staff to access the type of data/ information review needed to accomplish properly advised jail leaders (Ditto, 2023). Additionally, when tracked well, jails can take this work one step further and create data visualizations such as physical or digital/automated charts and graphs to show progress and set goals.

There are numerous ways to track that data whether via simple electronic spreadsheets, to more advanced digital forms and tools creating live “dashboards.” The broad recommendation for jails and jail administrators is to choose the tool that works for their agency. If feasible, this should be an electronic system or method which updates automatically, reducing administrative burden and staff time.

Adopting a Process Improvement Mindset

In combination with data, agencies should invest in its people to move those metrics/data in a positive way. Agencies and jails of various types can adopt a process improvement mindset and strategies through trainings or methodologies such as Six Sigma, Lean, Kaizen, or any number of different methods which have been used in various law enforcement contexts with soe degree of success. (Alosani, 2020) (Furterer, 2014) (Welch, 2021) (Santhiapillai & Ratnayake, 2021). All these methods may have different strengths and weaknesses but a key facet of all of them is giving staff a feeling of ownership of a process and freedom to recommend ways to make things better. This means a department’s leadership must be open to ongoing feedback and ideas and even strongly consider incentivizing ideas and/or rewarding successful ideas. There are multitudes of ways to train staff in these concepts and ideas ranging from formal external training and certifications to low cost in-house informal trainings.

Data May Reveal Technology Solutions

Sometimes the data may reveal other issues that can’t be solved with just your current staff or with better processes. Before reaching for funding to get more staff, agencies should critically look at their data to see if the gap may be solved with improvements in other resources, tools, or technology, which may be more easily adopted by newer generations. Specifically, generations such as Millennials, appear to be much more technology-savvy than previous generations and will likely be much more capable and willing to adopt newer technologies (Vogel, 2019).

The benefit of using technology based tools is they can often reduce the burden on staff and, in some cases, reduce many other costs. For example, training gaps could be addressed with investments in virtual reality technologies for scenario-based training, which can potentially be effective in de-escalation training and creating realistic training responses for jail deputies (Kleygrewe, Hutter, Koedijk, & and, 2024) (Lavoie, Alvarez, Baker, & and, 2023). Information gaps leading to communication and other issues could be addressed with improvements in jail management systems (Russo, Vermeer, Woods, & Jackson, 2020) or similar records management systems (Mbatha & and Luthuli, 2021). Contraband and drug issues could be addressed with better screening technologies such as body scanners, mail scanners, or any number of drug detection devices (Philip, 2009) (Schuetz, Ropero-Miller, & O’Donovan Dix, 2021). Additionally, other improvements to operations such as improving resources for incarcerated individuals’ access to programs could be accomplished through wrist/RFID tags, iKiosks, and tablets (McKay, 2022).

All of these are just examples of options that could be explored. As mentioned, the data will reveal what the gap or area for improvement is and will reveal whether the solution can work or is working. None of the tools can replace the good work of sworn staff, but when used well, can have a myriad of benefits to training, recruitment/retention, safety, programming for incarcerated individuals, and more.

Invest in and Leverage Your Staff for Data

To effectively track and report on the data, to find solutions (whether technology or process related), jails will need to ensure it effectively leverages its in-house experts/staff and train these staff. Whether sworn or civilian, jails may have many underutilized staff that can help their leaders make these decisions, support operations, and drive improvements.

As mentioned above, the key way to assist this effort is investing in the agency’s personnel. Ideally, agencies can help staff expand their knowledge with areas outside of general operations such as data, technology, and/or process improvement, and look at best practices from other agencies. Generally, the more agencies invest in their people, the more their staff are bought into the process and agency and the more they will retain those people (Rockwood, 2022).

But before investing in trainings, agencies should take a hard look and know what their return on investment (ROI) is for any trainings they provide or sponsor (Brown, 2006) (Staff, 2023). Administrators should know what they want their staff to learn and apply from the training, and what they expect to change when the training is applied (ideally in something objective, such as dollars saved, staff retained, incidents reduced, etc.). Clear goals and objectives for this investment is key to getting that ROI in training both for retention and improvements to operations.

A Word of Caution on AI Technologies

A newer innovative technology emerging in the law enforcement and jail professions is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Whether in law enforcement or in corrections, various agencies are starting to explore options for using these tools in combination with data-driven decision-making (Ezeh, Widgery, & Canada, 2025) (Ph.D & Robert, 2024). Although these tools may be worthwhile to invest in, the benefits are still being explored and understood. Therefore, it is recommended to exercise caution in adopting these technologies too early, but continue to be aware of them (Staff, 2024).

Final Recommendations

Find out what gaps you have in data or information to make informed decisions:

Are there things you are not tracking or factors you could track that may be informing larger data for operations, recruitment, or programs for incarcerated individuals?
Find out what the ROI would be for getting more data (more is not always better). Review your data tracking and visualization tools in depth:
Do you have the tools you need, or do you need better tools or methods to get the data you need?
Do you have a way to visualize and report on the data you collect to allow for real-time decisions?

Review your data tracking and visualization tools in depth:

Do you have the tools you need, or do you need better tools or methods to get the data you need?
Do you have a way to visualize and report on the data you collect to allow for real-time decisions?

Regularly review your data to find your operational gaps/areas of opportunity:

Consider looking at the data as a starting point to investigate root causes.
Conduct a root cause analysis or review to identify what is informing gaps or areas for improvement. Ensure all the right people/stakeholders can review the data and give input.
If gaps can be addressed with technologies and tools, consider the real cost and ROI of doing so versus attempting to address the issues or make improvements without technologies (e.g. process changes).

Train your staff in improvement methodologies and adopt an improvement culture:

Data should be used to help operations and ideally drive improvement, but it is your staff at all levels that are the real leaders in driving that improvement.
Figure out ways to train your staff in-house in these methods or ideas to reduce training cost burdens.

________________________________

Cameron Doelling is a Senior Analyst and process improvement expert within the Denver Sheriff Department, in Colorado, specifically in the Performance Management and Strategy Unit. He previously worked as a law enforcement officer for a Colorado agency and public administrator/ civil servant for more than 8 years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business management, a master’s degree in public administration, and holds certifications in various process improvement methodologies. For more information, he can be contacted at DSDPMAS@denvergov.org

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