Montana board reports progress and caveats on criminal justice data warehouse

The Law and Justice Interim Committee heard an update on Montana’s criminal justice data warehouse as staff described early technical integrations and cautioned that current data are incomplete and uneven across agencies.

Janice Fries, director of the Statistical Analysis Center at the Montana Board of Crime Control, told the committee the project has established a Snowflake integration layer for Ravalli County and is negotiating with Central Square — the vendor that hosts many local records management systems — to obtain bulk historic data rather than relying solely on slow daily API pulls. Fries said the team recently hired a second data‑warehouse architect and is seeking a project manager to scale work.

Fries showed exploratory visualizations that combined computer‑aided dispatch (CAD) and records management system (RMS) data to illustrate what the dashboard can produce. She emphasized caveats: many agencies use highly customized incident buckets that may not map to statutory crime categories, and about 29% of CAD calls in the sample converted to a formal case or officer report; in Ravalli County the ‘disturbance’ and ‘arrest’ buckets were among the most common.

Representative Kelly raised concerns about cross‑agency comparability — some agencies document incidents other agencies would not — and asked how staff will harmonize policy differences. Fries and Board of Crime Control staff said the team plans to document use cases, pursue MOUs with courts and clerks for judicial data, and engage partners to lead standardization efforts rather than imposing one model unilaterally.

Board executive director Kayla Bragg added that Central Square’s contract is scheduled to terminate in June and the agency is coordinating with the CIO’s office to determine whether and how to continue using the vendor’s API services or to secure bulk extracts.

Following the presentation the committee took public comment in praise of the staff’s work. The Board said it will continue data quality assurance, extend linkage to corrections records, and return to the committee with further technical details and MOUs as they are finalized.

What’s next: staff said they will continue onboarding vendors and counties, complete MOUs with courts and clerks, and provide updated visualizations once more historic data are integrated.