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On Location
Information on Inmates Now Available at NJDOC
Web Site
The New Jersey Department of Corrections introduced
the newest addition to its Web site -- an online offender search
engine -- at a press conference on December 16, at the Harris
Auditorium on the grounds of the department's Central Office headquarters
in Trenton.
As hundreds of thousands of Web users have learned,
the offender search engine enables anyone with Internet access
to obtain information on inmates directly from the NJDOC Web site
(www.state.nj.us/corrections).
The search engine became available to the public
at 2 p.m. on December 16. By day's end, 27,368 on-line inquiries
were submitted. After three days -- through December 18 -- 167,232
requests were fielded.
Since then, the offender search engine has averaged
more than 30,000 hits per day.
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The
search engine has approximately 97,000 offender records,
including offenders who are currently housed in Department
of Corrections facilities as well as those who have been
paroled or released from an NJDOC prison.
"The
offender search engine provides an important public service
that will be of particular value to victims of a crime,"
said NJDOC Commissioner Devon Brown, who noted that New
Jersey is the 23rd state to provide an inmate search on
the Internet. "By offering victims the ability to instantaneously
learn the status and location of an offender, it underscores
the fact that there are, indeed, rights available to them
through the criminal justice system.
"Furthermore,"
he continued, "the search engine enables law enforcement
agencies, family members and other interested parties to
view information on offenders, 24 hours a day, seven days
a week."
The
commissioner added that the telephone system that has been
-- and will continue to be -- used to locate inmates is
available only during normal business hours.
Information available
on the offender search engine includes such specifics as
name, discreet numeric identifiers, current location,
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Click on the above photo
to go to the
on-line Offender Search Engine
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parole eligibility date and max date. Sentencing information, admission
dates, and known aliases also are displayed. The most recent photograph
is included, if available -- although all offenders released prior
to December 2000 do not have an image on the search engine.
An offender's most recent booking information is
listed. If an offender completes his or her sentence and subsequently
commits another crime, the previous data will be replaced by updated
booking information. However, if an offender is on parole and
commits another crime and/or violates parole, the new data will
be added to the existing booking information.
The NJDOC Web site provides an escapee link in tandem
with the offender search engine. The escapee link allows the user
to view a list of the offenders currently on escape status from
a major facility as well as walkways from a halfway house. On
average, the escape/walkaway page includes about 220 entries,
which represents less than .01 percent of the inmate population.
"With their faces broadcast on computer screens
nationwide throughout the day and night, those who have fled custody
will find it more difficult to hide from the law," said Brown,
who was among the featured speakers at the December 16 press conference.
The NJDOC commissioner was joined at the media gathering
by Peter C. Harvey, first assistant attorney general and director
of the Division of Criminal Justice in the New Jersey Department
of Law and Public Safety; Bobbi DeLaRoi, coordinator of the Burlington
County Office of Victim-Witness Advocacy and incoming president
of the state's Association of Crime Victim Advocates, Inc.; James
Reilly, chief deputy of the Department of Law and Public Safety's
Office of Victim-Witness Advocacy; Mercer County Prosecutor Daniel
Giaquinto; Tim Williams, acting chief of the NJ/NY Regional Fugitive
Task Force; and James Plousis, United States Marshal for the District
of New Jersey.
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