Digital Evidence Management (DEMS) can help reduce the risks of breaches and fines through secure evidence sharing.
The FBI’s CJIS policy set forth stringent safeguards for protection of criminal and personal data. Police forces and prosecutors need to take particular care as they routinely share such information during the criminal justice process.
Fines for information security breaches have reached hundreds of thousands of dollars per incident. Copying and transporting evidence on CDs and other media opens the door to potentially misplacing evidence or exposing criminal records or sensitive personal data (especially where victims are concerned). Fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars are not uncommon for such breaches.
DEMS’ ability to facilitate secure sharing of digital evidence across the entire justice continuum eliminates this risk, as evidence never leaves the DEMS. Removable media are replaced by secure, trackable electronic evidence sharing.
Premature disclosure of evidence can compromise a case and victimize a victim again
Limiting access to case evidence to those working a case is critical. When evidence gets into the wrong hands it can compromise a case, and in high profile cases, prematurely disclosing evidence through the media can victimize a victim all over again.
DEMS protects evidence from unauthorized, untimely access.
With DEMS, case evidence is locked down and only accessible to stakeholders based on their roles and privileges granted. For example, you can designate an owner of a case – typically a lead investigator or detective. The case owner can perform any actions necessary to complete the investigation including:
- Initiating searches for evidence.
- Uploading case evidence to a folder.
- Adding comments or bookmarks.
- Initiating requests for evidence via automated workflows.
Sharing evidence with DAs or prosecutors registered in the system.
Case owners can also assign other detectives as contributors to a case, with full access rights (same as the case owner), or ‘view only’ rights, where (as the term implies) the contributor will only be able to view evidence in the case folder.