These examples and a number of others collected during the study clearly show that efforts at enhancing integration can be successful. That success depends, however, on overcoming the many barriers to integration found across the sites we studied. This section discusses those barriers and examines ways they have been overcome.

As one interviewee stated it, “Turf is the biggest killer of integration.” Similar sentiments were expressed in all the interviews. It was clear that “turf” constitutes a major barrier to achieving integration objectives in most settings. To understand these barriers, it is necessary to analyze the concept of turf and explore the implications for enhancing integration.

As used in the cases we studied, the concept of turf seems to include at least three major reasons organizations act defensively: (1) to avoid the costs of change, (2) to reduce or control risk, and (3) to preserve autonomy or protect their position in a competitive or adversarial environment. Integration typically requires a degree of centralized control and shared decision making that could compromise an agency’s control of its own operations or resources. Protecting turf can be particularly important when the potential loss of autonomy or control could benefit other agencies that are political or institutional adversaries. Since the agencies are all government organizations, political and institutional adversaries are part of the natural environment. In the case of the branches of government, maintaining independence and balance of power are legitimate concerns of each branch, based ultimately in constitutional structures.

Institutional Turf: Institutional turf refers to the role an agency must play because of the basic institutional structure of government, as found primarily in Federal and state constitutions. The essential elements of this structure are independent branches of government with a balance of power among them. The role of courts and judges in integration initiatives clearly illustrates institutional aspects of turf. In the initiatives described in the study, courts and judges played varied roles; in some cases they exercised strong leadership and advocacy, while in others they were seen as more resistant and defensive. This can be accounted for, according to one analyst of court systems, by differences in courts’ and judges’ technical and administrative resources. Where court administration has been professionalized and judges are technologically sophisticated, they are more likely to support integration and take leadership roles. Where courts’ and judges’ knowledge is less advanced, information integration can make them more dependent on executive agencies, which are typically much more advanced in terms of management and information systems.

Since the participation of courts is central to integration, these particular turf issues are critically important, and not easily resolved. The judicial system’s sensitivity to any threats to its independence is a legitimate concern. If the willingness of the courts to take a positive role in integration depends on their own administrative and technological development, then ensuring or enhancing that development is an important integration strategy.

A similar case of legitimate turf sensitivity involves the defense bar, and public defenders in particular. Defense attorneys’ duty to seek the best defense for their clients can make them resistant to integration efforts that they perceive to improve law enforcement and criminal prosecution at the expense of the accused. But they do have an interest in ease of access to records and related materials that can be useful in defense. One public defender noted that the high cost of searching for and obtaining many paper records needed for defense planning and preparation can hinder the defense of indigent clients. Integration that improved the efficiency of access to those materials would be more likely to elicit support from the defense bar and reduce this particular form of sensitivity.

Within the executive branch of government, there can also be institutional rivalries and adversarial relationships. Attorneys General and Governors are independently-elected constitutional officers in most states. This is true of prosecuting attorneys and executives at the county and municipal levels as well. Political rivalries are thus often part of this institutional structure and must be taken into account in integration strategies. A number of the initiatives mentioned in the interviews originated with either a Governor or Attorney General. In these cases, the governance structures that were developed provided for shared authority across executive agencies and a mechanism for conflict resolution and collaboration.

Organizational and Personal Turf: Organizational and personal turf refers to the defense of status, power, or other resources that may be at stake for organizations or individuals in any particular integration initiative. Advancing integration of information requires collaboration and change at the personal and organizational levels; this involves potential costs and risks. Resistance to this collaboration and change is another form of turf defense, taking the form of unwillingness to enter into collaborative arrangements and agreements, or refusal to adapt organizational resources, structures, or procedures to the needs of integrated systems. There is the added risk of embarrassment or loss of status resulting from release of some kinds of information to the public or to other agencies. For example, local law enforcement agencies may be unwilling to incur the cost of instituting new booking procedures to fit with integrated arrest or identification systems. Similarly, courts may be unwilling to restructure case and calendar information in ways that make workloads appear smaller.

This form of turf problem appears to be the consequence of insufficient trust and incentives. The expected benefits from participating in the integration effort were too small relative to the cost of change or to the increased risk of collaborating with uncertain partners. The problem was common across the locations and initiatives we examined, but it was almost always solved or reduced to manageable levels. The successful solutions depended on building trust and increasing incentives, or making the resistant participants more aware of incentives and benefits, and controlling costs. These are described in more detail below.

Criminal justice activities take place in a highly complex institutional setting. This raises barriers and increases the difficulty of designing effective integration initiatives, and organizing the necessary collaboration among the participants. A few basic statistics illustrate the scope of possible variation. According to U.S. Department of Justice statistics, there are over 19,000 state and local law enforcement agencies in the country, over 3,000 local jails, and over 1,500 state and Federal prisons. State and local courts, which handle the great majority of criminal work, handle over 85 million cases a year, and approximately 1 million persons per year are convicted of felonies. This large volume of criminal justice activity is distributed over a complex matrix of state and local government structures. For example, Texas has 254 counties, more than a third of which have populations under 10,000, compared with Florida’s 66 counties, only 5 of which have populations smaller than 10,000. Court organization in states can vary from uniform systems to complex layers of state, county, and local courts. There may be several types of trial courts in some states, or only one general trial court, as in Minnesota. Courts may be financed fully from the state level, or by a mix of state, county, and local funds. Similar variability is found in jail and prison systems, as well as in parole and probation functions. Inconsistencies in scale and structure are the rule rather than the exception.

Given this context, the prodigious variety in integration initiatives and technologies found in the study was not surprising. This can be another kind of barrier. Each of the states had developed its own approaches and most had multiple integration components or initiatives underway, either in comprehensive or selective forms. This diversity is reflected in the wide range of information technology investments and information systems already in place across levels and departments of the governments. The compatibility and consistency in applications necessary to create integrated systems is thus more expensive and complicated to design and develop.

The diversity is reflected in uneven rates of development and considerable range in technological sophistication among the jurisdictions in states. In some of the states in the study, the large cities had progressed faster than the state government agencies. Seattle, for example, was unwilling to wait any longer for the state of Washington to be ready to take action and has reportedly gone forward with its own integration initiative independently. The five major urban areas in Texas are also reportedly ahead of the state and are trying to resolve the resulting conflicts in approach that interfere with greater integration. Los Angeles County has achieved a level of integration well above that of the state of California. The barrier here seems to be uneven capacity to innovate or to adapt divergent technologies, rather than an unwillingness to collaborate or integrate information systems.

A common theme in the successful initiatives was the importance of an effective advocate and mobilizer of action and support, usually referred to as a “champion.” The research on innovation generally corroborates the importance of top level support and the need for effective advocates and leaders in promoting change. This factor may be even more important in the domain of criminal justice information integration, since there are so many complex barriers and problems to overcome. In almost all cases a person with considerable organizational or political influence played an important role, often described specifically as overcoming barriers or breaking up points of resistance. The champions described in these cases occupied a number of different positions: governors, attorneys general, a state police superintendent, chief judges, and occasionally legislators. In these cases the champion role required a position of considerable authority or leverage, plus a personal and/or political commitment to the integration objectives.

One role of champions, or other strong form of leadership, appears to be overcoming the resistance of separate, independent jurisdictions and agencies to accept coordination and standardization. The lack of this kind of leadership is a serious barrier to achieving integration objectives. A certain minimal uniformity and consensus on data, infrastructure, and procedures, as well as shared decision making, is necessary to achieve most integration objectives. Many of the actions of champions in the states and localities have been to initiate some kind of coordinating structure or policy, and to exercise power to persuade organizations to participate. This kind of coordinating function is critical to virtually all the integration objectives we encountered.