Washington State's crime-fighting tool. (HITS/SMART).(Homicide Investigative Tracking System! Supervision Management And Recidivist Tracking). )

"Just beyond the horizon, there lurks a cloud that the winds will soon bring over us. The population will start getting younger again. By the end of this decade there will be a million more people between the ages of 14 and 17....This extra million will be half male. Six percent of them will become repeat offenders. Get ready." (1)

Police and corrections managers know that they will face many challenges in the next decade. What will be the scope and nature of the crime problem? What will be the best ways to meet emerging challenges with available funding and resources? How can law enforcement and corrections not only hold the line on public safety but actually improve public safety and continue to drive the crime rate down? According to many experts, this could prove a daunting challenge. (2)

Another area of concern for police and corrections managers is prison overcrowding. "All but eight states in the United States are under federal court orders to do something to alleviate overcrowding in prisons--overcrowding so severe that it constitutes 'cruel and unusual punishment.' In their efforts, many states have had to reduce the time offenders spend in prison, and some states have placed an increasing percentage of felons on probation. This may mean that convicted felons are spending more post-conviction time on the streets than ever before, a situation that not only severely strains the resources of probation and parole agencies but also jeopardizes public safety." (3) Clearly, a challenge exists for corrections agencies to decide how to use their limited number of officers, who already have bulging caseloads, in a way that focuses necessary resources on the most dangerous and recidivism-prone probationers.

Over the past three decades, researchers have examined the impact of recidivism. For example, one study showed that in 1997, only 44 percent of persons under state supervision successfully completed their term of supervision compared with 70 percent in 1984. Moreover, police arrested a high percentage of these individuals for new felonies. (4) Over 10 years earlier, a study in Los Angeles County concluded that recidivism rates for high-risk offenders ranged between 50 and 75 percent, (5) while a Philadelphia study conducted nearly 30 years ago found that 7 percent of the criminal population committed approximately 70 percent of all violent crime. (6)

The probation failure and high recidivism rates cited in these studies will not surprise any veteran law enforcement or corrections officer. Clearly, both corrections and law enforcement officers need to focus on felons who are under supervision because "...successfully preventing this group from committing new crimes may be the key to continued and sustained reduction of crime rates." (7)

NEW CHALLENGES, NEW SOLUTIONS

Police have attempted to meet these challenges through such efforts as community policing, new partnerships, and improved information sharing, including new shared-technology systems that can link similar crimes and identify suspects. These systems can help police catch serial criminals and swiftly identify and take action against unlawful enterprises. The last decade saw the development and implementation of a number of successful partnerships between police and community corrections, such as Boston's Operation Night Light. (8) Most of these programs developed as an outreach of community policing and antigang and antidrug efforts.

Corrections agencies have embraced a variety of strategies for improved supervision of offenders, including intensive probation supervision, electronic monitoring, house arrest, and community-service sentencing. These tactics fall under the rubric of intermediate sanctions. Some experts believe "that the U.S. criminal justice system might be able to get additional return on the resources that are actually or potentially available by examining the benefits and cost of various intermediate-level sanctions for felony offenders, such as community-based programs, that provide more intensive supervision than routine probation but are less restrictive than prison." (9) However, some intermediate sanctions, such as intensive supervision programs, can require extra personnel, resulting in either additional probation resources or a reallocation of these resources.

Such new challenges definitely require new solutions. To this end, Washington State has created a new state-of-the-art crime-fighting system called HITS/SMART (Homicide Investigative Tracking System! Supervision Management And Recidivist Tracking). This system developed out of a spirit of cooperation and a common strategic goal of increased community safety. Combining a state system, HITS, with a local approach, SMART Partnerships, created a unique venture between police, the Washington State Department of Corrections, and the Attorney General's Office HITS Unit. HITS/SMART assists in solving homicide and other serious criminal cases, as well as providing a new investigative tool to police and community corrections (i.e., Washington State's term for state parole officers). It also provides near real-time information to community corrections officers regarding police contacts with supervised offenders. Combined with mapping and other crime analysis programs, it creates a comprehensive system for tracking offen ders and crime patterns and stands ready to help law enforcement and corrections meet the challenges of the future.

HITS: The State System

HITS comprises a unit of the Criminal Division of the Washington State Attorney General's Office. (10) The state developed HITS as a result of several heinous serial killings that occurred in the area during the 1980s. The National Institute of Justice provided the original funding in the form of a grant to study the salient characteristics of murder. HITS success became apparent even before all of the collected data had been entered. As a result, in 1991, the state legislature mandated that the system also track all violent crimes, including sex crimes.

As a software application, HITS stores information contributed voluntarily by system users who collect crime information on standardized forms, which require fewer than 30 minutes of preparation and data-entry time. The system's current design supports murder, attempted murder, missing person cases where investigators suspect foul play, sexual assault, sex-related vice, sex crimes committed by sexual predators (both known and unknown to the victims), and gang-related crime. HITS also can expand easily to include other crimes.

Criminals do not have boundaries--murderers may commit rape and robbery; arsonists may commit murder and rape. Whether by design or accident, offenders perpetrate a variety of crimes across many different borders or jurisdictions. Law enforcement organizations, on the other hand, have very distinct boundaries, federal, state, county, and city. Larger agencies even have demarcations between investigative units, such as homicide, rape, and robbery. In many cases, these units are divided into districts, with individual investigators handling one specific type of crime in only that district. If an individual commits several different crimes within the same district or jurisdiction or the same type of crime in different districts or jurisdictions, a good chance exists that the police will not catch the offender. If they do apprehend the perpetrator, they most likely will charge the subject with a single crime because they will not know about additional crimes committed in other jurisdictions.

Historically, a lack of communication and unwillingness to share information, referred to as "linkage blindness," has occurred between law enforcement agencies. Washington State created the HITS program to overcome this problem. The HITS design allows each agency to enter, maintain, search, compare, analyze, and view its own information in its entirety, as well as to compare this information with all of the data in the whole system. When the computer finds comparable cases not authored by the inquiring agency, it provides only the name of the investigating agency, the investigator's name, phone number, and agency case number. If the inquiring agency needs further information, it must contact the listed agency or investigator. This allows each agency to maintain the integrity and anonymity of its information.

Primarily, HITS acts as a central repository for detailed violent crime information collected from police and sheriffs departments in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Through analyzing this information and providing linkages between different incidents, HITS has contributed significantly to solving a number of high-profile crimes. (11)

SMART Partnerships: The Local Approach

SMART Partnerships began in 1992 as a collaboration between the Redmond, Washington, Police Department and the Office of the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOG) in Bellevue. In a two-part program, Redmond police officers began working directly with Bellevue community corrections officers (CCOs) to increase supervision and accountability of offenders who reside in, or frequent, Redmond.

In the first part of the program, Redmond police officers directly assist DOG in monitoring high-risk offenders who live in their patrol areas. One of the often-cited premises of community-oriented policing states that officers will be more effective if they work the same area and get to know individuals who live and work there, as well as knowing the normal patterns of activity in that locale. For the Redmond Police Department, SMART represents an extension of this philosophy. Officers not only must know the individuals who live and work in their patrol area but they also must recognize the high-risk supervised offenders who live there and their conditions of supervision. They also must develop working relationships with the CCOs whose caseloads include these offenders. The Redmond Police Department assigns officers one or two offenders, who they visit randomly at their homes twice a month during the offender's hours of curfew. Officers document the visit on a simple form that they provide to the subject's CCO. A second, alternating officer always accompanies the primary officer on each visit. This alleviates liability concerns and, over a short period of time, allows most officers on the shift to recognize the offenders and learn their hours of curfew and other conditions of release. Direct monitoring by police during predominantly nighttime hours makes it extremely difficult for offenders to violate their curfew or other conditions. If police officers discover that an offender is not home or observe other violations, they document these and notify the subject's CCO as soon as possible. If officers witness a violation of law, they take normal enforcement action. During home visits, officers stress professionalism, and many offenders actually have found this police monitoring a positive experience in their reentry into the community.

The second part of the program requires Redmond police officers to document random contacts with supervised offenders. In Washington State, when an officer performs an electronic name search to verify an individual's identity and to check for warrants, the process informs the officer whether the subject is under DOC supervision. For years, officers statewide received information on supervised offenders during traffic stops, as well as other police investigations, from suspicious person contacts to disturbances and serious criminal investigations. Sometimes, officers received this information on individuals who they would arrest for a new crime, but, more often, such matches occurred on offenders stopped for traffic infractions or associated with an event, such as a disturbance call, where officers usually would not effect an arrest. Until the advent of SMART, officers never documented or forwarded these contacts to DOC. Thousands of these contacts occurred in Washington State each year without DOC's knowledg e. However, the implementation of SMART changed this dramatically.

Because supervised offenders represent a group at high risk to reoffend and one that poses a significant threat to community safety, the Redmond Police Department took a new approach to random contacts with supervised offenders. Now, officers document these contacts and forward this information to DOC. The perfect tool for this existed in the Field Interview Report (FIR). Redmond, as well as most other police departments, has used FIRs for decades to document contacts with suspicious persons. Although the dimensions and details of the FIR vary slightly from department to department, the type Redmond uses consists of a 3x5-inch card that has spaces to record biographical information on the individual and associates, related vehicle data, time of day and location of the contact, type of event investigated, and a short narrative. The card also captures whether the subject appeared under the influence of alcohol or other drugs and whether the individual is under the supervision of DOG.

When officers complete a FIR on a subject under DOC supervision, the FIR is routed the same as all other reports, through the duty lieutenant and to the crime analyst. On a weekly basis, these FIRs are sent to the Bellevue office of the DOC, where the CCO designated as the SMART Partnership liaison forwards a copy of the FIR to the subject's supervising CCO. Although conditions for release can vary, typical provisions of supervised offenders include no alcohol or other drug use, an 8-hour nightly curfew, no travel outside of the offender's county of residence without permission, and no association with other offenders or in the case of a sex offender, no association with children. Frequently, other requirements exist that involve avoiding certain locations, such as high drug-trafficking areas or victims' places of residence or work. Obviously, these FIRs provide a wealth of information to COOs regarding activities uncovered by police contacts with offenders that they supervise. SMART Partnerships make police the eyes and ears of CCOs and give DOG an enhanced 24-hour capability, with no overtime and little associated cost.

SMART Partnerships soon spread to other departments. Since 1992, over 70 police departments and community corrections field offices in Washington State have received training in the implementation of SMART Partnerships. (12) From September 1993 to September 1994, the law enforcement agencies of Redmond, Bellevue, and King County North Precinct, forwarded 359 FIRs to DOG. (13) In 1997, Aberdeen, a small city on the coast of Washington with 20 police officers, forwarded 612 FIRs to DOG. (14) This represents a fraction of the volume of FIRs generated by the police departments currently participating in SMART.

HITS/SMART: The Connection

In early 1995, HITS investigators became aware of SMART Partnerships and, specifically, the high volume of FIRs that the program generated on police contacts with supervised offenders. Members of the Redmond Police Department, the Bellevue Community Corrections staff, and the managers of the HITS Unit met to discuss using HITS as a repository for the FIRs generated by SMART. HITS could use this information to create another database for comparing criminal incidents by employing information gathered through police FIRs of offenders. For example, a certain supervised offender may be a suspect in an abduction/rape case; however, not enough evidence for an arrest and no record of the offender having access to the type of vehicle described by the victim exists. A FIR on that offender may show that he has access to a friend's vehicle that turns out to match the victim's description. The rape investigator's knowledge of the vehicle could lead to evidence recovery and the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator. HIT S also may connect this vehicle to several other unsolved rape cases.

This initial meeting generated ideas that would take a partnership between HITS and SMART far beyond simply adding HITS as a repository for SMART-FIRs. Participants developed a plan that had far-reaching effects and included the following actions:

* HITS would develop an electronic database for storage of all FIRs generated by SMART.

* HITS would use this database as a new field for its primary role of linking and helping investigators solve serial crimes.

* Any police department participating in SMART could access this entire database in the course of its own criminal investigations.

* Any CCO could access this entire database for investigative purposes regarding the activities of supervised offenders.

* Because HITS already maintained an up-to-date computer record of every offender who was under DOG supervision, the new system also would match an offender who was the subject of a FIR with that individual's CCO. The system then would notify CCO electronically of the existence and availability of the FIR in the HITS database.

* The system would allow electronic entry of FIRs by police directly into the HITS database.

* After completion of the development phase of the program, a systematic effort would occur to connect every police department in the state and expand the database as rapidly as possible.

After the initial meeting, HITS representatives studied the feasibility and cost of such a system and, in mid-1995, the Washington State Attorney General directed HITS to develop HITS/SMART. During the 1996 legislative session, the state appropriated funding, which began in 1997. After a 2-year development phase, HITS/SMART was ready for tests and final refinement. Three Washington law enforcement agencies--the Redmond, Yakima, and Seattle Police Departments--are participating in the test phase. In mid-1999, these agencies began entering SMART-FIRs. Representing only a tiny fraction of police offender contacts statewide, these three agencies made over 600 entries into the HITS/SMART database by mid-October 2000. Once these agencies complete the test phase, all other law enforcement agencies in Washington State will be invited to participate in the program.

Currently, the Seattle Police Department is using the HITS/SMART program as part of a sophisticated partnership between the agency, DOC, and HITS. Coordinated through the Seattle Police Department's Crime Analysis Unit, the program uses crime mapping and several other crime analysis programs to analyze crime patterns and police contacts against offender addresses. Police officers use this information in investigations and to assist CCOs in prioritizing home visits with offenders. (15)

NEW DEVELOPMENTS, NEW APPLICATIONS

Over the last 8 years, a steady evolution of SMART Partnerships, HITS, and the Washington State DOC has occurred. These three entities, along with a new state law, have come together in a continually evolving partnership that will propel police, corrections, and technology into unprecedented crime-fighting synergy.

SMART Enhancements

SMART has evolved from hand-delivered or mailed FIRs, which could take weeks to reach a CCO, to a computerized system that matches a FIR to a CCO and alerts the officer almost instantly. The technology of HITS/SMART will make this system available to every police department and DOC office in Washington State. Currently, the Seattle Police Department and the King County Sheriffs Office are spearheading a movement to make HITS/SMART a statewide database for all FIRs, not just those where the subject of the FIR is under DOG supervision. The criterion for entry would be that the person must be suspected of criminal activity, which constitutes the same criterion, besides being under DOC supervision, that guides most departments on completing a FIR on anyone. Expansion of HITS/SMART to a statewide database for all FIRs would create a valuable new tool by providing every police investigator in the state with information on suspected perpetrators of crimes, ranging from vehicle thefts to serial murders.

HITS Expansions

Just as SMART evolves, HITS continues to expand its other databases and programs, all of which can be queried, overlaid, or applied to solving crimes. Some of these other databases and programs are Crime Data, Gangs, Registered Sex Offenders, Time Line, and Tip Sheet. All of the new programs employ technology in innovative ways. For example, another database, CATCH (Computer Aided Tracking and Characterization of Homicides), is an application that uses artificial neural networks and mathematical algorithms to assist in the analysis of murders and sexual assaults. It assists crime analysts by using known characteristics from previous similar cases to fill in missing characteristic information about recent sex-related homicides or sexual assaults and by relating the information in recent sex murder cases to past cases of sexual assault and sex-related homicide. It also helps crime analysts relate different cases to the same offender. (16)

DOC Innovations

The Washington State DOC remains committed to working partnerships with police. Past support for SMART and other police-corrections partnership programs, along with DOC's evolving relationship with the Seattle Police Department, exemplifies this commitment. Both agencies are working together on a program called the Neighborhood Corrections Initiative (NCI), which formalizes a working partnership that focuses on high-risk and chronic offenders under the supervision of the Washington State DOC. NCI will assist in identifying and monitoring high-risk and repeat offenders, who threaten the safety and welfare of the community, and hold them accountable for their actions. NCI's primary goal is to reduce repeat offenses by supervised offenders, thereby improving public safety. Broadening collaboration between DOC, the Seattle Police Department, and the community represents NCI's approach to increasing positive compliance from supervised offenders. Assigned to each precinct, NCI teams of police officers and CCOs wil l work on joint initiatives to accomplish these objectives. The teams will employ joint emphasis patrols, monitor high-risk offenders, serve bench warrants and detainers, conduct joint home visits, and expand the HITS/SMART program. The Seattle Police Department's Crime Analysis Unit will assist the NCI teams and other DOC and police staff members by employing HITS! SMART, crime mapping, and other technology to guide monitoring efforts of supervised offenders, as well as governing detection and apprehension initiatives of those who commit new crimes. (17)

Seattle is leading the way toward a day in policing when this technology, which currently is available in limited areas and only for the most serious crimes, will be available to and used by all police officers as well as CCOs. Besides crime analysts, line police officers and CCOs will feed information into these systems. In Seattle and most of Washington State, police and corrections agencies have learned that they can gain significantly by working together in formal partnerships. Technological advances, such as HITS/SMART, make these partnerships even more effective.

Legal Accountability

Even with all of the efforts to prevent supervised offenders from committing new crimes, authorities realized that they needed enhanced laws relating to these individuals. Therefore, Washington State enacted the Offender Accountability Act, (18) which completely overhauled the way that offenders are supervised. The following items set forth some of the major changes:

* As of July 1, 1999, community supervision became community custody. This greatly expanded the community custody classification, the highest level of offender supervision in the community. This means that all offenders can encounter a variety of restrictions, including an 8-hour daily curfew. It also means that those who violate their terms of supervision can face a range of sanctions, including felony escape charges for violation of curfew or abdication of supervision. Police also can assist with direct monitoring of community custody inmates.

* DOC may establish and modify additional supervision conditions based on risk to community safety and will work with law enforcement agencies as partners in community safety.

* DOC must complete risk assessments of offenders, deploy CCOs on the basis of geographic distribution of these offenders, and establish a systematic means of assessing risk to community safety.

* Communities, including victims, law enforcement, and offenders and their families, will define problems, seek solutions, and develop community standards for managing offenders.

Basically, the act is an attempt to prevent new criminal behavior by offenders who are under supervision in the community. The act, however, recognizes the limited resources of the DOC and seeks to not only focus those resources more effectively but to use community and law enforcement partnerships to do so. This philosophy summarizes the Washington State DOC's mission statement: "Working together for safe communities." (19)

CONCLUSION

Offender recidivism stands as an ever-increasing problem facing the entire criminal justice community. Law enforcement and corrections officers, alike, know all too well the frustrations of dealing with repeat offenders. Finding effective and efficient ways to combat this problem represents a challenge that requires innovative solutions.

To this end, Washington State has combined community policing, community corrections, and technology into a new state-of-the-art crime-fighting system. Without additional staff or expense, the Washington State Department of Corrections enhances supervision of offenders through the use of police officers who provide patrol coverage 24 hours a day. Community corrections officers know, sometimes within hours, when offender conduct has come to the attention of the police and whether this conduct is a violation of supervisory conditions. Police and corrections officers work together through programs, such as SMART Partnerships or Seattle's Neighborhood Corrections Initiative, to deter recidivist offenders. The result represents a type of intense supervision, only without the need for additional personnel or financial resources. Police and corrections officers employ crime analysis technology, including HITS/SMART, to direct and coordinate efforts and resources while using HITS as a powerful new tool for criminal investigation and linkage analysis (20) of serial crimes. Through these innovations, police, corrections, and HITS are all working together to support Washington State's tough new law, the Offender Accountability Act, and, thus, prevent recidivism by supervised offenders and improve the safety of their communities.

Endnotes

(1.) Jamcs Q. Wilson, "Crime and Public Policy," in Crime, ed. James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia (San Francisco, CA: ICS Press, 1995), 507.

(2.) Ibid.

(3.) Joan Petersilia and Susan Tumer, "Prison versus Probation in California: Implications for Crime and Offender Recidivism," in Community Corrections. Probation, Parole, and Intermediate Sanctions, ed. Joan Petersilia (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 61.

(4.) Allen J. Beck, "Trends in U.S. Prison Populations," in The Dilemmas of Corrections, ed. Kenneth Haas and Geoffrey Alpert (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1999).

(5.) Joan Petersilia, Susan Turner, and James Kahn, Granting Felons Probation. Public Risks and Alternatives (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 1985).

(6.) Marvin E. Wolfgang and Robert M. Figlio, Delinquency in a Birth Cohort (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1972).

(7.) Joan Petersilia, "The Current State of Probation, Parole, and Intermediate Sanctions," in Community Corrections. Probation, Parole, and Intermediate Sanctions, ed. Joan Petersilia (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 19.

(8.) For a description of police and corrections partnerships, see National Institute of Justice, Police Corrections Partnerships, NCJ 175047 (Washington, DC, 1999); Joan Petersilia, "Innovative Programs in Community Corrections," in Community Corrections: Probation, Parole, and Intermediate Sanctions, ed. Joan Petersilia (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 160; and James T. Jordan, "Boston's Operation Night Light: New Roles, New Rules," FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, August 1998, 1-5.

(9.) Supra note 3, 66.

(10.) Information in this section comes from Robert Lamoria, Office of the Attorney General of Washington State, Criminal Justice Division, Homicide Investigative Tracking System, HITS Advancement, SMART: Washington 's Answer to Crime Prevention? October 2000. For additional background on HITS, see Robert D. Keppel and Joseph G. Weis, "HITS: Catching Criminals in the Northwest," FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, April 1993, 14-19.

(11.) Supra note 10 (Lamoria, 4). For example, HITS staff identified a brutal child rapist by using physical characteristics and the suspect's vehicle description provided by the two victims. Since 1990, HITS has determined that 39 serial rapists (3 or more rapes) have been operating in Washington State. Analysis of these rape cases in the HITS program led to the identification, location, or conviction of 22 of these rapists.

(12.) The Bellevue office of the Washington State Department of Corrections gathered these figures.

(13.) Ibid.

(14.) The Aberdeen, Washington, Police Department gathered these figures.

(15.) Seattle Police Department's Crime Mapping Research Center concept paper, Utilizing "Crime Mapping and Analysis" in Community Corrections Knock and Talks, October 1999.

(16.) Robert Lamoria, Office of the Attorney General of Washington State, Criminal Justice Division, Homicide Investigative Tracking System, Statewide FIR Database, October 2000.

(17.) Seattle Police Department and Department of Corrections Neighborhood Correction Initiative Draft Policy, August 2000.

(18.) Office of the Governor of Washington State, Public Information Office, Offender Accountability Act: Requiring Offender Accountability, 1999.

(19.) Ibid.

(20.) Bill McGarigle "Crime Profilers Gain New Weapons: Linkage analysis and geographic profiling systems get criminals where they live," Government Technology, December 1997; http://www.govttech.net/publications/gt/1997/dec/geoinfo/geoinfo.phtm l; accessed March 19, 2001.

RELATED ARTICLE: Examples of Case Resolutions

Over a 2-month period, 11 sexually motivated burglary/rapes and attempts occurred in King County, Washington. The investigating detective provided the names and addresses of the victims and the method of operation and physical description of the suspect to HITS personnel, who conducted an analysis of this information. First, staff members ran a computer check on the physical description of the suspect (21 to 24 years old, 5"9" to 6' in height, and weighing between 140 and 170 pounds) and a present or former address within 10 square miles of the center of the series of crimes. The computer check, which also included those offenders previously convicted of a sexual offense or burglary in King County, identified 37 possible suspects. Staff members then requested information on only those suspects with previous convictions of both a sex crime and a burglary. This reduced the number of suspects to two, with one's physical description closely matching that of the unknown rapist. HITS personnel then plotted the name s and addresses of the 37 possible suspects, highlighting the two specific ones, and the victims on a computer-generated map. Based on this information, the detective set up a surveillance on the one suspect. Two nights later, police arrested the suspect attempting to break into a residence occupied by two women. The suspect confessed to some of the rapes and was linked to others by evidence.

The Bainbridge Island, Washington, Police Department requested assistance from HITS while investigating what they believed was a series of burglaries where the offender showed a propensity for violence. In one incident, the subject broke into a residence and took many items of considerable value. In another, he broke into a residence, tied up the resident, then took her property and vehicle. In the first case, police obtained a description of the suspect's vehicle and partial license plate. Because of the similarities in the method of operation and physical description of the suspect, the police believed that the same offender committed both crimes. HITS used the partial license plate and vehicle information to obtain a list of nine possible vehicles. Officers contacted the registered owners of these vehicles and found that the owner of one had loaned the vehicle to a friend who witnesses identified as the burglar.

Source: Robert Lamoria, Office of the Attorney General of Washington State, Criminal Justice Division, Homicide Investigative Tracking System, HITS Advancement, SMART: Washington's Answer to Crime Prevention? October 2000.