Prisoner recidivism is a growing problem in the United States. Offenders often find themselves rearrested and returned to the system after a few short years. The IT Solution Center’s Risk Assessment System was developed as a web based solution to risk assessment and offers a variety of tools to better manage offenders, conduct risk assessments, and facilitate the reduction of offender recidivism. Since that original development process, more states have adopted use of the Risk Assessment System, and that original mold doesn’t always fit the needs of the new users. The Risk Assessment System v4.0 includes a complete front-end framework migration and improves upon the original v3.0 approach by adding some highly requested features. Notable highlights are enhancements to data reporting via the Research Portal, merging/unmerging of offender records, role/permission management, and a chronological offender timeline. This
project also focused on creating a more robust database infrastructure through the use of logical replication to an external-server replica. Lastly, a .csv file upload application was developed to take the place of API integrations in the case that clients are unable to build a data upload solution of their own. These features were completed and iterated with a heavy focus on user satisfaction and configurability. Bulletproof functionality, ease of use, and user interface simplicity were all driving factors in achieving positive user acceptance results.