A Prosecutions Management Information System (PMIS): a case of the Uganda's Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP)

Abstract

As population and criminal cases increase, the data required to properly administer the prosecutions becomes more complex as well. These complexities have overwhelmed the ability of the present manual systems and rudimentary computer-based systems to produce reliable, timely and useful information about the DPP’s operations. In order to evaluate their services to the public and justify the need for additional resources, the DPP need to acquire a new system to solve the problems mentioned above. The major purpose of this project was to develop and implement a Prosecutions Management Information System (PMIS) that should be capturing criminal offenders, improve on cases, analysis and generating exceptional reports for the criminal justice managers. Information systems and particularly key issues about prosecutions information systems were raed prior to studying the existing systems at the case study DPP. Reading of the existing literate and documentions, observation, interviews and questionnaire methods were used to investigate the current systems. Selected journals and textbooks were read for purposes of acquainting the researcher with current computer based management information systems. The design was done in areas of archictectural design, context data flow diagram, entity relationship diagram, logical database design; and Java Programming Language was used for coding. Project development or implentation was done using MySQL server, html, and java for coding; addressing security issues and system testing and validation done. PMIS being web-based, would be the way forward in solving the problems like manual data processing,which lead to delays in generating reports for the DPP department in Uganda. PMIS was developed and implemented to enable prosecutors to manage the criminal cases and offenders or accused from the time of filling the case with the DPP’s office to termination, and keeping track of all prosecutions processes in litigation, which the researcher has attempted to solve. The developed system capture, analyse cases and generates reliable and timely reports, for example, cases handled by the prosecutor, accused/victims, prosecutors/users, prosecuted cases and districts and stations, that support management decision-making in the Directorate.