Several weeks before leaving office, Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin announced the addition of NICE Justice, a cloud-based Digital Evidence Management solution that will streamline and improve the way prosecutors build criminal cases and prepare for court hearings.

The increase in digital evidence in criminal investigations has helped enormously in prosecuting cases, but maintaining, organizing and effectively using that evidence has its challenges. It is estimated that video and digital evidence is involved in at least 80 percent of criminal cases.

The NICE Justice Digital Evidence Management solution will streamline the collection of evidence from law enforcement agencies by giving them a portal to share that evidence directly with the district attorney’s office. In addition to 911 recordings, agencies can upload and share footage from body-worn cameras, license plate readers, police vehicle cameras, surveillance cameras, and home security cameras.

Prior to this, digital evidence came to the district attorney’s office in a variety of ways with little uniformity or standardization, and it had to be manually uploaded, copied or scanned into various systems. With NICE Justice, instead of spending time on clerical duties like calling to request evidence, tracking it down or even driving to various locations to pick it up, prosecutors will be able to focus more of their time and effort on prosecuting cases.

Additionally, NICE Justice will work with the district attorney’s future case management system (CMS) to further streamline the evidence intake process.

When a new case is generated in the CMS, NICE Justice will automatically create corresponding digital case folders. Incoming evidence from law enforcement will be automatically correlated and placed into the correct digital case folder. Documents generated by the office and attached to the case will appear in the digital case folder as well.

Another benefit of NICE Justice is that all digital evidence is stored in one place, the secure cloud, reducing the risk of evidence being overlooked or misplaced.

Additionally, video evidence is always playable in NICE Justice without the need for specialized video players. NICE Justice also speeds up trial preparation and disclose with built-in, AI-powered transcription and redaction software.