A proven process for complex cases

by Craig Ackley

Investigators are responsible for managing a lot of complex information and data. Traditional case files have thousands of pages of material that aren’t easily searchable or organized. And assisting agencies rarely have complete access to an investigation’s case file because much of the information is not digitized.

CaseGuide streamlines case management, creating a secure, collaborative process for organizing and analyzing case information so that investigators across agencies can focus on solving crimes and getting justice for victims and their families.

As a secure, cloud-based software, CaseGuide breaks down the case management process into five steps:

Import

CaseGuide makes it easy to import your materials into the system, whether a single document or an entire folder. The software supports most file types, including .jpeg and .mp3 files so you can house all relevant case information, from crime scene photos to witness interview recordings, in one location.

The handiest feature of CaseGuide’s importation is that the system has “optical character recognition,” or OCR. This allows CaseGuide to recognize text in scanned photos or documents, allowing you to better search for keywords throughout the entire case file.

Organize

Traditional case files can have more than 40,000 pages. CaseGuide’s categories allow you to organize items like crime scene materials, including photos, diagrams, sketches, and reports, investigations by agency, search and seizure, evidence, persons in the case, and more into one searchable system. And with CaseGuide’s customizable templates, you have a starting point for organizing your materials already in place.

The “Persons” feature of CaseGuide creates a digital rolodex of all relevant people in the case, including victims, suspects, witnesses, and more. You can sort people in the case into these categories, search by name, and add relevant documents to a person’s contact record.

Analyze

With CaseGuide’s search and categorization features, investigators can spend more time analyzing information, rather than manually searching through pages upon pages of data. As you analyze the materials, you can add notes to any file, mark files as discoverable files with Bates stamps, and categorize your notes.

Review

During the review stage, CaseGuide lets you dig even deeper into the analysis. Here, you can consolidate all notes for a person’s record or a category like evidence to search for patterns and mine data. You can also consolidate notes from peers and collaborators on the case, giving you a fuller picture of the investigation.

Report

Once you’ve reviewed the materials, you can generate reports and export them to share with external users. You can generate reports by category, including a summary of witnesses, a summary on an individual, or one on all the forensics of the case. This feature is especially helpful for trials, letting you easily create a report of all discoverable evidence with Bates stamps to share with legal teams.

CaseGuide is not just a software platform – it’s also a proven process for organizing and analyzing your case information. Developed by Craig Ackley, a law enforcement professional with more than 40 years of experience solving complex cases, CaseGuide takes the guesswork and minutiae out of case file management. Schedule a demo today to learn more about how CaseGuide can help you and your team.