Is there a Best Practice for Odyssey and JCS users when dealing with Multiple Referral Numbers on a Juvenile Offender Case?


  • The Juvenile referral number is used to maintain the association between a Superior Court case and a Juvenile to accurately reflect that a case has been filed against a juvenile based on a juvenile court referral.

     
  • The referral is used by JCS because an offender matter has been referred to the juvenile department for some sort of action.  This can be as a result of an arrest which required a detention episode stay, a case filed, or other issue including a diversion for tracking related to a juvenile.  

     
  • JCS requires at least one referral must be associated to the superior court case as the juvenile court manages the pre-case and post-case information related to the juvenile offender matter.  

     
  • A juvenile offender case can be associated with a juvenile offender or juvenile infraction type referral.  

     
  • The relationship between the case and referral can be a many to many relationship.

     
  • A referral is created based on a referral from law enforcement (mostly in a detention scenario) or the prosecutor’s office.  It’s a written report from law enforcement that refers the juvenile to the juvenile court.

     
  • A referral can be entered in JCS by the juvenile department, or a skeleton referral can be created automatically (by JIS) when a case is filed in Odyssey (and replicates to JIS) by a superior court and/or when a detention episode is created in JCS with no existing referral or case number.

     
  • The superior court clerk is allowed to add multiple referral numbers on a juvenile case type-8 through Odyssey only.

     
  • This association is replicated to the SCCR (Superior Court Case Referral) screen in JIS which JCS relies upon.   Both connections can be viewed on Odyssey Cross Reference screen in JCS.

     
  • The Juvenile department should not attempt to fix a referral-case relationship in JCS or JIS; all changes to the referral-case (or case-referral) relationship should be made via the Odyssey case.

    NOTE: This will change dramatically when Odyssey moves to the EDR and stops replicating to JIS/SCOMIS. Associating the referral to the case will revert back to JCS. This functionality is already in place for King County Superior/Juvenile.


  • If any case requires second referral number to be added, the clerk’s office can add the second referral on a juvenile case type-8’s on the Detail Tab by using the ‘+’ on Case Cross Reference Numbers. Once done with adding it we need to check the potential replication issues that might occur if the Juvenile Department linked the Referral in JIS to JCS. Juvenile clerks should not fix or add any case-referral relationships in JIS or JCS. Doing so will cause a replication error when a referral is added/updated/deleted in Odyssey.

     
  • In JCS both the referrals status should be set to Case Filed- Information Filed (CSF IN); unless the case is resolved and then they can close the referrals.

     
  • This is a general practice, but not required.  Initially, prior to the case filing, it can be Pending, Prosecutor Review/Decision.  That said, each juvenile court has its own set practices and may choose not to use the referral status above. 

     
  • The case number to associate with the active referral must be a valid JIS case number of the format YYTSSSSSC, where YY is the case year, T is the case type, SSSSS is the sequence number, and C is the check digit. Dashes will be stripped [for both dual and non-dual court JIS].

     
  • If a juvenile referral number already exists it must be entered at the time of case initiation.   It is best to file the case with it if it is available, but it is possible to fix it later if someone created a case without including the referral number—it just should be fixed from Odyssey.  To fix it, they can edit the automatic referral that was created by JIS and returned to Odyssey when the case replicated; they would edit the referral that’s saved as a Case Cross Reference Number (they’d change it to the number the juvenile department had intended the clerk to use).

     
  • If an existing referral number is not added, the JIS will generate a new referral number which could result in a duplicate referral number on the case. Referral numbers cannot be entered at a later time.  The clerk can add referral numbers later on in the case as needed (but via Odyssey).

     
  • If a discrepancy or error with the referral number is noted, changes to the referral number should be updated in Odyssey. The changes will not be reflected in Odyssey if the corrections are made in the JIS system.  A replication error will occur if/when Odyssey is updated with the correct referral.

     
  • It’s also important to ask the Clerk’s Office to reach out to the juvenile department when these things happen.  Very often we get tickets from the juvenile courts and they have no idea that the Clerk’s Office entered the wrong referral.  

     
  • Referral numbers may be added, edited or deleted as necessary after case initiation in Odyssey.
    As noted above, JCS will not work properly if a case does not have a linked referral. The case will display but JCS data entry related to the case will not be able to be performed (such as, automated referral status updates, dispositions data entry, or conditions).

     
  • Multiple referrals on juvenile offender cases can be added by the Superior Court Clerk’s office without causing any replication errors.

     
  • JIS assigns referral numbers sequentially, statewide, regardless of the county or referral type (i.e. dependency, truancy, offender).  This is why when a referral number is mis-entered and associated to the wrong case type, it can create a long list of issues and are particularly difficult to investigate, unravel and fix:
  1. Wrong person on case vs. referral (John Doe vs. Darth Vader).
  2. Wrong referral type on referral vs. case type (JD referral on JO case).
  3. Creates a second primary referral participant on the referral (i.e. defendant).

  • Automated Referral Statuses may occur and are based on replicated docket entries to SCOMIS.  Some SCOMIS docket codes automatically update the referral status associated to the referral linked to the JIS/SCOMIS case.  These updates are performed by SCOMIS and log the SDX User ID for each superior court.  The juvenile department has relied on these automated status codes since 2005.

     
  • Warrant counts in JCS rely on the associations between the cases and referrals.  These are based on the automated referral statuses mentioned above.