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By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n Pitre told the County Commissioners Court earlier this month there were still 13,000 invalid data entries in old criminal case files that must be manually corrected before transferring them to Odyssey. She could not provide a date for when the work will be completed but said she is considering hiring a contractor to help with the load. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s challenging,\u201d Pitre said in an interview. \u201cIf I could fix it, I would. I know everyone is frustrated.\u201d<\/p>\n Dallas County District Clerk, Felicia Pitre (left), Dallas County Clerk’s office employee LaTonya Hill (center) Dallas County Clerk John F. Warren discuss about county’s database changes storing criminal cases Friday, June 2, 2023 at Dallas County Clerk’s office. <\/p>\n Shafkat Anowar \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n The IT department\u2019s attempts to run logic scripts to correct the data have not solved all of the issues. Much of the problem is related to how data was entered into the old system, Pitre said. <\/p>\n For example motions to revoke a defendant\u2019s probation were not always filed before arrest warrants in a case. Pitre said the Odyssey system requires clerks to enter the information \u201cthe correct way,\u201d preventing them from transferring the files automatically.<\/p>\n As a result the data corrections have to be done by hand. Pitre said it took her three hours to correct just 52 cases, glacial progress in finishing the project that began about a year ago.<\/p>\n \u201cMy staff is exhausted,\u201d Pitre told the commissioners court. \u201cI\u2019m exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n The mandatory reports that Dallas County is unable to submit to the Office of Court Administration show cases handled by judges sorted by offense. These reports have been required for decades, but Dallas County stopped submitting them for criminal courts in May 2023 when it adopted Odyssey. <\/p>\n The district clerk however is able to complete two separate reports required under new legislation passed in 2023: the annual performance measures report showing clearance rates and monthly judicial statistics reports. <\/p>\n Pitre said this is because those reports don\u2019t require sorting by offense type. <\/p>\n The district clerk said she was concerned about the conversion to Odyssey before it occurred in May 2023 and if she had known it would have impacted her ability to report OCA data \u201cI would have chosen to delay\u201d the switch to clean up the data first.<\/p>\n Earlier this month Pitre told county commissioners she was considering hiring a contractor at a cost of $70,000 to help expedite the data corrections. <\/p>\n \u201cDone,\u201d County Commissioner John Wiley Price said in response to Pitre explaining the cost. \u201cHire her.\u201d<\/p>\n Commissioners expressed exasperation at Pitre\u2019s explanation of having thousands of invalid data entries yet to be corrected after more than two years of reporting delays.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t seem to be making a lot of forward motion,\u201d County Commissioner Theresa Daniel told Pitre. \u201cI understand your frustration because we\u2019re frustrated also.\u201d<\/p>\n The commissioners court previously approved additional staff to help the district clerk\u2019s office correct the data, but Pitre has not yet utilized this. County Administrator Darryl Martin said last week he had recruited 31 employees to work on the data corrections for overtime pay.<\/p>\n Pitre said due to the complexity, a team of six staff members from her office and herself have been focused on the work, some days working on the conversion through midnight.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t something I can just hire a temporary person to come in and do, you have to know what you\u2019re doing in order to do this work,\u201d Pitre said. <\/p>\n Although the 2025 indigent defense grant is on hold until the OCA data is submitted, the outstanding data reporting has not prevented the county from applying for the fiscal year 2026 funding, Ehlers confirmed. <\/p>\n The commission will determine the amount counties will receive for 2026 in the spring. If Dallas County is not in compliance with its OCA reporting by then, the fiscal year 2026 grant will also be placed on hold, Ehlers said.<\/p>\n \u201cMy staff, we\u2019re committed to correcting it,\u201d Pitre said. \u201cAs the district clerk, it is my responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas County district clerk\u2019s office has failed to submit mandatory reports of criminal court data to the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":378709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,356,4219,1596,7290,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-378708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-dallas","12":"tag-dallas-county","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115549039116312460","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dallas](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4TA7XBRTYZD3LJ2TTWCGBVKR7U.jpg\")
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