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| category | created | updated | tags | summary | location | ||||
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| U.S. Government | 2024-04-26 | 2026-10-15 |
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The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia commissioned PROMIS in 1969, deployed it January 1, 1971, and signed the March 1982 INSLAW implementation contract at the center of the PROMIS Software Scandal. | Washington, D.C. |
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia is the federal prosecutor's office responsible for both local criminal matters (unique among U.S. Attorneys' offices due to DC's non-state status) and federal crimes within the District. As used throughout the INSLAW files and the House Committee on the Judiciary's PROMIS investigation, "the U.S. Attorney's Office" refers to this DC office unless otherwise specified.
Role in PROMIS Development
In 1969, U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Flannery perceived an urgent need for improved case management tools to handle the volume of cases flowing through the DC office. He directed the Office of Crime Analysis of the District of Columbia to commission a computerized case tracking system, funded by a $60,000 LEAA grant (70-DF-047) administered through Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. The design team was co-directed by Joan E. Jacoby and Charles R. Work (then Deputy Director of the office's Superior Court Division), with Bill Hamilton of Peat Marwick as project manager.12 The resulting system, the Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS), was deployed January 1, 1971.2
The DC office became the first PROMIS site and served as the demonstration platform for the system's national expansion. LEAA subsequently funded INSLAW to adapt PROMIS for adoption by other jurisdictions, and provided grants to municipalities converting to the system.1
EOUSA Implementation Contract
The Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA), which administers support for the 93 U.S. Attorneys serving 94 judicial districts (one U.S. Attorney serves both Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands),3 was the entity that signed the March 1982 implementation contract with INSLAW, Inc. for installation of PROMIS in 20 large U.S. Attorneys' offices and word-processor systems in 74 smaller ones. The execution of that contract, and EOUSA's subsequent conduct toward INSLAW, became the central dispute in the PROMIS Software Scandal.1
Footnotes
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U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report. House Report 102-857, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, September 10, 1992. ↩︎
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Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., System Overview and Report Formats for PROMIS (May 1971), prepared for the District of Columbia Government Office of Crime Analysis under LEAA Grant No. 70-DF-047, note 1 to the passage on the design team, NCJ 32469. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/32469NCJRS.pdf ↩︎
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28 U.S.C. 541, "United States attorneys" (one United States attorney for each judicial district, with a single attorney for Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/541 ↩︎