Legislative Requirement
As reported in the Legislative Summary of the March/April 2016 edition of Indiana Court Times, Senate Enrolled Act 161 requires the Division of State Court Administration (“Division”) to report certain methamphetamine-related felony convictions to the National Precursor Log Exchange (NPLEx).
The goal is to generate a stop-sale alert to prevent individuals convicted of possessing, dealing or manufacturing methamphetamine from purchasing ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. NPLEx is a real-time electronic logging system used by pharmacies and law enforcement to track sales of these over-the-counter cold and allergy medications.
Trial Court Technology (TCT) staff of the Office of Judicial Administration worked to meet the effective date of the new legislation – July 1, 2016.
Source of the data
Progress continues toward the implementation of the statewide court case management system, Odyssey. It is not yet feasible to send conviction data from Odyssey to NPLEx, since it does not contain felony convictions for the entire state.
However, there is another application that allows for the reporting of this information. TCT developed, in partnership with the Department of Correction, the Abstract of Judgment application in INcite (Indiana Courts Information Technology Extranet).
Since July 1, 2012, under state statute and Supreme Court Rule, courts must complete for every felony conviction an electronic Abstract of Judgment in INcite. Utilizing this technology, TCT can report to NPLEx data on methamphetamine-related felony convictions for the entire state as required by the new law.
Steps to Comply
TCT worked first to identify the drug offense statutes reportable to NPLEx. Of more than 7,300 Indiana offenses available in the Abstract’s code table, 111 were identified and flagged as appropriate to report to NPLEx.
In addition to the offense codes, TCT also sends certain defendant identifiers, including name, date of birth, driver’s license number, state personal identification number, or other unique number, and date of conviction. After working on a few test files, on July 1, 2016, TCT sent to NPLEx the first complete conviction file. A new file is sent daily at 6 a.m.
Early Results
In July and August 2016, TCT sent information to NPLEx on 4,062 individuals, and another 126 individuals in September. NPLEx identified in August twenty-four individuals who attempted to purchase ephedrine or pseudoephedrine on thirty-seven different visits to a pharmacy. In September, twenty-two individuals attempted to make a purchase on thirty-three different visits.