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Audit of the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

An overview of the purpose and process of auditing the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office.

Table of Contents

Overview

In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor (OSA) has conducted a performance audit of certain activities of the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office (PCDA) for the period January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017.

We conducted this performance audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Below is a list of our audit objectives, indicating each question we intended our audit to answer; the conclusion we reached regarding each objective; and, if applicable, where each objective is discussed in the audit findings.

Objective

Conclusion

  1. Does PCDA ensure that all program requirements are fulfilled and documented for participants who have successfully completed its Diversion Program?

Yes

  1. Does PCDA measure the performance of its Diversion Program?

No; see Finding 1

  1. Does PCDA’s Victim Assistance Program provide assistance throughout the court process to victims and witnesses of crimes as required by Section 5 of Chapter 258B of the General Laws?

Yes

To achieve our objectives, we gained an understanding of PCDA’s internal control environment related to our audit objectives by reviewing applicable laws, regulations, and agency policies and procedures, as well as conducting inquiries with PCDA’s staff and management.

Audit Constraints

Section 7.11 of Chapter 7 of the US Government Accountability Office’s Government Auditing Standards states,

Auditors should . . . report any significant constraints imposed on the audit approach by information limitations or scope impairments, including denials or excessive delays of access to certain records or individuals.

During our audit, PCDA imposed significant constraints on the audit process because the office was concerned about the confidentiality of information related to participants in its Diversion and Victim Assistance Programs. Specifically, PCDA did not give OSA access to specific information regarding program participants that OSA needed to conduct its audit testing in a timely manner. In some cases, PCDA took more than five months to provide requested information. Although OSA was eventually able to complete the audit work that was necessary to meet the audit objectives, these constraints significantly delayed the completion of the audit.

The constraints were as follows:

  • PCDA officials initially refused to give us access to the Diversion Program and Victim Assistance Program case files because of confidentiality concerns. In September 2017, the OSA Legal Department drafted a confidentiality agreement to resolve PCDA’s concerns. However, PCDA never signed this agreement and did not provide the requested documents until March 2018.
  • PCDA provided a list of Diversion Program case files from its case management system, the District Attorney Management Information Office Network (DAMION), that did not include names and docket numbers. Therefore, we could not trace names and docket numbers from the provided list to the hardcopy Diversion Program case files to verify that the audit population was complete and accurate. Our inability to verify the population as complete and accurate decreases the reliance we can place on the evidence obtained.

Methodology

We performed the following procedures to address our audit objectives:

  • We reviewed a nonstatistical, random sample of 28 out of 301 Diversion Program case files disposed of during the audit period to determine whether contracts were signed by the program participants, their parents or guardians if the participants were juveniles, and the Assistant District Attorney, as well as whether there was evidence that the specific conditions required by the signed contracts had been met for participants who successfully completed all program requirements (e.g., performing community service, writing an essay, or completing an online education program). However, the information in the case files we reviewed was redacted.
  • We asked PCDA officials about the process of tracking or measuring the performance of the Diversion Program. PCDA officials told us that the office does not track participants after they complete the program to measure the program’s performance; the decision to divert a juvenile or young adult is part of the everyday business of the district and juvenile courts and is considered a type of disposition similar to the decision to bring the case forward for sentencing.
  • For the Victim Assistance Program, we selected a statistical, random sample using a 95% confidence level and a tolerable error rate of 5%. We sampled 60 out of 4,513 cases that were active during the audit period involving charges for crimes related to Chapters 265 and 266 of the General Laws to obtain cases that involved a victim and/or witness. We reviewed the source documents in these files as the director and assistant director of Victim Services explained how PCDA offered victims and witnesses of crimes the rights and services governed by Section 5 of Chapter 258B of the General Laws.

Whenever we applied a nonstatistical approach, we were not able to, and therefore did not, project our results to the entire population.

For the lists of criminal cases for the Diversion and Victim Assistance Programs that PCDA gave us from DAMION, we were only able to perform limited procedures, such as reviewing information technology policies and testing selected system user access controls, to assess the reliability of the data obtained. We were not allowed to see the names of the Diversion and Victim Assistance Program participants to select a sample of case files from the file cabinet and trace the files back to the lists. Additionally, for the Diversion Program, we were only allowed to see redacted case files rather than original source documents. For the Victim Assistance Program, the director and assistant director of Victim Services reviewed and read us excerpts from the victim/witness advocate notes in the case files that pertained to our third audit objective.

Date published: October 11, 2018

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