RFP 6221 - Ventura County Jail Commissary System

Project Description: 1.1 Introduction/Purpose
The County of Ventura (hereinafter referred to as County) invites your organization to submit a written proposal for the procurement of a Jail Management System (JMS) to replace the Sheriff’s Inmate Management System (IMS). Proposals shall be due no later than 3:00 p.m. on June 13, 2025 for the furnishings of a jail management system in accordance with the attached Terms and Conditions, Instructions to Offerors which by this reference are made a part hereof.
The County of Ventura (County) Sheriff’s Department (VCSO) is presently utilizing a legacy commissary system, as a part of the Inmate Management System (IMS) in its Ventura County Integrated Justice Information System (VCIJIS), which is a 25-year-old thick client PowerBuilder based system developed “in-house”. VCSO desires a new Commissary system which shall be a web-based solution to provide the core business functions to manage all aspects related to commissary for the county jails such as ordering and receiving commissary items; managing inventory and vendors; receiving, processing, filling, and shipping inmates orders; charging for issued items to appropriate inmate accounts; accounting for all receipts, issue and return of items etc. This request pertains solely to the commissary system and its functionality, excluding commissary services. Additionally, this system shall interface with a chosen vended Jail Management System (JMS) and its Money Module, along with a migrated VCIJIS system (modernized from PowerBuilder to a .NET, Angular front end with a SQL Server backend) that supports various other county functionalities via an Azure based Integration platform. Vendors of interest are those capable of delivering, installing, and migrating currently active data into a Commissary system and providing ongoing support as part of a maintenance agreement. The solution could be on-premises or Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) compliant cloud-based (aka software as a service).
Offerors shall be skilled and regularly engaged in the general class or type of work called for in the solicitation documents.
1.2 Background
Ventura County covers 1,882 square miles, stretching from beaches to rugged mountains. Over 850,000 people choose to call Ventura County home. Five of the county’s ten incorporated cities (Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Moorpark, Fillmore, and Ojai) contract with the Sheriff’s Office to provide police services. These cities, plus the unincorporated areas of the county, make up nearly half of the county’s population and ninety-five percent of its land area.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office is staffed by approximately 1,250 personnel, including allocations for more than 750 sworn positions. Ventura County has 1,649 cells with an average daily population of 513 inmates with a total of 1,656 jail population. VCSO processes approximately 23,000 bookings annually.
These inmates are housed among VCSO’s three different jail facilities located throughout the County. Our Main Jail is located at the government center in Ventura, our Todd Road Jail facility is in the unincorporated area west of the city of Santa Paula, and our East Valley Jail is in Thousand Oaks. While in custody, the Sheriff’s Office provides a wide array of quality services including medical, mental health, food, counseling, recreation, religious, education and job training services.
VCSO is led by the Sheriff, who is an elected official that has the responsibility of being the chief law enforcement officer of the County. The Sheriff enforces federal, state, and local laws in the unincorporated areas and contract cities within the County. Moreover, the Sheriff provides services for traffic, general law enforcement. The Sheriff is responsible for operating and maintaining the County jail system inclusive of inmate transportation services within the County, provides the bailiffs and security officers to the courts, and serves civil and criminal processes as dictated by the courts.
1.3 VCIJIS Overview
The five criminal justice agencies in Ventura County are currently served by a shared system referred to as the Ventura County Integrated Justice Information System (VCIJIS 1.0). This internally developed legacy application, which has been in operation for 25 years, consists of a PowerBuilder-based front end and a Sybase back end.
VCIJIS 1.0 serves as a shared, fully integrated platform that enables real-time data exchange across all five Ventura County Criminal Justice Agencies, including the Ventura County Sheriff, Ventura County Public Defender, Ventura County District Attorney, California Superior Court (Ventura), and Ventura County Probation Agency.
The data exchanges within VCIJIS 1.0 primarily utilize real-time Sybase replication processes, which facilitate seamless collaboration among the five Ventura County criminal justice agencies for day-to-day operations. Furthermore, inter-agency event-driven communication is made possible through a real-time messaging queue that supports critical functions such as receipt of court orders in managing inmates and court dockets.
1.4 Current State Commissary
The existing commissary system utilized by Sheriff is a part of the “Inmate Management System (IMS)” which is a component of VCIJIS 1.0. Apart from commissary, the IMS includes core functionalities such as pre-booking / booking, inmate risk assessment & classification, housing management, clothing & laundry management, health, and food services etc.
Commissary module within the IMS comprises of Orders and Supervisor main menus. Functionality related to inmates’ orders (receive, process, fill, ship etc.), commissary items (issue, return, etc.), medical, diet and disciplinary restrictions for inmates, charging for issued items to appropriate inmates’ accounts, correct accounting of issued/returned items etc. are available in the Orders menu. Supervisor menu provides functionality related to vendor management, purchase orders, invoice management, inventory adjustments, and credit memos etc.
The IMS provides real-time data exchanges within the criminal justice agency suite of applications which serve as a core principle of Sheriff inmate management. However, the system relies heavily on paper-based manual processes and has been extensively customized over time. This customization hinders the Sheriff staff's ability to standardize daily operations efficiently. Additionally, the current system lacks sufficient and customizable reporting functionalities, making it challenging to expose and organize pertinent and consistent data. Furthermore, the system is built on a legacy development environment that is no longer supported, posing sustainability risks for the County. This creates challenges in sourcing resources to support these technologies and limits opportunities to leverage technological innovations.
The county has identified a preferred vendor for a commercially available Jail Management System (JMS), which is currently progressing through the RFP process. This is part of its larger justice agency modernization project, known as VCIJIS 2.0, which aims to modernize the entire suite of application systems within the VCIJIS 1.0 platform. In addition to replacing the Sheriff’s Inmate Management System with the new Jail Management System, this VCIJIS 1.0 Project includes replacing the Sheriff’s Records Management System with Versaterm’s Records Management System and the modernization of VCIJIS 1.0 solutions by transitioning from the PowerBuilder framework to a .NET and Angular front-end architecture, along with a SQL Server back end, and standardizing data exchanges via a custom-built integration platform.
Additionally, VCIJIS 2.0 includes the creation of a data warehouse for reporting purposes, the maintenance of a Central Person Registry Index, and other enhancements to replace the existing VCIJIS 1.0 platform.
1.5 Future State Commissary
In alignment with County’s modernization efforts, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office intends to significantly decrease dependence on paper files, streamline data entry processes, facilitate internal process workflows, support efficient facility operations and management, flexibly integrate with external vendors and service providers, leverage analytics for continuous improvement in administration and resource utilization, and enhance the efficiency of data and information sharing among other criminal justice agencies. The chosen solution should be capable of meeting the following objectives:
To adapt to evolving state, federal, and legislative requirements concerning the administration and care of the jail’s inmate populations.
To have the flexibility to seamlessly integrate in real-time with all current and future state VCIJIS suite of applications which are currently used by the Probation Agency, District Attorney’s Office, Office of the Public Defender and Superior Court of California, Ventura County.
To meet the standards of the Department of Justice (DOJ), especially the governing and security requirements of a government cloud solution if the proposed solution is hosted in cloud.
To provide optimal functionality through out-of-the-box features requiring minimal amount of configuration and customization.
To provide ongoing support and maintenance engagement for system support, enhancement, and issue resolution. This includes an escalation agreement, service level agreement and model that supports the availability standards of the County. System support must be available 24/7 suitable for the perpetual nature of jail facility operations.
To provide data migration services and support to enable data mapping to the future system.
1.6 Action Dates
The following is an outline of the anticipated schedule for the proposal review and contract award.
Issue Request for Proposal (RFP) May 2, 2025
Last day for questions June 6, 2025
Proposals Due June 13, 2025
Evaluation-award August 11 2025
Start Work October 2025
1.7 Questions Regarding RFP
All questions concerning this Proposal should be submitted online under the “Messages” tab. All other questions may be directed to Rory Aronsky, Principal Buyer, at (805) 477-7111, email: rory.aronsky@ventura.org.
County shall not be obligated to accept the lowest priced proposal. An award, if made, will be in the best interests of the County after all factors have been evaluated.
While County intends to enter a contract for these services, it will not be bound to do so. County reserves the right to reject any or all proposals. County shall be the sole judge of the offers hereunder.
Deadline for questions or clarifications concerning this RFP is June 6, 2025 at 5:00 p.m.