Black Creek Integrated Systems
11/10/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 11/10/2026 06:51
2026 | Case Study: Winnebago County Sheriff's Office
A new jail management system and rounds-tracking software bring greater efficiency and accountability to an Illinois county.
Background
The Winnebago County Sheriff's Office serves a 519-square-mile area that includes the county seat of Rockford, Illinois, and about 284,000 residents across cities, towns, and farmland. The county's jail has a capacity of just over 1,200 detainees, with an average daily population of around 900. The facility employs nearly 400 full-time staff; another 43 staff work part-time at Winnebago County Jail.
Primary Outcomes
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The Challenge
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The Winnebago County Sheriff's Office knew they were at a crossroads. The software their corrections officers were using to manage the jail had reached end-of-life. "There were no upgrades, so if it went down, we were done" recalls Corrections Administrative Lieutenant Chad Bounds, a 28-year veteran of the department. What's more, the existing rounds-tracking software couldn't manage critical tasks. "If a supervisor wanted to check to see if officers were doing their rounds or if they were doing them on time, the old system was very hard to get into," continues Lt. Bounds. And when the jail experienced an in-custody death, it meant pulling multiple reports and sifting through what might be 15 pages to find information about when the detainee had last been seen by an officer on rounds. The numerous steps required to accomplish common tasks were clearly affecting efficiency and wasting staff time. "We wanted to utilize our JMS for multiple things instead of using multiple different programs for each thing," Lt. Bounds says, adding that processing incident reports was an especially big drain on resources. "We would have to do the report, print it out, scan it, and attach it to the inmate's record." |
Corrections Administrative Lieutenant Chad Bounds, Winnebago County Sheriff's Office |
The Solution
When Winnebago County issued an RFP for new software, their aim was to find a jail management system (JMS) to manage inmate data as well as a solution that would ensure consistency and accountability for correctional wellness checks.
The Sheriff's Office chose Black Creek Integrated Systems Corp. to implement its SallyPort© Jail Management System, a browser-based JMS designed specifically for local and county jails.
Winnebago County also purchased WatchTour Manager®, a guard tour system that integrates fully with SallyPort and ensures compliance with each jail's tour requirements, capturing images and videos, documenting notes, and enabling alerts via secure mobile devices. Supervisors receive real-time notifications for missed or late tours, as well as full tracking and analytics by officer, unit, alert type, and date.
"This was a project that affected not just the jail but every agency throughout the county, including the court system and the juvenile department," notes Lt. Bounds. Hundreds of key stakeholders and ancillary staff who'd touch the new system also needed to be trained. "It was probably close to a thousand [staff]," he recalls. "I would take people in specialized units and go through the modules specific to them. Black Creek gave us access to SallyPort prior to our going live, so I would assign staff things to do every day, like housing inspections."
In August 2025, Winnebago County went live with both solutions after configuring SallyPort to meet Illinois-specific requirements. Lt. Bounds says the complexity of implementing these new systems is significant. At one point, he and his colleagues on the new JMS project were asked to visit neighboring counties to check out those counties' JMS and learn about their implementation process. One county, remembers Lt. Bounds, was envious that Winnebago County was implementing Black Creek's JMS.
The Results
While the Winnebago County Sheriff's Office hasn't tracked specific metrics showing the impact of their new JMS and guard tour system, there are already clear indicators of success:
Improved organization and time savings: "I believe everything's become more efficient with SallyPort. We're saving time and we're able to put more information in one area instead of trying to find it in different programs," explains Lt. Bounds. "There's no more jumping from one program to another and asking, 'what's my password for this?' It was always the struggle of not being able to find things easily. The ease of documenting and finding things has been huge with SallyPort."
Easier-to-process reports: How the JMS handles reporting has been an especially big win. "All the officers have raved about the incident reports because essentially we went from a report-writing system that was over-detailed; it was like a police report… We say our new reports are like a glorified log; they get to the point," Lt. Bounds adds. "These reports and the disciplinary hearing reports are now automatically attached to the inmate's record instead of taking a PDF that we fill out, then scan, and put in the file. It has streamlined some of these jobs significantly. It just saves the staff so much time, and they'll tell you that." Inspection reports, too, are easier to create and manage using SallyPort.
More accountable, efficient rounds tracking: The Watch Tour Manager has also made life simpler. "The rounds-tracking works perfectly, but it isn't just the rounds," he says. "It's the fact that you can actually do logs on an inmate through the rounds tracker and you can move an inmate from a pod to another location using the Watch Tour application. So the officer can be out and away from their desk more often and not have to sit at their desk and do a log. They can do a quick log on an inmate while they're walking around." And when an in-custody death does happen, the software enables leaders to immediately pull the rounds for that inmate (rather than for the entire housing unit) and produce a simple report for a 24-hour period that makes clear if and when a round was conducted on that individual.
Positive feedback from correctional officers: "I would say 90% of staff think that not only is Black Creek's software better than what we had before, but it's pretty user-friendly, too," says Lt. Bounds.
Next Up: Inmate and Officer Well-Being
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Winnebago County may not be done adding Black Creek products to its lineup. The Sheriff's Office will soon need to replace another older product: its officer duress system. "It's been end-of-life for 10 years," says Lt. Bounds, "and I personally want to work with Black Creek because I know their Sentry Suite products are going to interface with SallyPort and Watch Tour Manager." Like many correctional facilities, the county would also like to lower the number of in-custody deaths. Says Lt. Bounds, "I'm very interested in their inmate wellness product," called Sentry Care, a detainee well-being monitoring system that uses personal wrist-worn devices to monitor real-time heart rate and customizable alarms for at-risk populations who are elderly, detoxing, pregnant or experiencing another health condition. |
Sentry Care Detainee Well-Being Tag & Sentry Staff Officer Duress Tag |
Black Creek Integrated Systems published this content on November 10, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on November 10, 2026 at 12:51 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]