Discover Violation, Evidence, and Testimony Objects

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Explain how regulatory enforcement objects work.
  
• Summarize the importance of maintaining a reliable chain of custody for case proceeding evidence.
  
• Describe the objects for tracking evidence.
  

Enforcement and Evidence in Investigative Cases

The goal of investigative cases is to enforce laws and regulations. Compliance officers, inspectors, auditors, police, and other investigators play a key role in collecting facts and evidence to identify potential violations. Depending on the case and the responsibility of the department, their tasks can include interviewing witnesses, surveilling suspects, analyzing documents, or testing DNA samples in a laboratory.

Regulatory officers and law enforcement use evidence to establish the facts of a case, corroborate testimonies, identify perpetrators, and establish an incident timeline. In court, prosecutors and defendants use evidence as the foundation of their arguments in proving guilt or innocence.

Visit and Violation Objects

As part of an investigative case, agencies perform visits to respond to public complaints about an organization or individual. In Public Sector Solutions, the visit record stores information about the investigator’s findings, including collected evidence and witness testimonies. With Investigative Case Management, additional tools come in handy for investigators.

Use interaction summaries to record notes during conversations with witnesses or stakeholders. Additionally, set up dynamic assessments to guide investigators as they conduct a visit or perform other investigative tasks, such as risk analysis. To learn more about the tools, check out the Resources at the end of the unit.

During the visit or while analyzing the evidence and testimonies, the assessor can determine that a business or individual is noncompliant or operating illegally. If this happens, the investigator can create a regulatory code violation during the site visit to record an infraction. Moreover, a court might create the violation as a result of a trial.

For example, Carmen assigns regulatory inspectors to the case and creates a visit so that they can check for criminal activity at Stealthy Financial Services. During the visit, the inspectors comb through documents and interview employees to retrieve statements. All of this is valuable evidence.

This diagram shows how visit and regulatory code violations fit into the data model.

Review this table to learn more about regulatory enforcement objects.

To learn about regulatory code violations and other regulatory framework objects in Public Sector Solutions, see the Explore License and Permit Management in Public Sector Solutions trail.

Excited to find out what the investigators found at Stealthy Financial Services? So is Carmen!

Evidence Objects

The integrity of the legal process hinges on the safe handling and close tracking of evidence. Any mishandling, tampering, or loss of evidence can compromise a case, damage agency credibility, or, worst of all, lead to mistrials, wrongful convictions, or guilty parties walking free. For this reason, investigators package, label, and securely store physical evidence to adhere to strict audit requirements and to avoid contamination or tampering. It's now common for agencies to encrypt and password-protect digital evidence to prevent unauthorized access. Moreover, when transferring evidence, agencies must use strict protocols to track its whereabouts.

Unfortunately, many agencies still use paper documents and legacy systems, which are prone to errors and do little to prevent incomplete documentation or unauthorized access. That’s why Investigative Case Management uses objects specifically designed to efficiently manage the chain of custody and protect the integrity of case evidence.

In Investigative Case Management, you track each piece of physical or digital evidence that investigators collect during a case as a custody item. ‌Here’s the Custody Items tab of a case record, which shows all the collected evidence related to the case.

Use a guided flow in Investigative Case Management to quickly capture custody items and ensure consistency and accuracy. For each custody item, you record a collection date, an identifier to align with an external record-keeping system, the type of evidence, and the status. You can also add attachments, such as photos or documents, and use an interaction summary to track correspondence about the item.

Monitor the chain of custody for a piece of evidence as it proceeds through each phase of a case with custody chain entry records. In each entry, record the custody item, custodian, and duration of custody, and set a location or address to track the physical whereabouts of the evidence.

You can associate a piece of evidence with one or more cases or case proceedings by using the custody item relation junction object. Also, relate a custody item to one or more regulatory code violations with the custody item regulatory code violation junction object.

During the visit at the Stealthy Financial Services office, the investigators discover physical documents and emails that implicate Leonard, one of the executives, of falsifying records and bribing a potential client. In the system, the investigators create a custody item to record details about each incriminating document. They also create the initial custody chain entry to show that they’ve stored the physical and electronic documents at the City of Cosville evidence storage facility. Carmen creates a custody item relation to associate each custody item with the overall case.

This diagram shows the regulatory enforcement and evidence objects and their relationship to other objects in the data model.

Notice that the regulatory code violation connects to several objects, including public complaint, visit, and custody item.

This table shows each evidence object, the relationships between the objects, and some examples from our corporate fraud case.

After reviewing the evidence, the Cosville District Attorney files charges against Leonard, and in response, Leonard hires a lawyer. This means that it’s just about time for Carmen to schedule some case proceedings.

In the next unit, you learn about the case proceedings objects for resolving a case and delivering justice.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Evidence Management for Investigative Cases
• Trailhead: Inspections with Public Sector Solutions
• Trailhead: Dynamic Assessments with Public Sector Solutions
• Salesforce Help: Configure and Use Interaction Summaries in Public Sector Solutions