Case Study
Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, SD
How a complex, multi-division sheriff’s office in South Dakota used Public Safety Suite Pro to replace rigid legacy software, go paperless, and connect every operation in one place.
About Pennington County, SD
Located in the Black Hills of western South Dakota, Pennington County is home to Mount Rushmore. Its sheriff’s office serves a diverse population with a mandate that goes well beyond traditional law enforcement.
The agency manages an adult detention facility with a capacity of 600 to 700 inmates, a juvenile detention center, a detox and treatment facility, a warrants division, a civil division, investigations, patrol, and a 24/7 sobriety monitoring program. That’s a lot of moving parts, and the work extends across multiple substations throughout the county.
At that scale and complexity, software needs to be reliable, flexible, and built to keep up. Since 2013, Pennington County Sheriff’s Office has relied on CentralSquare’s Public Safety Suite Pro to keep every division connected and running.
"It's all-in-one—meaning our dispatch, fire department, police department, sheriff's office, and jail. Every piece is in CentralSquare. That means a lot to agencies."
Rhonda Bohn, Computer Tech
Pennington County Sheriff, SD
The Problem
“I didn’t know [customization] was possible…but once you see it, you realize how much of a game changer it would be.”
— Rhonda Bohn, Computer Tech, Pennington County Sheriff’s Office
Before CentralSquare, Pennington County Sheriff’s Office ran on New World. It worked, but only up to a point. Staff could enter charges and access a handful of built-in features, but the platform offered little room for customization. Forms couldn’t be added. Processes that lived on spreadsheets stayed on spreadsheets. What you saw was what you got.
One of the biggest pain points was paper. Pennington wanted to go paperless, knowing it would improve accuracy, reduce the risk of lost documents, and streamline operations across divisions. But with their old system, it simply wasn’t possible.
The office also needed a platform that could serve every division without requiring separate systems or clunky interfaces between them. Jail, dispatch, warrants, civil, and patrol each needed to operate within the same environment—without workarounds.
Room to Customize
A platform flexible enough to replace rigid, out-of-the-box software
Fully Paperless
A way to go fully paperless and eliminate manual, document-heavy processes
One Connected Platform
A single, unified system that could serve every division without silos or workarounds
The Solution
In 2013, Pennington selected CentralSquare’s Public Safety Suite Pro™ after an extensive evaluation process. They toured sites across South Dakota and traveled to Lafourche Parish, Louisiana to see the platform in action. By the end of the assessment, they realized that CentralSquare checked every box.
The most immediate win was going paperless. What had been impossible with New World became a reality with Pro Suite. Documents that once required physical paperwork now live in the system, so nothing gets lost and everything is a click away.
Custom modules took it a step further. Anything previously tracked on an Excel spreadsheet could be built into the software instead. Processes that had always existed outside the system were finally brought into the platform, consolidating operations and reducing the risk of data falling through the cracks.
Perhaps most importantly, every division now operates on one platform. Dispatch, fire, police, sheriff’s office, and jail are all connected. That means mission-critical information is shared across divisions seamlessly, without having to navigate disjointed systems or interfaces.
Beyond the core platform, Pennington County has built public-facing tools on top of CentralSquare’s interface, including an inmate website and a portal for purchasing mug shots. Multi-factor authentication has also been implemented for CJIS compliance, which is a critical requirement for any agency handling criminal justice information.
For Pennington, responsive support has been instrumental in the partnership with CentralSquare. The AI chatbot now resolves many issues without requiring a live agent, saving time on both sides. Pennington County has also served as a reference site for neighboring agencies considering CentralSquare—hosting demos and sharing its firsthand experience with the platform.
The Results
“Everything to me is about reliability, and [CentralSquare] checks that box. It has super customization, which every other demo we did in the past did not have.”
— Rhonda Bohn, Computer Tech
The impact of Public Safety Suite Pro is felt across every division at Pennington County Sheriff’s Office. Going paperless was just the beginning. Today, staff across jail, dispatch, warrants, civil, and patrol work from a single, connected platform. Operations are more cohesive, information is easier to access, and the inefficiencies of the old system are a distant memory.
Reliability has been a defining characteristic of the platform. In over a decade of use, the system has only gone down twice, once due to an unrelated server failure. Not only that, upgrades roll out cleanly, support tickets are rare, and staff can focus on the work that matters rather than troubleshooting software issues. That dependability matters for agencies that operate 24/7.
Looking ahead, Pennington County is excited about Centerline AI®—especially its potential to transcribe body cam footage and support jail-side operations. For an agency doing more with less, the ability to automate time-consuming documentation could be transformative.
Public safety agencies managing complex, multi-division operations on lean budgets need software that’s reliable and customizable to their workflows. Schedule a conversation to learn how CentralSquare’s Pro Suite delivers both.
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