Officers now complete pre-sentence investigations in under 8 hours instead of 40, with adult and juvenile reports running on one platform.
Observed January 1 – Sept 28, 2026 †
Staff hours returned
Equivalent to approximately 111 forty-hour work weeks.
Faster than baseline
Across measured DocAssist report workflows.
Average time saved per report
Compared with each report type's pre-Cognisen baseline.
Drafts generated
Across 573 reports, refined by officers before approval.
(†): Figures are from Cognisen's DocAssist usage dashboard and include reports in progress. Baselines were provided by the agency.
At a Glance
About The Agency
Stanislaus County Probation serves adults and youth across one of California's Central Valley counties. Its officers prepare the reports courts and partners rely on, from presentence investigations to juvenile intake.
Like most departments, its officers balance heavy caseloads, court deadlines and time in the field. Report writing was taking a growing share of that time.
The Challenge
A week of work behind every PSI.
Before DocAssist, a pre-sentence investigation took about 40 hours to complete. Letters and terms took about 16 hours. A juvenile intake report took about 6 hours, and the department writes hundreds of them each year.
Those hours came out of the same week as field contacts, court dates and case planning. And the workload sat across both adult and juvenile units, not with one team.
Pull question: How could they give officers back the time a PSI takes, without handing the judgment in that report to software?
The Solution
One platform for adult and juvenile reports.
Stanislaus brought eight report types into DocAssist, each shaped around the department's own report formats. Juvenile intake and transfer packets drove the volume. PSIs carried the largest time cost per report.
Workflow steps:
1. Case information — The officer brings together the case material the report needs.
2. DocAssist-supported draft — DocAssist prepares a structured draft in the agency's format.
3. Officer review — The officer edits, refines and adds professional judgment.
4. Final report — The approved report moves through the department's existing process.
Officers stay responsible for review, refinement and approval of every report. Cognisen supports the department after launch.
Agency Results With DocAssist
63% Less Time Spent Writing Reports
Over 4,400 Staff Hours Returned
Pre-Sentence Investigations
32 Hours Returned Per PSI
The average PSI fell from a 40-hour baseline to 7h 57m, an 80% reduction. That adds up to more than 1,800 hours returned on PSIs alone.
Juvenile Intake
From 6 Hours to Under 3.5.
Juvenile intake is the department's highest-volume report, with 390 written so far this year. Average time fell from 6 hours to 3h 26m, returning more than 1,000 staff hours.
More Than Faster Reports
Returning Time to Stanislaus Officers, for the People They Serve.
A PSI that takes one day instead of five changes an officer's week. Time spent drafting goes back to the work that needs a person:
Field contacts and home visits
Court preparation
Case planning with youth and families
Client interactions
Meeting report deadlines with less overtime
Two principles of how DocAssist helped improve Stanislaus County report writing workflows:
We kept officers in control.
DocAssist prepares the draft. Officers review, edit and approve every report, and the professional judgment in it stays theirs.
We built for adult and juvenile units.
Eight report types run on one platform across the department, from high-volume intake to complex investigations.
Conclusion: Looking Ahead
In its first eight months of 2026, Stanislaus County Probation wrote 972 reports with DocAssist and returned more than 4,400 hours to staff. PSIs that once took a week now take about a day, and officers keep full ownership of every report.