NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An independent study commissioned by the city to scrutinize its embattled criminal justice system found “highly fragmented” and low-tech coordination among the dozen agencies.

The report says Criminal District Court was severely hampered by Hurricane Katrina, which closed the court building and displaced defendants, witnesses and victims.

“In a world of Microsoft Outlook, the New Orleans criminal justice system is functioning in a bygone era,” the report notes of the court system’s reliance on hard-copy calendars and handwritten summonses.

The antiquated organization, the report says, creates poor communication between agencies and bogs down the entire system.

The report is the first of two commissioned in March at a total cost of $90,000.

PFM Group of Philadelphia tallied the system’s annual budget at around $300 million, collected from local, state and federal budgets, along with grants and fines and fees from traffic tickets and defendants.

The city spent $181.3 million in 2010 on criminal justice, 71 percent of which went to police. In addition, the state spends an estimated additional $75 million on city crime through “the disproportionate number of state prisoners, probationers and parolees who come from New Orleans.”

PFM found the system is plagued by inconsistent data collection and analysis.

It took the Police Department months to revamp accountability procedures because of lack of access to data, arrest tracking systems don’t account for court disposition and Criminal District Court could not provide information on case disposition times because “such data does not exist in an easily obtainable way.”

The report said the sheriff couldn’t provide timely information on inmates and the coroner tracks thousands of annual psychiatric evaluations only on paper.

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Information from: The Times-Picayune, http://www.nola.com