Mark Cunning is a wily one.

He managed to go 16 years without paying a cent on a $24,000 restitution order for a 1986 burglary before the long arm of Butler County law reached out and touched him where he was making a new life in Georgia.

It was August 2003 when he emptied his pockets and paid $4,000 into the restitution fund for Gertrude and Donald "William" Kelly. As for the balance, Cunning was put on a $50-a-month payment plan.

If he was 30 days late, he'd get a reminder in the mail from Butler County Clerk of Courts Lisa Lotz. At 60 days, he'd receive a warning. At 90 days, he'd be ordered to appear before a judge, or a bench warrant for his arrest would be issued.

The checks came.

For the Kellys' daughter, Lenna Calairi, of Butler, it was a salve to know Cunning was finally being forced to pay toward the Sept. 18, 1986, burglary of her parents' home in Connoquenessing Township.

Then, in February, the payments suddenly stopped.

Calairi learned that Butler County's computerized system for monitoring restitution payments had gone the way of the stagecoach when the county was put on a new, statewide, judicial computer system that month.

Not only were restitution checks to crime victims slower in being issued due to computer crashes and more complicated steps for data entry, Lotz no longer had a convenient way to know whether payments were delinquent or by how much they were late. That meant that those on probation and parole no longer would get reminders and warnings from the county. The hammer of justice no longer hung over their heads.

It didn't take long for restitution checks to begin languishing.

Butler County District Attorney Tim McCune said at least a dozen calls have been made to his crime victim advocate, and Lotz said her staff has been fielding complaints as well. They don't know exactly how many restitution payments are late, but both expect the problem to get worse before it gets better.

"It's not taking these guys long to figure out that no one is watching anymore,'' McCune said.

As Calairi put it, she feels "like I'm being victimized all over again.''

Lotz said it's been nothing short of a nightmare.

"We know what effect this is having on people, but we can only do so much,'' she said, noting that staff has been working overtime just trying to keep pace with the day-to-day work associated with the new computer system.

Because restitution is usually a condition of probation and parole, the responsibility for enforcing restitution payments falls under the adult probation office in most counties.

But in Butler County, the responsibility ended up in Lotz' lap after her office bought computer software in 1997 that could automatically generate delinquency notifications every 30 days.

"I never really wanted that job, but it ended up with me and we gave it our all,'' Lotz said.

It was a success. Collection of court costs, fines and restitution immediately climbed by 50 percent to $1.5 million. For 2003, the figure was $2.6 million. Lotz expects the number to be significantly lower for 2004 because of the computer problems.

"Even though, by statute, it shouldn't have been the responsibility of her office, she did a great job with it and victims were getting their money,'' McCune said.

All that changed when Butler County became the 10th county in the state to start using the state Common Pleas Case Management System. Ordered by Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the first two pilot counties -- Westmoreland and Cumberland -- began using the system in December 2003. The rest were to be slowly but steadily added.

As more and more data was pumped into the system from more and more counties, more flaws in the software were discovered and more crashes ensued.

Things got so bad that the state stopped adding counties after 20 were using the system, just before Erie County was to be added.

"Believe me when I tell you that we were not disappointed,'' said Erie County Clerk of Courts Bob Catalde. "I've heard nothing good about this new system."

Catalde said he has met with county officials and has sent "heads-up" letters to each member of the bar association in the county as well as everyone associated with the court system to warn that things probably won't be the same under the new system.

"We will be behind in things, we're certain of that. [The state is] jamming this down our throats,'' Cataldi said. A news release in March from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, an arm of the state Supreme Court, acknowledged "performance issues" and an "unacceptable decline in system performance." Amy J. Ceraso, director of judicial automation, said state staff would focus on helping counties with their "specific hardships" as well as on systemwide problems while they delayed for a year full implementation of the new system to the remaining 47 counties.

The counties currently on the system are Armstrong, Beaver, Bedford, Butler, Cambria, Cameron, Clarion, Crawford, Cumberland, Elk, Fayette, Forest, Greene, Indiana, Jefferson, Lawrence, McKean, Venango, Warren and Westmoreland.

Cataldi is hoping the administrative office will make good on promises to use the delay to clear up problems. But one that is not likely to be handled by the office staff, at least not entirely, involves old restitution payment plans.

Tom Darr, deputy state court administrator, said data from the payment plans wasn't transferred electronically from the start because specific problems related to the plans were discovered during the transfer of the data in the pilot counties.

"We can't ameliorate the problem entirely,'' said Tom Darr, deputy state court administrator. "We can't be put on the hook to compensate for [clerk of courts] offices that were perhaps understaffed before [the state system was implemented]."

He said his office would do all it could, however. A state staffer spent a week in Lotz's office recently, entering by hand 150 outstanding payment plans, and other staffers have been working remotely to do more as they can. Of 7,000 outstanding payment plans, representing $15 million in uncollected fines, costs and restitution payments, staff have keyed in 2,200 payment plans over 30 days for Lotz's office.

Brenda Wright, supervisor of the bookkeeping department in the Westmoreland County Clerk of Courts office, said that although the county's payment plans were transferred to the new system, she expects to have to re-enter them by hand because that information may have been corrupted during the transfer process.

"I think it's going to take a long, long time, but I'll just start with the A's and go from there,'' Wright said. And she hasn't entered information from any new cases into the new system since the county started using it because of concern about all the "bugs."

She hopes the effect on Westmoreland County crime victims is minimal because, like most other counties, Westmoreland's probation officers routinely monitor their probation and parole clients to be sure that restitution payments are being made.

"For most [of the counties], the biggest headache will be for the staff who have to do the extra work,'' Wright said.

Lotz said she is particularly dismayed because the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts staff had assured her until just days before the new system was implemented that the old payment plans would be transferred. "I was worried about this very thing happening and it happened,'' she said.

Court officials are proposing that Butler County probation officers begin monitoring all new clients for compliance with the restitution orders.

Meanwhile, Lotz said she will free up staff as she can to enter by hand the old payment plans into the new system, but she noted that workers remain overwhelmed with what Wright referred to as the "inefficiency" of the new system. For example, Wright noted one process that used to take seven steps now takes 28.

Lotz said, "It's bad enough that my staff and I are pulling out our hair over the extra work. But we know that our citizens are suffering, too, and that's what's really hard to take,'' she said.

As for the old cases, the solution is more confounding. While Lotz said she's thankful for the state's help, she doesn't expect it to be the answer.

"It seems to me that it's going to come down to more staffing -- more staffing to get the old cases on the new system and more staffing to deal with a new system that simply isn't as good as the old one,'' McCune said.

Lotz said things have improved in some small ways. "We are getting the restitution checks out quicker,'' she said. No problems have occurred in the software that notes receipt of a check from a defendant to the county and the county's subsequent issuance of a check to the victim. "When we get the money, it is properly credited to the victim's account,'' she said.

For example, though Calairi isn't getting a regular monthly payment from Cunning, one of the other two men associated with the burglary of her parents' home is continuing his payment of $25 a month. Calairi, who receives the payments because her parents are now deceased, is getting that check in a timely fashion.