NCJ Number
191816
Journal
Governing Volume: 14 Issue: 12 Dated: September 2001 Pages: 26,28
Date Published
2001
Length
2 pages
Annotation
This article examines public access to police and court records.
Abstract
The Internet age is forcing government agencies nationwide to decide if the personal information in routine files should be available to anyone online. The issue is provoking a fresh look at the age-old access rules. How public should public records be? The prospect of instant worldwide access to justice-system records alarms privacy advocates. Last year, SEARCH, a Sacramento-based consortium of justice statistics agencies, commissioned a survey by privacy researcher Alan Westin. It found that only 12 percent of Americans favor making arrest and conviction information “freely available.” Still, news organizations are staking out their claim for information. Court committees in many States are sorting through the opposing arguments, and reaching different conclusions. A court committee in Colorado, for example, settled on providing only docket details. Listings of probate, mental health and juvenile crimes are excluded. The outcome of the State debates will be based on legal and public policy arguments. In Maryland, news organizations protested a proposal that would have allowed a court official to base online access on whether the State considered the request legitimate. The media argued that State and Federal courts have recognized a First Amendment right of access to civil and criminal court records. It will take several years for most States to work out their policies on releasing records online. In the end, the fifty States may have different rules governing Internet access to court records. Professor Clark Kelso of the University of Pacific in Sacramento predicts that there will not be a nationwide policy, saying “States have different levels of comfort sharing this kind of information.”