Over the past couple decades, there has been a steady flow of government files such as land and court records being made available online. The pace has accelerated considerably throughout the pandemic as government offices could no longer have in-person traffic and federal relief funds were made available that could be used for the projects.
Counties have competing priorities though and putting records online can be a time-consuming process given the amount of personally identifiable information contained in them. In Sonoma County, California, you’ll need to make a request whether you need something from the Superior Court or the civil and family clerk’s office, but at the clerk’s office you’ll walk out with your document and with the court, you’ll wait a week or more.
Attorneys and first amendment advocates aren’t happy with the current pace and say in The Press-Democrat that these delays are causing real problems for people that can affect their housing or employment. Another concern is the disparity between records access. While District Attorneys have access to court records at the click of a button, defense attorneys are submitting requests, paying by the page, and waiting a week or more to get their documents.
For their part, the Sonoma County Superior Court acknowledges that things have been difficult but notes that they’re still trying to rebuild a workforce that has been depleted by the pandemic. The process of requesting documents from the court was itself a pandemic adjustment, to limit exposure for office staff.
The court further took ownership of the problem and acknowledged that records requests haven’t been getting the attention that they should have. The court has been hiring steadily since this past summer and Court Executive Arlene Junior says that “the media and the public will see immediate improvement in access to criminal documents.”
Court records, especially in a large county, can be very difficult to keep up with. As with other records, they have plenty of information that needs to be redacted before being made available, but they also have unique considerations like minor names that need to be removed from the documents.
At Extract, we use our IDShield software to automate the redaction process. Rather than having staff or filers redact in a time-consuming and error-prone way, our software can automatically identify everything you need redacted with the click of a button.
If you’d like to learn more about how we do this, please reach out and we’d be happy to schedule an introductory call or demonstration of our software.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.