Fixing flaws in criminal records

Imagine applying for a job and finding out, after the position had been filled, that the employer had checked your criminal record online and found a felony charge erroneously assigned to you.

Imagine searching your baby sitter's background and finding alcohol-related charges, but because the records online contained no middle initial, address or age, there was no way to tell whether the person charged was your baby sitter.

Public records give us perspective on the people and places around us. They allow us to see trends in our community, to keep track of decisions made on the public's behalf and to hold elected officials accountable. But if they're inaccurate, as was the case with the job applicant's background check, or incomplete, as with the baby sitter, they're useless.

That's where the court clerks' technology trust fund, created a dozen years ago to help the courts update their filing systems and to make court records more accessible, is supposed to help. Pooling money from surcharges on court filings, circuit court clerks were supposed to be able to tap the fund to buy modern equipment and upgrade operating systems. Lately, however, the General Assembly has used the fund to shore up the budget, leaving less money to update records and technology.

Most cities and counties - Fairfax and Alexandria are two exceptions - rely on the state's outdated online database, linked to the Virginia Supreme Court's Web site, to give the public access to criminal records. They aren't official - legal records remain in the clerks' offices - but people commonly use the site to check arrest records.

That database is cumbersome, uses 1980s DOS-based technology and offers limited searches that sometimes yield inaccurate results and information that should be kept private. Four years ago, Virginia Beach got $500,000 from the technology fund and began creating its own online database for Circuit Court criminal records, becoming the first city in Hampton Roads to venture away from the state's system.

The Beach system, which went online three months ago, is very basic.

Vbcircuitcourtrecords.comdoesn't have identifying information such as hometown, age and arrest date to help narrow search possibilities. And, like the state system, the site doesn't connect to the State Police, Department of Motor Vehicles or other state agencies with databases on infractions and criminal charges.

But as Circuit Court Clerk Tina Sinnen said, "Less information is better than bad information." Eventually, she promises, her office will add records and more specific information, making sure to avoid Social Security numbers and dates of birth.

The goals are twofold: To give citizens more reliable, more up-to-date records, and to provide law enforcement with the facts they need to keep us safe. Both are worth every penny.