[chaps]

Mixed feelings on this, and a lot of it unfortunately stems from these systems requiring access in-person only as well as courts generally being inaccessible through FOIA. Had these records been available through FOIA from the beginning, for example, then these records would have gone through a review/redaction process. But, they're being released now, which can many ways be seen as a reaction to the lack of access to this information, generally. The extensive overuse of courts for non-violent cases definitely doesn't help either.

As a researcher, there are deep problems with the inaccessibility of court information in that it prevents the general public from learning about systemic issues, for example identifying extensive abuse by judges (singular, or in a group), or identifying whether bail is applied uniformly.

I don't know what the solution is and things get trickier the more you look at them. Restrictive access isn't a perfect answer, since it allows gatekeeping of those critical. Having talked with lawyers who have access, they basically have to keep completely out of public spot light while they have restrictive access, at the fear of losing it. And our massive systems around incarceration have shown themselves as being uninterested in providing information to those who are critical of them. We've dug ourselves into a pretty deep hole.

[giantg2]

The documents being released are currently publicly available. It looks like records of minors either don't show up, or don't show details. It also looks like expunged convictions do not have the case showing up.

FOIA doesn't apply for two reasons. One is like you say - many court documents are considered privileged and not subject to FOIA (which I agree has many issues around things like complaints). The other is that documents that are publicly available like this don't need to be requested through FOIA since they are already available.

I can go to my state's website and get the same information as on this site. The thing this site does is allow you to search all state's for free. There are plenty of sites that will allow you to search for people like this, but they currently charge money.

[chaps]

Access to justice and information about justice shouldn't be gatekept through money. I understand where you're going with it, but it's very close to the same reasoning used to justify ex[tp]ensive bail -- it only fucks the poor.

[giantg2]

"Access to justice and information about justice shouldn't be gatekept through money."

I agree. My comment was about how this site allows that access for free. And also that FOIA is moot for this information - it's publicly available without a request.

[chaps]

My point is that we should have gone through a FOIA route from the beginning.

And no, a lot of important information still isn't publicly available, so we still have these issues that need to be ironed out for the exact same reason as I'm describing. This release still only scratches the surface. I'm able to get court documents from city law departments, but the process takes forever (ten complaints per week, for example) and the alternative is to go downtown to work with computer systems that have poor search capabilities.

Had we been (and been able to be) aggressive from a FOIA perspective from the beginning, the inefficiencies of these systems (eg, segmentting private information is stored in court records) would be more ironed out.