NCJ Number
82494
Editor(s)
G R Cooper
Date Published
1981
Length
402 pages
Annotation
This volume identifies, categorizes, describes, and analyzes more than 225 Federal and State court decisions concerning the handling of criminal history records by criminal justice agencies.
Abstract
To identify relevant cases, the authors examined Federal and State court judicial opinions that were written since 1950 and published in the national reporter system. Each case summary identifies the parties involved, notes the legal theories invoked and the relief sought, describes the facts, states the court's decision and relevant point of law, and analyzes the decision's effect or impact. The volume organizes cases according to the recordkeeping operation or type of record at issue. It groups cases under the dissemination of criminal history record information category according to the identity of the proposed recipient (criminal justice community, government noncriminal justice agency, litigant, private employer, media, and public) and the recipient's purpose in seeking the criminal history record. It groups cases involving the maintenance of criminal history records according to the nature of the record or the criminal justice process associated with its creation. These decisions focus on inaccurate or incomplete records, records of illegal or improper arrests or convictions, arrests not pursued or ending in dismissal, juvenile offenses, first offenses, and records after the subject established a clean record or received a pardon. Decisions relating to the subject's access to criminal justice agency records are also included. About four-fifths of the cases cited involve a claim by the record's subject for sealing or purging of all or part of the record. Review of case law also shows that over the last 5 to 8 years the courts have been reluctant to find constitutional implications in agencies' handling of criminal history records. This development probably results from the Supreme Court's 1976 decision in Paul v. Davis, the Court's trend away from judicial activism, and the failure of jurists and scholars to develop a persuasive constitutional theory of information privacy. However, the courts are receptive to interventionist arguments involving the accuracy and completeness of criminal history information. They also seem receptive to arguments that the records' subjects have the absolute right of access to their own records. Footnotes and an alphabetical index are provided.