Criminal records backlog won’t be cleared until 2018

CARSON CITY — All 78 state courts are now reporting dispositions to the state criminal information repository, but it will take until mid-2018 to erase a backlog of nearly 900,000 old records, state lawmakers were told Monday.

Only one-third of the state’s 78 courts had been consistently reporting the information to the agency before the issue came to the attention of lawmakers.

Julie Butler, who oversees the program for the state Department of Public Safety, updated the Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee on the progress of the backlog. The panel in June authorized the program to hire 10 additional employees and 10 contract employees to work on the backlog.

The repository had received 909,710 records as of Nov. 29 to enter into the repository, Butler told lawmakers. The staff have since June entered 25,899 dispositions into the system, leaving a balance of nearly 884,000 still to be entered, she said.

The agency is running two shifts to enter the data. With the 20 total staff, the backlog would be erased by mid-2019, Butler said.

With a new federal grant award, the agency plans to hire 10 more temporary staff starting in April 2015. With the 10 additional positions, the backlog could be erased by mid-2018, she said. Lawmakers approved the receipt of the federal grant.

Sen. Debbie Smith, D-Sparks, said the work is critical to public safety since the records are used for background checks.

“These background checks involve everything in our daily lives, whether it is public safety, domestic violence, people who shouldn’t have weapons, down to employment and safety background checks for care workers,” she said. “We really need to say on top of this.”

Butler told the committee in June that the massive amount of records, most submitted electronically, had only recently been forwarded to the agency. A combination of factors likely contributed to the backlog, including a lack of resources by some agencies and a turnover of employees leading to a lack of knowledge of the reporting requirement, she said.

Law enforcement officers making a traffic stop would have past arrest information but not the details of convictions, Butler said.

A study by MTG Management Consultants in 2011 found that criminal justice agencies were either not submitting dispositions or were inconsistently reporting them to the state General Services Division of the Department of Public Safety.

Contact Sean Whaley at swhaley@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3900. Find him on Twitter: @seanw801.