One of Justice Watch Tucson's initial efforts is to improve interested neighbors' ease of access to upcoming Tucson City Court event information, and thereby increase the presence of citizens in court who are affected by a wide range of alleged civil City Code and criminal (e.g. graffiti, unruly gatherings) violations in their neighborhoods.
As followup to a November 13, 2012 meeting with Tucson City Court administration, a message was received December 20 from Mr. Christopher Hale, City Court Administrator. My reply is shown first below, with Mr. Hale's message below that.
Don Ijams
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Court Event Data
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2012 21:24:40 -0700
From: Donald Ijams
To: Christopher Hale
Mr. Hale,
Thank you very much for your consideration of our request for data on upcoming court events. You have been most responsive and are obviously working to assist us, within the constraints of the Court.
We will be reviewing your reply in more depth over the holidays and look forward to receiving new information as it becomes available.
Regarding the possible modification of an existing report, our list of desired fields of information can be reduced to ease any workload on your staff. In addition to the basics of what, where and when, we obviously need the ability to aggregate court events by neighborhood, which is why we need the LEA number to link with incident case information. A raw text file report might be easiest for all of us to handle.
As background, the Neighborhood Support Network is totally an arm of elected neighborhood leaders and their constituents, the citizens of Tucson. The Network operates completely by volunteer support, which occasionally includes passing the hat for incidental expenses. The Graffiti Action Forum, and its offshoot Justice Watch Tucson, are not formal groups but are creations of ad hoc groups of neighborhood leaders working toward graffiti reduction.
We look forward to working with you and your staff toward the least intrusive method of enhancing public access to court event data.
Thank you,
Donald Ijams, Coordinator
Neighborhood Support Network
Graffiti Action Forum
Justice Watch Tucson
On 12/20/2012 5:31 PM, Christopher Hale wrote:
Mr. Ijams,
We are slowly making progress on the items discussed at our last meeting. As a former City employee I know you are well aware of the City and Court’s limited IT resources. The Court currently has several high priority IT projects underway which occupy the majority of our IT Unit’s time. However, we have taken the following action:
1. The Court will be adding a search field to our public records search for the Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) Report Number. This should allow you to look up cases using the LEA number and then using the Court’s docket number conduct further research into case information on our website or the Arizona Supreme Court’s website. Our IT section has been working on this and I expect that this function will be available in January 2013.
2. The Court will be posting a version of the court calendar that will include a defendant’s violations (our current public calendar does not include violation codes) on the Court’s website. However this calendar does not include the defendant’s date of birth. I have attached a sample of the calendar to be posted. I expect that this too will be available in January 2013.
While we are able to provide access to the majority of records requests timely, requests for bulk data are different. The Court makes every effort to meet our obligations for access to court records and I believe that we are treating your request consistent with all other requests for bulk data. As you are aware the Court is governed by Arizona Supreme Court Rule 123 in regard to public access to court records and in particular bulk data. Under Rule 123 the Court is not required index, compile, re-compile, re-format, program or otherwise reorganize existing information to create new records not maintained in the ordinary course of business. The bulk data you have requested to receive for each upcoming Court event as listed below would constitute a new record.
Date of event
Starting time of event
Event type
Courtroom
Judge
Defendant's Name
Defendant's DOB (only month and year are provided to the public)
Primary charge description
City Court case ID number
LEA Number (TPD case number or other)
Consistent with Rule 123 (h) (3) I asked our IT Unit to give me an estimate of the cost to write a program to provide you with the information. I believe the estimate to be excessively high ($2,300) and asked that they review modification of an existing calendar report to reduce the cost to you for developing a report. At our last meeting I discussed with you that the Court would soon be fielded a new automated Case Management System (CMS) and any programs written to extract information from our current system may need to be rewritten for the new CMS.
Additionally if you wish to receive bulk data from our CMS you will need to sign a dissemination contract and disclaimer containing provisions specified by the supreme court, please see Rule 123 (J). I have attached a template for your review to this email.
I will be on vacation next week but as soon as the new estimate is available Laura Spain will forward it to you. At that time you may decide if you or your organization will pay for the report and execute a dissemination contract and disclaimer as required by Rule 123 (J).
Occasionally an attachment is stripped off an email as being too large when being transferring between networks or mail systems. If this happens please contact Laura Spain who will try another method to get the attachments to you.
I hope you have a happy new year.
Chris
Christopher Hale
Court Administrator
Tucson City Court
As followup to a November 13, 2012 meeting with Tucson City Court administration, a message was received December 20 from Mr. Christopher Hale, City Court Administrator. My reply is shown first below, with Mr. Hale's message below that.
Don Ijams
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Court Event Data
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2012 21:24:40 -0700
From: Donald Ijams
To: Christopher Hale
Mr. Hale,
Thank you very much for your consideration of our request for data on upcoming court events. You have been most responsive and are obviously working to assist us, within the constraints of the Court.
We will be reviewing your reply in more depth over the holidays and look forward to receiving new information as it becomes available.
Regarding the possible modification of an existing report, our list of desired fields of information can be reduced to ease any workload on your staff. In addition to the basics of what, where and when, we obviously need the ability to aggregate court events by neighborhood, which is why we need the LEA number to link with incident case information. A raw text file report might be easiest for all of us to handle.
As background, the Neighborhood Support Network is totally an arm of elected neighborhood leaders and their constituents, the citizens of Tucson. The Network operates completely by volunteer support, which occasionally includes passing the hat for incidental expenses. The Graffiti Action Forum, and its offshoot Justice Watch Tucson, are not formal groups but are creations of ad hoc groups of neighborhood leaders working toward graffiti reduction.
We look forward to working with you and your staff toward the least intrusive method of enhancing public access to court event data.
Thank you,
Donald Ijams, Coordinator
Neighborhood Support Network
Graffiti Action Forum
Justice Watch Tucson
On 12/20/2012 5:31 PM, Christopher Hale wrote:
Mr. Ijams,
We are slowly making progress on the items discussed at our last meeting. As a former City employee I know you are well aware of the City and Court’s limited IT resources. The Court currently has several high priority IT projects underway which occupy the majority of our IT Unit’s time. However, we have taken the following action:
1. The Court will be adding a search field to our public records search for the Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) Report Number. This should allow you to look up cases using the LEA number and then using the Court’s docket number conduct further research into case information on our website or the Arizona Supreme Court’s website. Our IT section has been working on this and I expect that this function will be available in January 2013.
2. The Court will be posting a version of the court calendar that will include a defendant’s violations (our current public calendar does not include violation codes) on the Court’s website. However this calendar does not include the defendant’s date of birth. I have attached a sample of the calendar to be posted. I expect that this too will be available in January 2013.
While we are able to provide access to the majority of records requests timely, requests for bulk data are different. The Court makes every effort to meet our obligations for access to court records and I believe that we are treating your request consistent with all other requests for bulk data. As you are aware the Court is governed by Arizona Supreme Court Rule 123 in regard to public access to court records and in particular bulk data. Under Rule 123 the Court is not required index, compile, re-compile, re-format, program or otherwise reorganize existing information to create new records not maintained in the ordinary course of business. The bulk data you have requested to receive for each upcoming Court event as listed below would constitute a new record.
Date of event
Starting time of event
Event type
Courtroom
Judge
Defendant's Name
Defendant's DOB (only month and year are provided to the public)
Primary charge description
City Court case ID number
LEA Number (TPD case number or other)
Consistent with Rule 123 (h) (3) I asked our IT Unit to give me an estimate of the cost to write a program to provide you with the information. I believe the estimate to be excessively high ($2,300) and asked that they review modification of an existing calendar report to reduce the cost to you for developing a report. At our last meeting I discussed with you that the Court would soon be fielded a new automated Case Management System (CMS) and any programs written to extract information from our current system may need to be rewritten for the new CMS.
Additionally if you wish to receive bulk data from our CMS you will need to sign a dissemination contract and disclaimer containing provisions specified by the supreme court, please see Rule 123 (J). I have attached a template for your review to this email.
I will be on vacation next week but as soon as the new estimate is available Laura Spain will forward it to you. At that time you may decide if you or your organization will pay for the report and execute a dissemination contract and disclaimer as required by Rule 123 (J).
Occasionally an attachment is stripped off an email as being too large when being transferring between networks or mail systems. If this happens please contact Laura Spain who will try another method to get the attachments to you.
I hope you have a happy new year.
Chris
Christopher Hale
Court Administrator
Tucson City Court
No comments:
Post a Comment