Just last month, a Baltimore inmate, Russell John Yarborough Jr., was accidentally released when bail was posted for his brother–who has the exact same name and also was facing assault charges.
That might seem a fluky circumstance, except it was one of four mistaken releases in November in Baltimore. Maryland officials blame an antiquated computer system and say they are developing a new one.
In Winston-Salem, N.C., Corey Young was awaiting charges of trying to kill two police officers. He was mistakenly released last month instead of inmate David Young. It was the sixth time in a year that the jail released the wrong prisoner.
These examples attracted little national attention, but they spotlight one of the most widespread, if little-discussed, problems in the criminal-justice system: Criminal records are in abysmally poor shape across the country and often inaccessible to law-enforcement officials who need them.
No comprehensive nationwide database of convicted felons exists, though the FBI is working on one.
The consequences can be serious. Accurate rap sheets are needed by police to try to figure out how dangerous a suspect is, by prosecutors to decide what bail to seek, by judges to know if they are sentencing a multiple offender, and by prison officials to determine whether an inmate merits maximum security.
“It creates problems for everybody,” said Candice Kane, acting director of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. “This cuts across all parts of the system. I don’t know that many people are being (wrongly) let go, but I’m sure some people are.”
Illinois has seen its share of problems. Maureen Josh, court clerk of DeKalb County, has a staff of just 25 but must collect criminal data from 11 police agencies and forward it to the state.
She said she frequently finds she has been supplied with the wrong birth date, incorrect address or other bad information simply because police have much to do and might not be adept at paperwork.
“If the database doesn’t get the date of birth, it creates a completely inaccurate criminal history on someone,” Josh said, adding that this has led to the wrong person being arrested in her county. “These are relatively common problems throughout the state.”
Now, some fear similar errors will infect the vaunted Brady handgun law.
Four years ago, in a monumental win for President Clinton and gun-control activists, the Brady bill was signed into law, requiring police to check whether would-be gun buyers have a criminal record.
Next November, Brady background checks are scheduled to switch to a high-speed computer system. That setup, it is hoped, will be a vast improvement over the somewhat cumbersome manual one.
There is one problem: Half the information on the computer database, the Justice Department acknowledges, will be incomplete or inaccurate, raising serious questions about just how effective enforcement will be.
“Do we have concerns? Absolutely,” said Robert Walker, president of Handgun Control Inc., which campaigned for the Brady law. “We’ll just have to carefully monitor it.”
The missing information could even mean that guns will occasionally be sold to felons by mistake, added Richard Dugger, an Oklahoma prosecutor who has studied the issue. “That is a real possibility,” Dugger said.
When the Brady law was signed Nov. 30, 1993, after years of legislative battles, it changed the way guns are bought in this country. Now, when a customer wants to buy a handgun from the local gun shop, he must first fill out a form that is sent to the police. They have five days to determine whether the buyer has a felony conviction or any other disqualification such as mental incompetence.
Illinois has a gun-control law, so state residents are affected relatively little by Brady. Elsewhere, though, the law has been celebrated and reviled in the years it has been in effect.
About 250,000 applications to buy guns have been denied, the Justice Department reports.
In June, the Supreme Court struck down part of the law as too burdensome on local police. State and local officers, the court declared, cannot be forced to carry out federal regulations. Most police departments, though, are following Brady dictates, the Justice Department says.
When the “insta-check” system, as many call it, kicks in Nov. 30, 1998, every gun dealer will, in theory, be able to tap directly into a nationwide database of felons so a gun sale can be instantly approved or rejected.
Except for one thing: There is no reliable nationwide database of felons.
The FBI maintains a list of people who have been arrested. In most instances, it does not reveal whether they were convicted or acquitted, rendering the information useless without further investigation.
The reason for the lapse is that it is enormously difficult for states to gather information from thousands of local agencies, some of which keep terrible records, and computerize it in an accessible way.
A 1994 Justice Department review found that only 18 percent of the nation’s felony records were complete and computerized. That is unacceptable, said Kent Markus, deputy chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.
“It is horrible,” Markus said. “It’s pretty amazing. What that means is, if you put somebody’s name in, you have a less than one-in-five chance of getting accurate information. There were jurisdictions whose criminal-history records were kept in shoe boxes.”
To prepare for the Brady insta-check, the Justice Department is pushing to upgrade criminal-information systems throughout the country. It has spent $200 million on the effort, with more to come.
Justice Department officials, however, will count themselves lucky if the number of complete felony records is up to 50 percent by the time insta-check is supposed to begin.
Some ridicule that performance. “If the Justice Department and Janet Reno can’t get their act together after spending four years and $200 million, maybe they ought to think about contracting it out to someone in private industry,” said Wayne LaPierre, executive director of the National Rifle Association.
“All these excuses are just lame. All you’re talking about is computerizing some data,” added LaPierre, whose organization supported the insta-check system from the onset, though it vigorously fought the original Brady bill.
Justice Department officials insisted that the progress has been monumental, given the difficulties. They noted that police can use the FBI database to find out if someone has been arrested. If so, they can often determine with a call or two if the defendant was convicted.
Brady aside, the need for crime information to be available at the click of a mouse is intensifying, law-enforcement officials say.
Illinois has not escaped the problem. State officials estimate that only 60 percent of the outcomes, or dispositions, of criminal charges get properly recorded.
The Justice Department has provided the state $6.7 million so far to improve this performance, plus more money to municipalities. Much of the work is being done in Cook County, where a large portion of the state’s crime occurs.
Cook County Circuit Court, for example, will soon be able to instantly record on-line when a case is decided. “We are working quickly to resolve these problems,” said Aurelia Pucinski, clerk of the court.
Gun-control advocates believe Illinois is making decent progress in whipping its records into shape. They are less sure, though, about other states.
