KTLA News: "Assemblyman expresses need for protocols around retention..." (1973)

There seems to be a need for some balance in this area. Uh after a certain number of years, uh a person ought not to have his record follow him forever, I think. Uh unless it's something of a very serious nature. And we are finding that employment opportunities are being denied to people uh simply because they had an arrest as a juvenile and uh for the rest of their lives. They are they are being haunted by some kind of activity which occurred at a very early age. Assembly are the current record of Governor Reagan's recent statement of the relaxation on the names of >> No, this is a study which our criminal justice committee has been engaged in for some time. to uh on the one hand see whether there may not be constructive programs in the area of juvenile delinquency prevention and at the same time to indicate a concern uh about the promagation of records of juveniles. uh the question of confidentiality of these records, how far they're circulated, how many years after a person uh becomes an adult, these records are still around and so forth. These are the two interests that our committee has and which we are trying to uh discuss today. >> The attorney general of course is talking about scrapping all sorts of criminal records, juvenile and other except in major crimes after a certain. Is this the general area in which you'd like to see these go for the juvenile system? >> Yes, I think that u the uh records not only of juveniles but of adults uh uh have to be narrowed down. We're keeping too many different kinds of records and uh I think we have to start narrowing down the kinds of records we keep. I think that is part of the uh recommendations of the attorney general as well. What are the ultimate effects uh say the arguments on both sides? Those who are for keeping the records, those that are against it. U what uh what are the what's the thrust of the two arguments? >> Well, the arguments for keeping the records are basically that we need um to have this these records available for research. That's one of the arguments. who want to be able to follow people throughout their lifetime to to determine uh what is happening to them. There are also those who want to have these records available for employment uh uh checks and uh more harm to society in the long run by denying employment opportunities than the value of keeping these records. So, it borders on a violation of uh a juvenile's uh uh civil rights. Would would that be an interpolation? >> Well, this is still somewhat an unclear clear area as to uh how long records ought to be kept and what we are trying to do here is to uh decide if we can uh to make recommendations to the legislature as to the methods of keeping juvenile records. Assemblyman, we've heard in testimony this morning that various counties have various practices when it comes to releasing those records, this information that judges pretty much have their own discretion on it. Are you aiming at some uniformity? >> I think that's one of the things we are we're trying to get into. We found out this morning, for instance, that um uh certain counties are sending their records to the state youth authority for certain purposes. Well, uh I'm not sure that's really necessary. And once these records get into the state files, um, there's no telling how far they may go. It seems to me that the purpose of these records basically are to help the probation department, which is a county function, and the juvenile court, which is a county function, and they ought to stay basically right there in the counties. and uh unless there's some overriding interest uh that we haven't discovered yet, I don't think the state ought to be involved in the recordeping of juveniles. Do you have an opinion as to what kinds of >> criminal justice at the University of California Davis has uh is under grant to the law lea law enforcement administration act assistant office to also perform some evaluations of the um probation subsidy program. Now they were done spoke with us for a day a couple of weeks ago. I did some further discussion with them while I was in Sacramento last week. They obviously in order to draw their samples are going to have to have access to not only the uh aggregated data but also additional data that would come from the hard copy files and in those cases names could be available uh to them. uh they were informed and knew in advance that they would have to seek an order from the uh presiding judge of the juvenile court to have access to that and they have already uh submitted such a petition to judge Hogaboom and there is every reason to believe that in the case of this particular uh institution and its purpose research that uh such permission will be uh granted and that we will be authorized to participate with the Davis group in this uh study. Now those would be uh the kinds of situations in which uh names could be made available. Uh, also being a county that has a large number of universities and colleges, we get almost weekly requests from both the professorial staff and graduate students who are either doing term papers or master's thesis or special studies in the fields of crime, delinquency, prevention and so on. We provide information to them as a matter of policy without uh identification of uh persons. If they need to get into the files and have access, they too must go uh and provide us with authorization from the presiding judge before we can do that. And then it is done only under our supervision. The files are never removed or computer terminal to get into it. the they must identify themselves and use the appropriate keyword for the day to indicate that they have authorization to get into these data. >> So at this point you you represent that these cards let's assume after 5 years would not be available >> and storing them in the uh security uh vaults of the justice data center. Uh one of the problems uh is our limited access uh to the computer in doing that.