From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 14, 2005
Mountains of paperwork in the St. Clair County courts have been swept away.
The system has switched gradually over the past two years to electronic record keeping for all traffic and misdemeanor cases.
Chief Circuit Judge Jan V. Fiss said St. Clair was the first county in Illinois to make the switch under a pilot project approved by the Illinois Supreme Court.
Included as well are all ordinance violations, drunken driving cases and conservation cases such as hunting and fishing violations.
Electronic imaging is also used for felony cases, but it is not yet the official record for that division. Nor has it spread to civil cases.
Fiss said the change had already helped everyone from circuit judges down to police officers on the street. But the biggest fans seem to be the court clerks.
No longer do they spend hours each day searching for documents, filing documents and refiling documents. In the past, courtrooms sometimes came to a standstill while a search was conducted.
Circuit clerk supervisor Debbie DeRousse said the biggest advantage of electronic imaging can be summed up in a single word -- access.
"It's at our fingertips," she said.
The sheer volume of cases in St. Clair County gives some idea how important that is.
DeRousse said that in 2003, the last year for which she has complete figures, more than 85,000 traffic tickets were issued in the county. Other case categories now captured by electronic imaging added nearly 18,000.
Circuit clerk chief of staff Jean Brown said: "Filing was a tedious job to begin with. We were averaging 1,000 documents a day returned to us to file."
It was full-time work for two deputy clerks just to retrieve files for the next day's court sessions, Brown said. Now they pop up in the courtroom at the touch of a keyboard.
More important, the system lists a defendant's entire record. No longer can a defendant slip in and pay a fine to clear up a fresh charge with the judge unaware of previous convictions or old cases still pending.
DeRousse said, "They come into court on a ticket, and it has their history right there and the fines received. You don't even have to leave your desk."
Circuit Clerk C. Barney Metz, 79, has been in county government nearly four decades.
"From what I have seen so far, it's a great operation," he said.
So far, it has not reduced his staff, but with an ever-growing caseload, it has allowed people to be shifted to where they are needed most.
Associate Judge Stephen R. Rice said he expected electronic imaging to eventually spread to the entire system, including civil cases.
"You can go right to the document on your desk," Rice said. "You can tell the computer to print it out."
Backup computer records are maintained in two geographic locations, just in case the system develops problems.
As a further backup, paper documents are still created, but merely dropped into a date-labeled cardboard box that is shipped to storage.
State officials have conducted random tests to see if a paper document could be located if needed. Metz said it was successfully found every time.
County officials calculated they already had saved more than $21,000 in one year by not having to buy case jackets.
Public documents are available to anyone at two computers on the first floor of the courthouse in Belleville, one in a kiosk in the foyer, the other in the traffic division foyer.
That saves time for the clerks as well. Printouts can be made for $2, plus 50 cents for each additional page.
Rice said the electronic system was both more reliable and more secure than the old system.
Any change or addition -- or access to confidential or sealed documents -- requires a security code. There are five levels, with judges at the top.
A report on the new system emphasizes, "Documents are never deleted. They are simply moved to another index." And any change or deletion can be tracked.
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