GR 9 COVER SHEET

1. Name of Proponent: The Washington State Office of Public Defense and the Minority and Justice Commission….
2. Spokesperson: George Yeannakis, Office of Public Defense
3. Purpose: Amendments to GR 31 and CrR 2.1

Introduction

These proposed amendments to GR 31, Access to Court Records, and CrR 3.2, The Indictment and the Information, aim to ensure that courts across Washington State treat juvenile records consistently, comply with the Washington State Constitution, and recognize the severe and long-lasting impact of that result from prosecuting youth in juvenile court. This is critical for all youth and particularly youth of color since we know that

[o]ne of the most consistent findings in the research on the juvenile justice system is that race matters. Race matters in Washington State just as it matters across the United States. Studies conducted in numerous states have demonstrated that race shapes decisions at various stages in the juvenile justice process, independent of the severity of the offense and of the individual’s criminal history

HEATHER D. EVANS & STEVEN HERBERT, JUVENILES SENTENCED AS ADULTS IN WASHINGTON STATE, 2009-2019 (June 2021) available at https://www.opd.wa.gov/documents/00866-2021_AOCreport.pdf.

The Administrative Office of the Courts adopted a policy, after careful consideration, to not display juvenile court records on a publicly accessible website and to exclude juvenile offender court records from bulk distribution.

The Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) tracks statewide case information and records through its Judicial Information System (JIS), ACORDS, and Odyssey. To respond to the numerous issues and policy implications of the electronic distribution of court information, the Judicial Information System Committee (JISC) established the JIS Data Dissemination Committee (JISDDC), which makes policies regarding AOC’s dissemination of computer-based court records.^[1]  AOC, through its JISDDC, responded to the demonstrated harms of displaying juvenile offender records publicly online and distributing juvenile offender records to large private data aggregators by imposing limits through Section V of its Data Dissemination Policy:

A. Juvenile offender court records shall be excluded from any bulk distribution of JIS records by the AOC otherwise authorized by GR 31(g), except for research purposes as permitted by statute or court rule.

B. The AOC shall not display any information from an official juvenile offender court record on a publicly-accessible website that is a statewide index of court cases.

AOC’s limits were adopted after extensive discussion and consideration. These limits have been in place since 2008. However, rather than following AOC’s policy limiting the display of juvenile court records on a publicly accessible website, some counties (e.g., King County through its new electronic records portal) now provide broad, online public access to “juvenile offender cases” though a publicly accessible website. See King County Script public access search site, available at https://dja-prd-ecexap1.kingcounty.gov/?q=Home.

Immediate action is needed because the harms of available juvenile court records are acute and are intensified by displaying the youth’s full name in the case caption. 

“A publicly available juvenile court record has very real and objectively observable negative consequences, including denial of ‘housing, employment, and education opportunities.’” State v. S.J.C., 183 Wn.2d 408, 432, 352 P.3d 749 (2015) (quoting Laws of 2014, ch.175, § 1(1)). In public housing, a single juvenile offense might result in the entire family’s eviction. See Ashley Nellis, Addressing the Collateral Consequences of Convictions for Young Offenders, 35 The Champion 20, 23 (2011.) In addition, a juvenile court record can foreclose employment possibilities and make it harder it to obtain even a high school diploma, much less postsecondary education. See Nellis, supra.

In 2014, the Legislature declared that “it is the policy of the state of Washington that the interest in juvenile rehabilitation and reintegration constitutes compelling circumstances that outweigh the public interest in continued availability of juvenile court records.” Laws of 2014, ch. 175, § 1. The legislature has also provided a pathway to seal juvenile court records. RCW 13.50.260.

Washington State is one of seven states in the country that “categorically make all juvenile records public though there are exceptions even within these states. RIYA SAHA SHAH ET AL., JUVENILE RECORDS: A NATIONAL REVIEW OF STATE LAWS ON CONFIDENTIALITY, SEALING AND EXPUNGEMENT 15 (2014) (footnote omitted), available at national-review.pdf (jlc.org). By providing online, public access to juvenile records, the harms of publicly available juvenile records are intensified and are more far reaching. That is because

[t]he emergence of the internet has enabled instant access to many digital records, and services like Intelius.com or beenverified.com make searching names cheap, quick, and easy. Moreover, some jurisdictions have cut out the middleman and have created databases to allow online searches of court records.

Judith G. McMullen, Invisible Stripes: The Problem of Youth Criminal Records, 27 S. CAL. REV. OF LAW & SOC. JUST. 1, 20–21 (2018) available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol13/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3397404.

As a result, “[a]ny potential school, landlord, or employer can easily access information about a subject's contacts with the law—indeed, any curious citizen can mine this information at will.” Id. at 21. In addition, the sealing of juvenile court records is undermined, if not rendered useless, if a youth’s name is routinely published online. “Once information becomes publicly accessible, it cannot be made confidential again.” James Jacobs, THE ETERNAL CRIMINAL RECORD 22 (2015).

Action must be taken to help ensure that youth can truly have their case sealed and treated as though it never occurred so they can reach their full potential. To meet this goal, we made the following recommendations for proposed rule changes:

·         Caption juvenile court cases with a youth’s initials at the trial court level (as is done at the appellate level—pursuant to RAP 3.4^[2]—and in other states) in order to limit broad dissemination of a youth’s involvement in juvenile court thereby enabling reintegration and rehabilitation.

The proposed amendments to GR 31(e)(1)

(1) Except as otherwise provided in GR 22, parties shall not include, and if present shall redact, the following personal identifiers from all documents filed with the court, whether filed electronically or in paper, unless necessary or otherwise ordered by the Court. (A) Social Security Numbers. If the Social Security Number of an individual must be included in a document, only the last four digits of that number shall be used. (B) Financial Account Numbers. If financial account numbers are relevant, only the last four digits shall be recited in the document. (C) Driver’s License Numbers. (D) In a juvenile offender case, the parties shall caption the case using the juvenile's initials. The parties shall refer to the juvenile by their initials throughout all briefing and pleadings.

The proposed amendments to CrR 2.1(a)(2)(i)

(i)                 the name, or in the case of a juvenile respondent the initials,  address, date of birth, and sex of the defendant

Conclusion and request for expedited consideration

The proposed amendments to GR 31 and CrR 2.1 address the severe, long-lasting impact that access to juvenile court records causes to youth, who are disproportionately youth of color. In addition, the proposal is consistent with the appellate court rules, and we submit these proposed rule changes for expedited consideration pursuant to GR 9(e)(2)(E).