The bill looks to address instances in which only partial records are tied to individuals. The entire criminal justice system is meant to send records to the Identification Division of the attorney general’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, where the records are digitized and made accessible through criminal background checks.
Background checks can hit snags, White explained, when the state’s database shows only a partial record, like when there’s a recorded disposition (meaning, the final outcome of a criminal court case) but no record of the individual’s fingerprint, or vice versa.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican who worked on the bill alongside White, the Ohio Supreme Court and a slew of additional criminal justice entities, said the bill is “one piece of a yearslong effort” to address the problem.
“When I came into office, we had disposition data (in our system) for about 55% of the entries, meaning people were arrested or slated or charged with something and we didn’t know whatever happened to it,” Yost said. He added that the number has risen to about 71% over his seven years in office, “which is still not very good.”
Partial records, White explained, can stem from an oversight if someone with a criminal court case wasn’t fingerprinted by cops or the court but the court still reported a disposition; or if a clerical error occurs when the records are hand-entered into the background check system.
She said her bill, House Bill 689, would require reporting entities to transmit fingerprints and dispositions electronically.
“What we’re trying to do (is) to reduce the amount of records that are sent on ink and paper,” White said. “Fingerprints are being mailed to the AG’s office, they’re having to thoroughly and carefully enter all the hand-entered data to make sure there’s no mistakes, and this slows things down and certainly opens opportunity for error.”
Her bill would also streamline reporting of mental health adjudication for juveniles; ensure timely reports of arrests that don’t result in criminal charges, or in instances where a case is immediately brought to a grand jury but the jury doesn’t convict; and require prisons and jails to fingerprint for any inmate criminal offenses.
H.B. 689 has not yet had any public hearings and awaits a committee assignment, though there’s already been a handful of powerful criminal justice associations that have put some weight behind the bill, including the Ohio Clerk of Courts Association; the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police; the Buckeye State Sheriffs’ Association; the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio; and the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
For more stories like this, sign up for our Ohio Politics newsletter. It’s free, curated, and delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday evening.
Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
About the Author
