The Hamilton County Criminal Court Clerk’s Office announces that starting on Thursday the minutes of the daily court proceedings in the three criminal divisions will be retained in electronic format. These minutes have historically been kept in large leather binders, in a file room, in the clerk’s office.

“Since the beginning of time, our office has retained a printed copy of the daily proceedings in each of the three criminal courts, which are courts of record as designated by the state of Tennessee,” said Hamilton County Criminal Court Clerk Vince Dean. “Typically, preparing these minutes for retention requires them to first be printed off on regular weight, legal size paper and then be scanned and printed a second time onto a heavier, archival-grade paper. The costs of the paper, ink, binders, maintenance and replacement, along with the time required daily to maintain and store the binders filled with the minutes of the courts were all taken into consideration when first thinking of moving away from keeping hard copies.”

The exact cost savings is unknown at this time, but is expected to
be appreciable. Transcribing the court minutes is just one of many routine functions that deputy clerks perform on a daily basis. Several months ago Criminal Court Clerk Chief of Staff, Brad Tucker, began researching a Tennessee law that would allow for minutes to be retained electronically, if certain criteria were met. Since then, he and several other members of the staff have been working closely with Hamilton County’s IT department to satisfy the requirements of that state law.

“To maintain the integrity of these documents is paramount;” Tucker said. “I am confident, along with the assurances that we have received from CTAS (the University of Tennessee’s County Technical Assistance Service) that we are in compliance.”

“In my opinion, this is one more step toward a paper on demand criminal court system” said Clerk Dean. “The three criminal court judges have been very supportive in our efforts and are consistent in their desire to help us achieve that goal.”

Having the minutes readily available will also greatly enhance the efficiency in fulfilling requests for records. Existing minutes that are currently in printed form will be archived