Our county is considering going to a totally paperless filing system (document imaging only). Paper filings would not be maintained and the original document would be the image. Does anyone have any experience with this type of system? What advantages and disadvantages have you found? Any legal issues that have already been raised and resolved would also be helpful. Thanks.

Out of curiousity, are you purchasing the equipment required to keep fingerprints on the computer too? I know the technology is available to just scan them, but it's pricey. If you just try to scan the fingerprints off of a document, I doubt they'll maintain their quality so that they can be compared.

Jeff, I don't expect our county to expend the extra money to obtain the equipment that you are describing. I expect we will be left with the digital image of the prints. I can only hope that they will be better quality than some of the photocopies that we now get from TDC.

You could always print the TDC Disclaimer on every document. You know the one:

"Our copies suck because the original sucked"

I don't think TDC, according to them, has ever received an original that was worth a flip.

You could go to a semi-paperless filing system, and still save a ton of space by having a file for hard copies of F/Ps, with the cause no. and crook's name on the F/P. Thus, when someone orders cert. copies of a crook's J&S, Waivers, and any identifiers, the clerk would download the crook's plea papers, and then go to the F/P file to find the paper copy to Xerox.

This would require introducing a set of the crook's f/ps, with the case cause no. on it during the plea, since the J&S with the single f/p will be digitalized. But that is just as well anyway, since 95% of the fingerprints on J&S's are useless anyway.