Themed issue: justice records across national boundaries

Citation

McLeod, J. (2015), "Themed issue: justice records across national boundaries", Records Management Journal, Vol. 25 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-09-2015-0032

Themed issue: justice records across national boundaries

Article Type: Editorial From: Records Management Journal, Volume 25, Issue 3

The idea for this special issue arose from a conversation with someone after I had invited them to review a manuscript submitted to the journal. Though they had relevant expertise to review the submission, they were unfamiliar with the Journal, but became interested in what it covered. An outcome of the conversation was the idea for a special issue devoted to justice records, in particular aspects of managing them across national boundaries. I’m delighted it has come to fruition.

This issue demonstrates our continued commitment to pushing boundaries. A quick search of the Journal reveals only a handful of articles relating to justice records have been published in previous volumes and all of them written by records professionals. In this issue, with one exception, the articles have been contributed by people who are outside the records management discipline and are academics, researchers or professionals. They are based in universities, public sector law enforcement bodies such as Europol and an independent scientific research. They span four different countries in two continents, and one paper sets a record for the number of co-authors – 14.

In addition to seeking different disciplinary perspectives, the call for papers sought contributions that considered the opportunities and challenges of record management across national boundaries and the application of records management and archival theory. The final selection focuses strongly on sharing data and records, whether from a practical perspective, an ethical one, for development or in support of effective systems of justice.

The papers by Anika Ludwig and Mary McCloskey and by Derek Johnson and Ted Hampson focus on sharing data with academia for secondary research purposes. Ludwig and McCloskey highlight the challenges of accessing reliable and useable geocoded criminal justice data in a European context, using England and Germany as examples. Such data enables cross-national comparisons of immigration, ethnicity and crime but they found its availability, integrity and reliability were problematic. Although data were more openly available in Germany than England (the researchers gaining access to data in England via Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to police forces), varying methods of collection, management, retention and dissemination by different agencies were common in both countries. Johnson and Hampson also used FoI legislation to access UK police data. Whilst their experience of the process was positive due to well-managed response processes and the value of the legislation in supporting access to information for research is clear, so is the need for greater proactive publication to support research and avoid the burden of responding. They draw some interesting conclusions about the integrity of crime data, based on their research, noting that each FoI response included a caveat about the fluidity of the databases from which the data had been extracted. They highlight that indepth knowledge of current crime data recording systems used by UK police forces was invaluable in assessing the data which was disparate in form. Both articles demonstrate the potential value of access to existing data and records for research purposes but highlight the importance of good records management to support data quality – an issue raised in the Journal’s 2014 special issue on big data and open data.

The article by Patrick Jeuniaux et al. focuses on sharing data between European member states in the context of DNA records, specifically the records relating to forensic DNA identification and the notion of DNA-based judicial records. Reflecting on the management of such records in the Belgian National DNA database over a decade, the authors provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the issues they identified in relation to records reliability, integrity and usability. Interestingly, they conclude that the main problems arise from the “natural” boundaries between the different stakeholders in the country’s judicial system. The paper illustrates that whilst today’s network and communication infrastructures enable data to be shared readily, much development work is still needed to make systems truly interoperable and to support meaningful sense-making through information and records sharing.

Mpho Ngoepe and Simon Makhubela, records management academics, explore the contribution of records and their management in the administration of justice in South Africa. They identified a range of court cases reported in the press where records were missing or lacking and examined three high profile ones. Supported by interviews with a policeman, lawyer and judge, they draw conclusions about the implications of the unavailability of records in court cases and suggest there is a strong relationship between poor record-keeping and the miscarriage of justice in South Africa.

I hope this issue of the Records Management Journal highlights further opportunities for records professionals in all sectors to start and/or continue conversations with those in other disciplines and identify ways to collaborate and improve systems and outcomes through better management of records. Equally, I hope that the publication of articles authored by non-records professionals will stimulate wider interest in the Journal from people in other disciplines.

Julie McLeod
Department of Mathematics and Information Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK