Files Filling Up Prison Storage Rooms
Iowa’s prisons want to obtain state funding to store countless paper documents collected over the years on computer compact discs (CDs).
The Iowa Medical and Classification Center at Oakdale alone has documented every prisoner ever held in the state, and would require an estimated $400,000 in the first year alone to upgrade its record keeping.
Rusty Rogerson, who serves as the center’s warden, estimates it would take five years to complete the archiving process.
Oakdale collects a criminal file, a medical file, and an inmate file for each new arrival in prison, which averages to 14 new inmates each day.
The records are currently contained in a 3,000-square-foot area, but officials hope to eliminate permanent storage by destroying paper documents after their information is transferred to CD.
The proposal is set to go before the legislature in January and implementation of the new system could start as soon as Sept. 1 of next year.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Associated Press (09/02/03) .
