I can understand why my fellow members of The Daily Cardinal Editorial Board would want access to as many court records as possible. We are journalists and it is our job to get all necessary information out to the public.
The problem with releasing these aforementioned CCAP records is that they do not always include necessary information. In the United States court system, as civics teachers and ""Schoolhouse Rock"" songs have drilled into our head, a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. If the case is dismissed or the person is acquitted, the government has no cause or means to punish them. But that is exactly what the government is doing by keeping these records open to the public: Punishing people who were never found guilty of a crime.
The mere record that a person was tried for a crime, even if the individual is acquitted or the case is thrown out by a judge, is damaging to that person's reputation. The simple fact is that there are definitely employers, landlords, business associates and others who will look at that CCAP record and think differently of their potential employee, tenant or client despite the fact that the court found they did nothing wrong.
I admire the idealism of my colleagues who think that a simple disclaimer on the CCAP website solves these issues. But it does not. There is virtually no way to police employer discrimination based on CCAP records except in the most obvious circumstances, and if an employer wants to use these records to judge a candidate, a few words of website text aren't going to stop them.
If you are acquitted from a crime, you should be able to move on with your life. As useful as CCAP is, the state of Wisconsin should allow its citizens the opportunity to truly live ""free of all charges"" through the removal of select records.
