Juvenile Restrictions/Warnings

CrimeStar provides the ability to both warn users when they are viewing or working with a Juvenile record and it can also restrict users from accessing Juvenile Records.

Juvenile Warnings: When a user recalls or views a juvenile record CrimeStar will display a banner message in from of the record notifying the user that the record is a juvenile record and reminds them to check departmental policy before releasing any related data. The user can simply close this banner message by double clicking on it or clicking "x" in the upper right corner of the banner. This is only a reminder/warning message and does not restrict the user’s activity or capabilities at all.

If your agency finds this Banner reminder to be annoying and wishes to disable it simply set "JUVENILE_WARNING=OFF" in the [CONFIGURATION] section of the CrimeStar INI file.

Juvenile Restrictions: When a user attempts to recall or view a record that meets the criteria as a juvenile record CrimeStar will check to see if that user is authorized via the CrimeStar Security system to view or work with juvenile records. If the user does not have juvenile security authorization CrimeStar will not recall the detail record and instead will display a message indicating that they lack authorization to access juvenile records.

One fundamental issue that any software must resolve is "What is a Juvenile Record?"

It sounds like a simple question but it really is not. Different jurisdictions and different states have widely different criteria for what circumstances constitute a juvenile record. For example; in some jurisdictions a juvenile document is any document where a juvenile was arrested, charged or otherwise listed as a suspect. However in other jurisdictions, the presence of any juvenile name in a document, even if that juvenile was only a witness, makes it a juvenile document. Obviously, it is not possible for any one software program to accommodate all the different nuances and variations of circumstances that make a document a juvenile document.

Therefore CrimeStar has taken a rather conservative position on this issue, assuming it is better to be too protective of documents that contain juvenile information than not protective enough.

CrimeStar uses the Age Warning / Juvenile Threshold setting on the Name Index page of the system configuration module to determine the age when a person becomes an adult. For example; setting this value to 18 assumes that a person is considered an adult at age 18 and a juvenile at any age less than 18. Using this age threshold it compares the date of birth (DOB) of the subject(s) involved to the date of the document itself to determine if at the time of the document that person was a juvenile.

The following explains the criteria used by the different CrimeStar Modules to determine if a document is a juvenile record:

Accident: Compares the date of the accident with the DOB of the youngest person listed in the report to see if he/she is below the Juvenile Threshold. If so, the document is considered to be a juvenile record.

Arrest & Booking: Compares the date of the arrest with the DOB of the arrested person to see if he/she is below the Juvenile Threshold. If so, the document is considered to be a juvenile record.

Bicycle Registration: No Juvenile warnings or restrictions enforced.

BOL: No Juvenile warnings or restrictions enforced.

Calls For Service: No Juvenile warnings or restrictions enforced.

Community Policing: No Juvenile warnings or restrictions enforced.

Citations: Compares the date of the citation with the DOB of the cited person to see if he/she is below the Juvenile Threshold. If so, the document is considered to be a juvenile record.

Field Interviews: Compares the date of the FI with the DOB of the FI’d person to see if he/she is below the Juvenile Threshold. If so, the document is considered to be a juvenile record.

Firearm Registration: No Juvenile warnings or restrictions enforced.

Incidents: Compares the date of the Incident with the DOB of the youngest person listed in the report to see if he/she is below the Juvenile Threshold. If so, the document is considered to be a juvenile record.

Master Name Index: Compares the subject’s DOB with the date of the oldest MNI Involvement to see if he/she is below the Juvenile Threshold. If so, the MNI document is considered to be a juvenile record.

Pawn: No Juvenile warnings or restrictions enforced.

Property & Evidence: No Juvenile warnings or restrictions enforced.

Registrants: Compares the date of the registrant document with the DOB of the registrant to see if he/she is below the Juvenile Threshold. If so, the document is considered to be a juvenile record.

Warrants: No Juvenile warnings or restrictions enforced.