Expanding on our May post outlining the process of civil grand juries in California, our latest blog details a recent report issued by a Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury. The Grand Jury initially launched an investigation of contracting procedures related to the football stadium built in Santa Clara, however after the city failed to respond to numerous public records requests, the Grand Jury shifted its focus to the city’s noncompliance with California Public Records Act (CPRA) law. The Grand Jury’s report includes helpful background on the CPRA and an agency’s duty to respond to requests, as well as a detailed account of all the records requested by the Grand Jury and how each request was handled. In this instance, the Grand Jury also exercised its right under California law to request that the City of Santa Clara respond to the report’s findings and recommendations.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón has become the first DA in California to post prosecution statistics on a publicly available website.  The DA Stat site hosts three dashboards - arrests presented, incoming caseload and trials - containing statistical information on both felony and misdemeanor matters presented to and acted on by Gascón’s office. Data on the DA Stat site goes back to 2011 and is updated monthly. 

The key to any analysis of public records is understanding the proper context of the records, which speak the language and impart the meaning contemporaneous with the time in which they were created. If the context under which the records were created is misunderstood, then the analysis can be misconfigured and lead to erroneous conclusions. In this blog, we discuss how the controversy surrounding major errors discovered in author Naomi Wolf latest book, “Outrages” Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love,” provides a cautionary tale of misunderstood language leading to a misconfigured context. The lesson for researchers:  be very careful about your understanding of terms and always remember that the understanding is contemporary to the usage, not to the present time.

The Arsolen Archives, International Center on Nazi Persecution recently uploaded more than 13 million documents to a new online archive.  Working with the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, the archive has created a database that contains concentration camp prisoner cards and death notices among many additional types of documents.  In total, the recently uploaded documents feature information on over 2.2 million people persecuted by the Nazis. 

It has become much easier to research international corporations thanks to the OpenCorporates database, which is the largest open database of companies in the world with over 169 million companies and over 223 million officers indexed from 131 jurisdictions.  When approaching large corporate entities with an international reach, OpenCorporates provides a useful starting point and is especially helpful in narrowing the list of jurisdictions where companies are registered and in obtaining online corporate registration filings. 

In most cities, the procurement of goods or services follows similar steps – the process starts with the city agency in need of the services writing a bid solicitation or Request for Proposal (RFP), which is then released publicly.  Bid solicitations have traditionally been published in an official city newspaper, though many cities have also begun to list open RFPs online.  New York City, for example, publishes a city newspaper called The City Record that lists all open contracts, as well as public hearings, property auctions and personnel changes within departments. Researchers interested in the public contracting process should familiarize themselves with the exact process in the locale in which they are working and also probe for the existence of resources like The City Record.

In the U.S., each county uses the proceeds from the county’s portion of phone and commissary payments to maintain an inmate welfare fund, which is typically overseen by the County Sheriff’s office and designed to improve the quality of life of inmates. However, the San Diego Union-Tribune recently obtained a full accounting of how that county’s inmate welfare fund has been administered and found that millions of dollars from the fund have been used to pay for county jail staff and operations, including on out-of-county travel and staff cell phones.  The Union-Tribune’s analysis is a good reminder to be on the lookout for discretionary accounts controlled by research subjects that are outside of the normal budgeting process, even if they are ostensibly allocated for other purposes.

A fascinating story in last week’s New York Times discusses the release of years old CIA cables and reports that are being put to use in Argentina as prosecutors pursue cases related to that country’s “Dirty War.” The release of the records illustrates the unique role that the National Security Archive plays in using the FOIA to force the release and declassification of government records. The National Security Archive has filed over 60,000 FOIA requests - including numerous FOIA request related to the “Dirty War” beginning in 2002 - and forced the release of millions of pages of previously classified records in service of its mission to “check rising government secrecy.”

The practice of civil asset forfeiture has drawn increased scrutiny in the U.S. in recent years, with increasing pressure from the public to reign in misuse of the practice.  There are few transparency requirements for most state and federal civil forfeiture laws and researchers should be aware that in many cases the only way to obtain information about how asset forfeiture funds are spent is through public records requests.