Witnesses tell Judiciary panel Vermont’s criminal-history systems cannot selectively release sealed records under S.12

Jeffrey Walton, director of the Vermont Crime Information Center, told the House Judiciary Committee that VCIC treats expungement and sealing differently and that state systems are not currently structured to selectively release sealed records on request.

“If something is expunged, it’s as if it never happened,” Walton said, explaining that an expunged record is removed from VCIC and federal partners. He said a sealed record remains in VCIC but is “flagged as sealed” and must be filtered by staff before information is provided to non-law-enforcement requesters such as licensing agencies.

The committee heard the practical consequences from Christina Lynch, a Valcour subject-matter expert and contractor, who described how documents and incident files are stored at local agencies and in the Valcour records-management system. “When that order to seal comes in … we go in, and we have a button on the person’s name jacket in that incident. And that button says seal, and we click that button,” Lynch said, describing the agency-level action that marks a person or an incident as sealed inside Valcour.

Why it matters: committee members considering S.12 want to expand the set of convictions that can be sealed while still allowing law-enforcement use in defined circumstances. Witnesses told the panel that changing from expungement (which removes records entirely) to sealing (which retains records but hides them for most uses) shifts the technical and operational burden to VCIC and to local record systems.

Key operational takeaways

- VCIC is the state criminal-history repository and, Walton said, contains over 263,000 individual records. VCIC’s criminal-history entries are identity‑proofed (fingerprint-based); many agency record systems are not fingerprint‑proofed and are maintained separately.

- Expungement: VCIC removes expunged records from its systems and from federal partners; an expunged conviction “is as if it never happened,” Walton said. He added that an expungement typically eliminates related fingerprints and identifying fields from the state repository, leaving only aggregated data needed for national reporting.

- Sealing: a sealed record remains in VCIC and in the agency’s records but is flagged as sealed and is not provided to non-law-enforcement requesters without human review. Walton said processing a sealing order requires staff intervention and a quality check: two VCIC staff receive the court order, update the record and a second person performs a quality check.

- Technical limits: Walton said VCIC’s current database is a single repository that is flagged (sealed) rather than partitioned. To support the model in S.12 that would allow court-authorized release of sealed records to law enforcement on petition, Walton said the state would likely need to develop a separate dataset or new functionality; that would require time and funding.

- Valcour / agency records: Lynch explained that the underlying documents for incidents (affidavits, attachments, scanned reports) reside with the law‑enforcement agency and within Valcour. Agencies can choose to seal a person’s involvement or seal the entire incident; sealing an entire incident limits visibility to that agency only. Lynch said agencies that do not use Valcour (Windsor, Hartford and Norwich were cited as agencies on other systems) manage documents differently.

Policy and oversight

- VCIC and Valcour both operate under Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) rules for authorized users and authorized purposes; Walton noted the repository audits agencies roughly every three years and the FBI audits VCIC on a similar cycle. Walton said queries are expected to be submitted for authorized criminal-justice purposes and that misuse is most commonly an incorrect purpose code rather than malicious access.

- Federal partners and other states: witnesses said federal criminal-justice agencies can query Vermont records when they present an authorized purpose and follow CJIS rules; Valcour also contains federal ORIs (originating agency identifiers) for some federal agencies.

Committee concerns and next steps

Committee members raised multiple implementation questions: how to define “access” versus “use,” how exigent circumstances would be handled if the committee restricted routine visibility of sealed records, and who would bear the time and cost of building new database features. Walton and Lynch both recommended further technical analysis: Walton suggested the Agency of Digital Services or other IT staff be asked for cost/time estimates to create a separate dataset or capability, while Lynch offered to demonstrate Valcour’s demo system for the committee so members can see how records, flags and redactions appear in practice.

Distinction between discussion, direction and decision

- Discussion only: witnesses and members discussed how VCIC and Valcour currently store, flag and provide sealed and expunged records; the technical limitations of a single VCIC repository; and how agency practices differ when records are paper vs. electronic.

- Direction/assignment: committee members asked witnesses for more detail and asked staff to draft clarifying language for S.12 (examples included replacing the word “access” with “use” and defining exigent circumstances). Members asked for a Valcour demo and for the Agency of Digital Services to provide a cost/implementation estimate for any functionality that would segregate sealed records and allow court-authorized release.

- Formal decision: no vote occurred during this hearing; the committee continued the matter for additional testimony and technical follow-up.

Ending: committee members said they will continue testimony this afternoon and requested that Valcour representatives demonstrate the records system and that the state IT office provide technical cost estimates before the committee advances S.12 for further consideration.