In consideration of the rights of citizens of the United States, the court has given an order to provide civilians the right to know about public records and criminal data. The New York State Unified Court System has opened up a website called “webcrims.”
The website is an open-source platform that lets general people request easy access to court records and case information. Webcrims keeps information regarding criminal cases in various cities like New York City, Nassau Counties, County Courts in the Ninth Judicial District like the counties in Rockland, Putam, Westchester, Orange, and Dutchess, and the county court in Erie.
Whatever information you want to access, whether civil cases, trial courts, or small claims, are not instantly provided. The website acts as a request engine. It takes a lot of time to provide the requested documents that the user requested from the database.
Users can frequently check to see if the data they asked for is available or not. Webcrims give you access to various information, including case records and case summary.
Case Identifier Search on Webcrims – courts.state.ny.us
- First, you have to visit the official page for New York City at https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcrim_attorney/AttorneyWelcome
- Then go and read all the terms and conditions and all the important notices provided before you can search them up on the website. You have to comply with all the terms and verify the Captcha to prove that you are not a robot. Then you would have to click on “I agree.”
- Then, you are redirected to the search page, where you will get three options to choose how you will search for the cases and then fill out all the details and click search to get results.
The website provides you with three search criteria. Those three search methods are Case Identifier Search, Defendant Name Search, and Court Calendar Search.
The Case Identifier option lets you search for the case through case number or summons number. This search option is an excellent way to get the records like court date, case type, case summary, claims, appeals, and more.
The Case Identifier search provides you with just the case file you need without you having to go through many cases to find the one you are looking for. This search engine uses “summons number” to search for your file, unique for every case. So, you get the best results with this search.
How to use the NY State Court Case Identifier Search
You will get two dialogue boxes where you would need to put the information.
- The first dialogue box will ask you for either the case number or the summons number.
- The second dialogue box will give you an option to narrow down all the search results by filtering through County or Court.
- Lastly, you can choose whether you want to receive the data as a pdf document or simply on the website.
This way, within a matter of a few weeks, you can get access to all the information permitted by the law to be shared with civilians.
Sometimes a judge may seal a case, and you will not be able to access the information, or a case where only an arrest took place might not be available either. The cases not having a future date are also not available.
This system is terrible. There is no description of the format and cases often aren’t here even when they are still open.