CJ Griffin Quoted in New Jersey Monitor regarding Transparency in Law Enforcement Records

CJ Griffin, Partner and Director of the Justice Gary S. Stein Public Interest Center at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C., was quoted in a New Jersey Monitor article, “Lags in Criminal Justice Reporting Raise Reformers’ Concerns About Transparency.” The article discusses delays in the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office annual report for law enforcement records, which has yet to be released for this year. Griffin, who works extensively with Open Public Records Act (OPRA) litigations, speaks on the importance of transparency in police records.

“We have pretty extreme secrecy in this state, and the type of information we are able to access, largely, is statistics and reports. Keeping the public from seeing even that minimal amount of transparency is a broken promise. Secrecy in policing is a notorious problem that leads to less accountability and more corruption.”

Not only are there delays in the reports, but there are also concerns about the quality and vetting of information that is released in these reports.

“It seemed like with the AG’s last two reports, they just sort of took anything that was submitted and threw it into a PDF and released it to the public without in any way seeing if it was in compliance,” she said. “But taking so long is unacceptable, because the public’s waiting for this and there could be a better system,” said Griffin.

Griffin was also highlighted in the New Jersey Monitor's "Morning Monitor" Newsletter.

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