Juvenile files stored by Craighead County’s Circuit Clerk’s office have not been destroyed in many years, which is a violation of a state law. Circuit Clerk Candace Edwards informed the Craighead County Quorum Court about the issue last night. Juvenile court records are required to be destroyed on the 21st birthday of that juvenile, unless those files meet four sets of criteria. Edwards says she was informed the county was violating state law by not destroying those files when a pair of deputies went to a conference in Little Rock and learned about the problem. Edwards says the office is looking at destroying hundreds of files this year and working back to the last 40 or 50 years. She says there will be many hours of work done by her office to meet the state law’s requirements, as she estimates that thousands of files will have to be found and then destroyed. She says she is working on trying to find solutions to the problem and hope to present them to the quorum court next month.
Johnathan Reaves is the News Director for KASU Public Radio. As part of an Air Force Family, he moved to Arkansas from Minot, North Dakota in 1986. He was first bitten by the radio bug after he graduated from Gosnell High School in 1992. While working on his undergraduate degree, he worked at KOSE, a small 1,000 watt AM commercial station in Osceola, Arkansas. Upon graduation from Arkansas State University in 1996 with a degree in Radio-Television Broadcast News, he decided that he wanted to stay in radio news. He moved to Stuttgart, Arkansas and worked for East Arkansas Broadcasters as news director and was there for 16 years.