This is way different though. It’s not online forever.
Seems this thread has a problem with casual insurance fraud.
The internet is not American 
I did the same thing when a minivan I owned was scratched and slightly dented. You’re not really getting over on the insurance company if you pocket the money, since they don’t care if you fix your car or not.
How many times do people need to explain to you that it’s a necessary consequence of criminal proceedings being public?
I don’t have any pre-existing damage, I was responding to Marksman’s question about what would happen to a claim if someone had damage, took the money and didn’t get it repaired, then had another accident.
My car was basically in perfect condition before the accident.
That’s an interesting one, because if they were willing to admit fault, the judgment could have been entered pretty quickly… But I’m not a lawyer so I have no idea what “pretty quickly” would mean in this case. Obviously the EV/hr ends up low because the odds they ever come into a lump sum of $8K is going to be pretty low.
Its definitely not wrong to pocket the money and live with a damaged car if you didn’t do anything to get an inflated estimate or anything like that.
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In some places you can’t search it online, you have to put in a formal records request (which can cost money I think)… I’m pretty sure it’s always public record, though.
This will really upset you Clovis… In most states, if not all, all you need is someone’s license plate number and you can look up their home address from the Department of Motor Vehicle for whatever the fee is for the request ($20-50 probably).
Well for one thing, by the time it gets to the public records, the police and the district attorney have decided to bring charges. The record also shows whether they are dismissed or withdrawn or not, it is just a record of everything that is brought before the court.
If you don’t want there to be a public record then you have to be against court proceedings being open to the public, which seems like a really silly/bad idea.
No, that’s perfectly allowed and your insurance company won’t care. They have a record of the damage, so if you try to defraud them later you’re probably going to get yourself into trouble anyway. As long as you don’t lie to them about what happened, you’re not doing anything wrong.
dids 1.0 was really torn up over that one
We have open courtrooms but records are private.
I’m pretty surprised on this forum the idea of public criminal records, knowing what we know about the system, is not widely decried.
Fair, though I think we can mentally separate the two. Open government records are largely (always?) a good thing. Said records could be detrimental to some individuals due to the government being broken / criminal justice system being broken, but that is the fault of the system and not of the open records themselves.
There are probably plenty of ways in which open records can actually provide beneficial transparency into the system and reveal just how broken it is.
Dear god, I learn this during a car insurance conversation.
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Why should it be Private? Just how bad does something have to be before it should be public?
Better off limiting how much weight can be given to convictions or allowing
We know America is widely over criminalized.
We know that there is wide spread corruption.
We know there is nearly infinite power in the hands of prosecutors.
We know the legal infrastructure is increasingly right wing.
We know all the above is massively disproportionately targeted at minorities.
We know privacy from the state is a bedrock of democracy.
Private criminal records seem a logical extension of these.
Nice dodge, mind answering the questions?
My post specifically answered your first question on why it should be private. As for how bad, I don’t see a good reason for any criminal record to be easily searchable online by anyone.
“Privacy from the state”?
The arrest records are obviously available to the state. This is about whether state information is available to the public.
Good point. I guess I meant more generally. I’m not sure it is automatically available to all parts of the state.