Nearly 4,000 bench warrants calling for the arrest of traffic offenders and issued through a new $13 million computer system cannot be served because state court officials discovered too late that the orders lack legally valid court signatures and seals.

A temporary fix to the problem may not be in place for another two months, when the number of unserved warrants could swell to 6,000, according to Judiciary officials and court data. Even then the issue may not be fully resolved until June, and only if the Legislature and Gov. Linda Lingle approve changes to a state law.

City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle said he finds it "unacceptable" that it will take another two months before the new warrants are sent to the state Sheriff Division to be served.

The warrants will add to a backlog of unserved court orders that as of Jan. 1 totaled about 61,500. The existing backlog was bad even before problems arose with the new computer system, Carlisle said.

The first phase of the state courts' computer system known as JIMS — short for Judiciary Information Management System — was supposed to cut through the time-consuming process of producing large amounts of paper bench warrants. The system allows judges to issue so-called "paperless" warrants that are stored in electronic form, then printed only when the subject of the warrant is arrested.

Since November, judges have issued about 3,900 such paperless warrants but Judiciary officials discovered that none can be served until the law is changed to allow a judge's signature and an official court seal to be "electronically" placed on the warrant. The change may not be adopted until June.

To get around the problem for now, the courts will need to produce paper copies of the paperless warrants so they can be properly filed at the sheriff's office and eventually served, according to court officials.

The glitch with the courts' new JIMS computer project has compounded the problem of unserved warrants, which is frustrating law enforcement officials and eroding public safety. As with other aspects of the problem, a lack of resources has been hampering the solution.

Court clerks couldn't immediately begin producing the paper versions of the paperless warrants because they had to first clear away a backlog of some 2,200 warrants from the courts' old computer system, known as TRAVIS.

"The TRAVIS warrants system is very paper-intensive," said state Intermediate Court of Appeals Judge Corinne Watanabe.

Some 1,300 of the TRAVIS warrants were sent to the Sheriff Division recently so court clerks could then start on the JIMS warrants, Watanabe said, but the work will likely go slowly because the Judiciary doesn't have enough clerical workers.

Paper copies of the paperless warrants for November and December should be delivered to the sheriffs by mid-April or sooner, according to Judiciary spokeswoman Marsha Kitagawa.

Kitagawa said statutory changes for the paperless warrants were enacted in 2002, but the Judiciary more recently discovered another statute exists that requires a court seal be impressed on court documents. So the Judiciary is proposing a bill in the current legislative session to clearly provide that court documents like bench warrants may be electronically signed and sealed, she said.

'FRUSTRATING' PROBLEM

When the new warrants are eventually received by the Sheriff Division, another bottleneck will be created because overworked division clerks have to process and file the new paperwork.

Officials have found another problem with the JIMS system: It electronically activates new warrants in law enforcement computers, making it look as if they're available for service when they're really not.

When police stop a driver for a traffic offense and check their computers to see if the driver has outstanding warrants, they get a "hit" if there's a new JIMS warrant, said sheriff's personnel.

"They (police) call us and want to come over and pick up the warrant, but we have to tell them we don't have it," said Melva Ferreira, chief clerk of the Sheriff Division. "It's very frustrating."

JIMS also doesn't allow sheriffs and police to notify the computer system when a warrant has been successfully served. That theoretically means the same individual can be arrested more than once for the same offense, Watanabe acknowledged.

"We've agreed internally that a few individuals at outside agencies will be authorized to make those entries," the judge said.

The JIMS system is also taken offline for three hours every night for maintenance and other work such as transmission of new conviction information to law enforcement computers. But police say they need access to the information in the system 24 hours a day, Watanabe said.

"We've asked our consultant to address that issue," she said.

The JIMS system will eventually streamline and integrate all state courts civil, criminal, traffic and jury system records as well as accounting functions, according to officials.

The prime contractor is ACS Government Services Inc., a subsidiary of Affiliated Computers Systems Inc. ACS is the Texas-based company that operated the short-lived and controversial traffic camera system here in 2002. The Legislature repealed the program in April 2002 in the face of public opposition and court challenges to its legality.

Kitagawa said the overall JIMS contract was priced at $11.9 million. She said change orders to the contract have added another $1.1 million to the price tag.

"There have been many customizations that the Judiciary felt (were) needed," Kitagawa said.

And, she indicated, the price may go up again.

"It is unrealistic to think there will be no other cost change orders," Kitagawa said.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com and Ken Kobayashi at kkobayashi@honoluluadvertiser.com.