Request By:
Roosevelt Elswick
Kentucky State Reformatory
La Grange, Kentucky 40032
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
You have written the attorney general complaining that the Pike County Sheriff's Department has not responded to your request for copies of records made under the open records law, KRS 61.870 - 61.884. In a letter dated October 23, 1982 you requested copies of seven (7) categories of records pertaining to you and relating to criminal charges against you in Pike County. A description of the records you requested by copied and sent to you is more than one typewritten page long and we will not repeat it here. The description specifies "arrest warrants and their supporting affidavits," statements and confessions made by you, statements made by an alleged rape victim, statements made by witnesses, reports of the results of medical examinations of the rape victim arrest warrants and supporting affidavits pertaining to one Junior Miller and statements made by Lucy Elswick pertaining to Junior Miller. You stated in your request letter that you expected to pay a fee of ten cents per page for a copy of the described records. You also made the following statement:
"Please be advised that a final disposition on the above charges named in above Request #1 was made on May 27, 1982 in the Pike Circuit Court in Indictment No. 80-CR-176; completing prosecution and investigation in the case. Further, that the witnesses who gave statements are known by this Applicant and their lives and safety are in no danger or threat."
OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
The records you describe, if they exist, are public records and, if prosecution has been completed as you state, they are open to public inspection. However, a sheriff's office or a police department is not necessarily required to send copies to a requester by mail. In OAG 76-375 we stated as follows:
"The right to have copies of records is ancillary to the right of inspection and does not stand by itself. If a person has not inspected the records he desires to copy and cannot describe them with specificity, there is no requirement that copies of any records must be delivered to him."
We recognize that you are unable to personally go to the Pike County Sheriff's Office and inspect the records because of your confinement in the Kentucky State Reformatory but you could have some other person do that for you. Although a prison inmate has the same right to inspect public records as any other person, it is not incumbent upon a public agency to provide records to inmates who are unable to go to the office where the records are kept because of their legal confinement, OAG 79-446. The open records law does not contemplate that a public agency shall send requested records to a person who has not inspected them. KRS 61.874 provides as follows:
"(1) Upon inspection, the applicant shall have the right to make abstracts of the public records and memoranda thereof, and to obtain copies of all written public records. When copies are requested, the custodian may require a written request and advance payment of the prescribed fee. It the applicant desires copies of public records other than written records, the custodian of such records shall permit the applicant to duplicate such records, however, the custodian may ensure that duplication will not damage or alter the records.
(2) The public agency may prescribe a reasonable fee for making copies of public records which shall not exceed the actual cost thereof not including the cost of staff required."
In summary, it is our opinion that a sheriff's office is not required to send a copy of records which have not been inspected by the requester even though the requester is an inmate who is not able to personally inspect the records because of legal confinement.