Indiana Courthouse Runs Short Of Space Amid Record Backlog

PERU, Ind. (AP) — A north-central Indiana county's courthouse is running so short of storage space for court documents that records are now stacked up in hallways, attics and offices.

Miami County Clerk Tawna Leffel-Sands tells the Kokomo Tribune the courthouse has eight years' worth of records, including marriage certificates and court filings.

She says the records are accumulating because Indiana requires counties to hold on to official documents for a specific time period before they can be placed on microfilm and destroyed.

Leffel-Sands says a county addendum to state code requires the clerk's office to keep records for five years before they can be microfilmed.

She says the county used to microfilm its own documents, but that stopped in 2007, when the machine broke and was never replaced.