Criminal Court Clerk
The duties of the Criminal Court Clerk are numerous and varied but basically break down to the keeper of the records for
the Criminal Courts of Hamilton County. There are three departments or divisions of Criminal Court Clerkâs Office: the
criminal division of General Sessions Courts, the Delinquent Collection division, and the Criminal Courts. There are 58
persons currently employed as Deputy Clerks by the Criminal Court Clerk as staff for these three divisions.
The Criminal Division of the General Sessions Court is always open (24 hours a day, 7 days a week). One office is located at the Hamilton
County Jail as a convenience to law enforcement officers. The other office is located in Room 108 of the Courts Building. General Sessions
Court clerks deal with all the paperwork involved with an arrest, state traffic violations, misdemeanor court hearings, and felony preliminary
court hearings. The Criminal Division of General Sessions Court handles over 50,000 cases each year.
The Delinquent Collections division is open Monday through Friday from 8:00 A.M. until 4:00
P.M.. Here the deputy clerks deal with the collection of court fines and court costs which are
over six (6) months past due. These clerks utilize many techniques in order to collect the money owed by defendants who have been ordered
to pay fines and/or court costs by either General Sessions Courts or Criminal Courts. They perform skip-tracing searches in an effort to
locate the defendants and garnish bank accounts, payrolls and commissary accounts. All efforts are made to work with each individual
defendant in setting up reasonable and realistic payment schedules while at the same time ensuring that the monies ordered by the courts
are paid in the shortest length of time.
The Criminal Courts division of the Office is open Monday through Friday from 8:00 A.M. until 4:00
P.M., and is located in Room 102 of the Courts Building. The clerks in the Criminal Court
division handle the record keeping for all criminal cases bound over to the Grand Jury, or appealed from Sessions Court and all local
municipal courts. This division also handles cases appealed from the Sessions Courts and local municipal courts. The Criminal Court
division handles approximately 6,000 new cases each year.
I invite all citizens to visit our office here in the Courts Building and become familiar with this division of the judicial branch of our government.
