Semi-Public Definition
Just with the majority of documents about anything, there are levels to the secrecy of those documents about who can reach and read them and who can not.
Some documents are open to the public, and everyone can take a look at them, use them for research, quote it, and share it anywhere they want as they are public records.
There are also some records that are highly classified, and no one outside a certain jurisdiction cannot see, read, or share those documents with anyone.
Somewhere in the middle of these types, there is a type called semi-public.
As the name suggests, semi-public public records are the records that are partially open to some persons outside of a regular jurisdiction or organization.
This could be to the public or to a different department outside of where that document belongs.
It could also mean that the document is entirely open to the public, but some information within that document is blacked out so that people cannot see or know about those blacked-up parts due to laws or other important details being disclosed in those parts.
Both of these types of semi-public documents are generally for some court documents or documents that need clarifying by the public, yet some details are important not to disclose or some documents that some people need to see outside of the normal jurisdiction.
In the case where the record is shared with some other people outside of a regular constituency, generally, there are no blacked-out parts to make the document as clear as possible.
Why Do We Have Semi-Public?
Semi-public documents are not as common as entirely public or highly classified documents because, generally, if a document is highly classified, no one else needs to see that document outside of that department or organization.
However, in some cases, in general law or police matters, the documents need to be shared with external partners like lawyers or institutions that need to take a look at the paper to determine a decision or help with something.
This allows the important documents to be easily shared without having to worry about whether the public will know about them or not (in the case where the file is only shared with certain departments and not the entire public).
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The Verdict
To sum it up, semi-public public records have two ways of use; one is sharing the document with some other people in a different organization or department and allowing them to read the document without any problem or access problems.
The other is sharing the document with the public but with blacked-out parts of the important things on the record.
This allows the public to have information regarding the topic and the record while allowing for the people to be still discreet about their information on the entire topic of the record.
This is done to allow some information to go out there and protect people or cases from any problem.
Semi-public records are generally there to share a normally classified record with people who do not have the clarification to do so.
Amit Gupta is the founder of PublicRecordsSearch.org. Amit has spent half a decade learning about and working in the background screening industry. After completing his high school certification, Amit decided to focus on helping others make informed decisions by creating PublicRecordsSearch.org.