Randall and Elizabeth got in trouble with the law for different reasons. Randall was charged with assault. Elizabeth was charged with theft. The complete names of Randall and Elizabeth, their ages, races, booking numbers – and a description of the state laws they broke – are now available at the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office Web site.

It’s a citizen-friendly way to research the men and women who have been booked into – or released from – the Spokane County Jail, Geiger Corrections Center and also those on home monitoring.

The information has long been part of public record. But members of the public didn’t always know it was available. And it certainly wasn’t easy to access the information, unless a person called the jail or showed up to look at the roster printed out each day.

During his campaign for Spokane County sheriff, Ozzie Knezovich promised openness on the job. He’s delivering on this promise. The inmate roster on the Web site serves as a model of openness, accessibility and immediacy; it is updated approximately four times a day.

Leaders in the region’s law enforcement agencies and municipalities should take a look and consider how the model might be adapted to their organizations. It’s also in place in other law enforcement agencies around the country. Lt. Edee Hunt, who spearheaded the inmate roster project, told The Spokesman-Review that “it’s a popular feature that many agencies have used.”

Journalists watchdog public agencies to determine how well they adhere to open-records laws. But keep in mind that records belong to all citizens, not just to journalists or to the public employees generating the records or to the employees in charge of releasing them.

So which citizens benefit by knowing who is in custody and why? Start with the suspects. Part of living in a free, open society means that when your freedom is taken from you because you are charged with a crime, this is public knowledge, announced in public records. Suspects cannot easily be hidden away in secret prisons here.

The victims of crime benefit from a public jail roster because it can help them track a suspect’s whereabouts and release dates. Reading through the entire roster also provides citizens an unscientific but informative snapshot of the region’s crime patterns.

Ultimately, all citizens benefit from accessible records because public money is used to fight the legal battles that can occur when records are not released. For instance, two of the open-records legal challenges filed in recent years by The Spokesman-Review are in the supreme sourts of Washington and Idaho. Court cases leave an expensive paper trail for taxpayers. The default mode should always be for openness.

The Sheriff’s Office’s bold move to place the jail roster on its Web site signals a positive culture shift. Rather than find reasons not to release public information, Knezovich’s office found a way to do it more efficiently. As it should.