State senators want to find ways to "permanently alleviate" a backlog of nearly 77,000 arrest warrants held by Hawai'i law enforcement agencies, a problem detailed last month in a series of news stories in The Advertiser.

Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Makaha), head of the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs, introduced a resolution this week calling for creation of a task force to determine precisely how many unserved bench warrants are in the hands of law enforcement and find ways to eliminate the backlog.

The resolution incorporated The Advertiser's findings that in January there were 76,881 outstanding bench warrants representing as much as $20 million in unpaid fines and court fees, and that the backlog creates a public safety concern.

The state needs to "find a permanent solution to this problem and clear up the current backlog and ensure that, in the future, arrest warrants are served in a timely manner," the resolution said.

Task force members would include representatives of the attorney general's office, the Judiciary, the state Sheriff Division, county prosecutors, the public defender's office and county police departments.

In discussing the bench warrant backlog yesterday before the state House Committee on Public Safety and Military Affairs, Department of Public Safety director Frank Lopez said the department's Sheriff Division lacks the staffing to handle the workload.

The Sheriff Division holds more than 50,000 unserved traffic court arrest warrants. Despite insufficient staffing, the agency is "looking at other creative means for mass serving of these warrants," Lopez said.

He would not elaborate.

Support was voiced in the same hearing for the hiring of retired police officers to help serve the backlogged warrants. But the state attorney general's office said the idea isn't legally feasible and should wait until the proposed task force studies the problem.

In the meantime, the number of unserved warrants continues to climb because of problems with a new state Judiciary computer system called the Judiciary Information Management System, or JIMS.

Courts officials testified yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, seeking passage of a bill that will allow the JIMS system to electronically place the signatures of traffic court judges and official court seals on JIMS-generated warrants.

Because the legal change wasn't made before the JIMS system began operating in November, issuance of thousands of new traffic bench warrants has been held up while court personnel manually process the paperwork.

The outstanding JIMS warrants are scheduled to be delivered to state sheriffs by April 1.

Should the new law pass, traffic court bench warrants will be held in electronic form and printed, signed and sealed only when the warrants are served.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.