State Judiciary officials hope a new electronic system will allow it to collect more unpaid traffic fines and fees.

Last month, the state used the system to refer almost $6.2 million in delinquent traffic judgments to Municipal Services Bureau, a Texas-based collection agency specializing in government collections.

That's a significant improvement over the old manual system. From October 2005 to October 2007, staff sent manually prepared referrals worth $7.9 million to the collection agency. Of that, about $777,160 — less than 10 percent — had been collected as of October 2007.

Since the electronic system also can receive money, the rate of collections sped up last month and the state had $82,000 electronically deposited into its bank accounts.

"The Judiciary's computer system, JIMS, allows us to automatically and electronically send and receive delinquent account information daily through a secure interface, thereby reducing the amount of manual intervention required," Thomas Keller, administrative director of the courts, said in a news release.

"We expect that the percentage of monies collected on delinquent accounts will significantly increase because once the collection agency receives this information, it will pursue persons who have chosen not to pay their fines."

Once the state catches up with its backlog of delinquent cases, the newer ones will go to the collection agency automatically.

The computer system will automatically refer unpaid judgments of $500 or less after 90 days and those greater than $500 after 180 days.

"Now that the computer system does it automatically, it doesn't involve any staff time," said Deena White, JIMS program manager.

It also doesn't require any staff to figure out when the judgments become delinquent, which previously required printing out a report, preparing the collection referrals manually and mailing them to Texas.

Once the judgment has been referred, the payments will go directly to Municipal Services Bureau, which is required to pay the agency's fee of 21 percent of the total amount owed to the state.

The prompt collection agency referrals could lead to more timely payment when people realize that the collections will be more aggressive. Many of the referrals sent out last month were to repeat offenders or involved years-old cases.

"Justice is promoted when judgments are enforced," Keller said.

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com.