West Virginia FY 2021 National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP)

Under this award, the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety (WV DMAPS) will use funds to sub-award grants to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia (“Court”), West Virginia State Police (WVSP) and SEARCH costs. Specifically, the Court will use funds to continually support the efforts and projects that they have built up over the past seven years. This entails continuing efforts to automate the criminal record creation process in West Virginia to ensure the integration of record improvement initiatives. To achieve this, the Court will continue to use resources to convene meetings of the Records Improvement Committee and the IT Working Group to guide the development and implementation of automated recordkeeping systems. Once complete, the Court will finalize a strategic plan with SEARCH and stakeholders to automate the criminal record creation process in WV. Further, the Court will complete the development of the West Virginia Charge Code Database to ensure all law enforcement and court recordkeeping systems can effectively communicate. Additionally, the Court will use funds to replace aging and critical technology to ensure the continued availability of data that is directly accessible or made available to national record systems. The state current has a five (5) technology refresh project to ensure the safety and security of records and their systems. Lastly, the Courts, in conjunction with WVSP, will use funds continually improve the reporting of accurate missing dispositions to the WVSP Criminal Identification Bureau and eventually to the federal records systems. In their FY 2019 award, the WVSP acquired and have since implemented a new CCH system which greatly enhanced the ability of the Court and WVSP to communicate and transmit data. This process is possible and will continually improve the State’s ability to report by hiring data clerks and disposition staff to conduct the manual searches necessary to locate and enter this data.