Vermont FY 2021 NCHIP

Under this award, The Vermont Department of Public Safety will use NCHIP FY20 funds to conduct a series of tasks to improve their ability to report and improve the quality of records at the state and national level. VTDPS will use agency employees on an overtime basis to review a backlog of cases for possible expungement. The overtime will not exceed ten hours per week for the two employees assigned to this project. Under Vermont law, fingerprints taken pursuant to an arrest must be destroyed if the case does not end with a conviction. Frequently the Vermont Crime Information Center (VCIC) receives arrest fingerprints on cases for which no disposition information is received or a non-conviction disposition is received from the courts. Unless the VCIC can link the arrest with a conviction disposition the fingerprints must be destroyed and the case must be expunged from the III. It is, therefore, in the interests of both the VCIC and III to determine whether or not any conviction occurred in these cases and to update record systems accordingly. VTDPS will upgrade the staff computers and continue to use existing staff on an overtime basis not to exceed 15 hours per week to continue their efforts to becoming a NFF state. In this effort the state has started to take control of the records (currently maintained by the FBI) so, they can be updated and full disposition reporting can be made available via III.