Delaware FY24 NCHIP

The Delaware Criminal Justice Information System (DELJIS) is the State’s central repository for criminal history information.  In November of 2021, the Delaware General Assembly passed Senate Bill 111, otherwise known as the “Clean Slate Act.”  This bill requires the State Bureau of Identification (SBI), in conjunction with DELJIS and the Courts, to create an automatic expungement process for adult and juvenile charges that are eligible for mandatory expungement. SBI must identify and expunge cases eligible for automatic mandatory expungement on a monthly basis.  DELJIS’s role in this process is to create an electronic system capable of identifying eligible individuals, cases, and charges and supply this information to the SBI. DELJIS seeks funds to expand efforts that started with the Superior Court to all courts, including the Justice of the Peace, Court of Common Please, and Family Court. Preliminary reviews of existing records show an additional 143,000 dispositions from the remaining Courts that would need review, research, and resolution of a final disposition. DELJIS will identify individuals, cases, and charges where the disposition mismatch exists, provide this list to the relevant court, the court will then research each case and provide DELJIS with a ruling on a final disposition, at which point DELJIS will update the records within CJIS. These efforts will result in cleaning up inaccurate, pending, and open dispositions for citizens of Delaware which is the goal behind the “Clean Slate Act.” The SBI and DELJIS team will also use funds to send additional staff to criminal justice conferences to expand employees’ knowledge base and support training opportunities.