Ohio FY24 NCHIP

The Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) will use funds to improve the reporting of dispositions and reporting to NICS of persons who are prohibited from possessing firearms for reasons related to mental health. Only 55% of arrests entered into Ohio’s criminal records system have a final disposition on file. The large volume of paper criminal records submitted to BCI renders those records inaccessible in state and federal background checks. With previous NCHIP funding, BCI hired eight full-time employees tasked exclusively with converting paper records into digital records. Funding for these positions will expire at the end of December 2024. Budget constraints amongst local agencies have also made it difficult to fund staff charged with updating missing records. BCI is requesting funding to purchase at least 30 live scans for local courts throughout the state to decrease the number of electronically submitted dispositions that have been rejected because no arrest/fingerprint record was associated with the incident; to provide sub-grant awards to local courts for disposition recovery; and to continue to compensate eight employees tasked with the continued conversion of paper criminal files and criminal arrest fingerprint cards into electronic format.