Rhode Island Criminal History Improvement Program

The goal of the National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP) is to improve the Nation's safety and security by enhancing the quality, completeness, and accessibility of criminal history record information and by insuring the nationwide implementation of criminal justice and noncriminal justice background check systems. BJS provides direct financial and technical assistance to the states to improve criminal history and other related records and to build their infrastructure to connect to national record check systems both to supply information and to conduct the requisite checks.

Under this award, the Rhode Island Public Safety Grant Administration Office (PSGAO), the state's NCHIP administering agency, will use funds to complete tasks associated with two projects: 1) PSGAO will subaward funds to the Rhode Island Supreme Court to support 26 overtime sessions for staff to research and resolve missing court dispositions. It is estimated that the sessions will allow the courts to research and enter dispositions for at least 9,000 criminal cases (misdemeanors and felonies) during the grant performance period; and 2) PSGAO will subaward funds to the Rhode Island State Police to support the purchase and installation of a proxy server system for the Rhode Island Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (RILETS) that will offer the diversity and redundancy needed to ensure the timely and accurate exchange of data between criminal justice practitioners and the state and national databases they access. The RILETS network is currently comprised of legacy frame relay data circuits and its network will be decommissioned by the vendor within the near future. The legacy network is overly dependent on one technology and does not offer the redundancy required for timely accurate exchanges of criminal history and other critical data. CA/NCF