Maine Criminal History Record 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 Maine State Police will continue the effort of capturing and linking records in the State's CCH to reduce the current backlog of fingerprint cards. Several employees will work an additional 10 hours per week to process the State Bureau of Identification's (SBI) 70,000 hard copy fingerprint cards and consolidate them into an existing record. Staff will keep track of the number of cards processed, records built, and the number of felonies, domestic violence charges, and sex offences that are found and processed. SBI should be able to create roughly 600 new records per month with each person processing approximately 10 cards per week. Once these records are built into Maine's criminal history repository, they will be made available to the state's sex offender registry and the FBI. (CA/NCF)