South Dakota FY2014 National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP)

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.

The South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), located within the Office of Attorney General, is the state's NCHIP administering agency. Under this award, DCI will use funds to support two main projects: 1) Funds will support 90% of two FTE positions assigned to the DCI Identifications Section to complete a variety of data entry tasks, including processing civil and criminal background checks, completing audits of noncriminal justice records, and responding to NICS inquiries. South Dakota started to submit disqualifying mental health records to NICS on July 1, 2014. A key focus of the grant-funded staff in FY 2014 will be to implement the new reporting requirements and ensure that the appropriate mental health disqualifiers are being submitted to NICS; and 2) Funds will be used to support the first phase of a multi-year effort to replace all thirty-six of the state's Livescan units. The state's current Livescans are using an outdated version of Microsoft XP and the majority are over six years old. The current Livescans are starting to fail and many of the state's high volume jurisdictions have to wait for a portable Livescan or process fingerprints by ink and roll methods due to system downtime. The state determined that it is not technically feasible or economical to attempt to upgrade to a new platform. FY 2014 funds will be used to purchase ten Livescan units and two Batchscan units to transmit records to IAFIS. The state identified which ten agencies would receive the Livescan units during the project period based on need and on the volume of fingerprints processed. The ten agencies selected to receive the new machines account for 68% of all submissions to DCI. The state requested the two Batchscan machines for DCI use to process non-criminal justice agency fingerprint based applicant background checks. In 2013, DCI processed 25,173 checks. DCI is also responsible for processing ink and roll submissions for counties that do not currently have a Livescan. In the past 12 months, DCI has processed about 1,260 ink and roll submissions. The Livescan and Batchscan replacements will ensure that South Dakota can continue to submit timely and accurate records to the state and national systems. (CA/NCF)