Arizona FY 2016 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.

Arizona, through the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission (ACJC), will use funding as follows to address criminal history records information and arrest warrants.

Arizona, through the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission (ACJC), will use funding to address criminal history records information and arrest warrants. The following 8 projects focus on numerous NCHIP priority areas listed under the NCHIP solicitation:

1) Admin Services: ACJC will provide administrative oversight for the projects by tracking and monitoring performance in reviewing quarterly activity and financial reports. It also includes conducting site visits to ensure the agencies are meeting project goals and objectives.

2) Scottsdale PD – Criminal History Records Improvement: 4 Phase approach with 1st phase identifying a document vendor to assign orphan files and convert images. 2nd phase addresses the records retention issue and the combining of orphan and parent files to form a complete record. The 3rd and 4th phases involves importing all indexed files into a SQL database available for searching, report generation, cross-referencing and validation.

3) Apache Junction Livescan Update: The City has three expired Livescan devices which do not automatically transmit information to DPS, but rather the information is downloaded and sent via e-mail. The purchase and installment of three Livescans will provide a more efficient and effective manner for processing fingerprints to DPS.

4) Pinal County Sheriff’s Office – Records Improvement Program: PCSO serves as the central county repository for all police reports and related records. PCSO is currently understaffed and has about 769 boxes of handwritten, original arrest records that need to be scanned. The project will offer overtime to eligible staff members to scan and quality control the boxes of arrest booking records.

5) Disposition Backlog: Maricopa County AttorneyÂ’s Office (MCAO) will continue to reduce the backlog of dispositions with the goal of improving the records and reducing the backlog by 40k within 18 months. MCAO will use the same work model from previous projects by utilizing existing employees to manually enter the monthly new dispositions during the day and offer overtime to resolve the backlogged dispositions which stand at 174,876.

6) Pinal County Attorney’s Office – Criminal History Improvement Program: Pinal County is missing about 21,104 dispositions out of 73,913 felony arrest charges (29%) which has an impact on background checks and other prosecutorial charges. The project will employ 2 FTEs to resolve the disposition backlogs and implementation of disposition reporting from PCAO to DPS.

7) Department of Public Safety (DPS) – Fingerprint Imaging Backlog: The DPS has imaged over 4M paper records to electronic format: however, there are 269,781 fingerprint cards for non-NICS related charges that remain to be imaged. Imaging the cards will furnish assistance throughout AZ and the nation in criminal cases and provide a more efficient, complete and accessible criminal history records system.

8) DPS – AFIS Equipment Update: The current Livescan equipment is no longer supported by the manufacturer and is not compatible with the FBI NGI system standards. The DPS will purchase and install 13 Livescan devices to the 13 identified locations. (CA/NCF)