Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2017, $644,912)
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 the 2017 NCHIP priority areas 1 (updating and automating case outcomes in state records and the FBIs Criminal History File) and 2 (automating access information concerning persons prohibited from possessing or receiving a firearm and transmitting relevant records to II, NCIC, and the NICS), the New York State, Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) will administer and conduct one project to perform the analysis to extend the Juvenile Transmission System to Adult Court Processing.
The current process for transmitting disposition data from the Office of Court Administration (OCA) to the statewide criminal history database (CCH) maintained by the DCJS is an inefficient, decades old process with limited capability to handle real-time transmissions or any significant increase in disposition volume. DCJS receives dispositions and Defendant histories from OCA to update the State Criminal History records with information entered into the court administration records. The processing method of adult court case data received from OCA is done at a transaction level instead of processing the court case. This method requires getting criminal history records multiple times, and applying updates and deletes numerous times before the final outcome is known. Approximately 1.5 million disposition records are received per month. This disposition reporting schedule impacts RAP sheet accuracy, the various state and federal criminal history lookups, and hinders the proper sealing of adult records. In addition, the inefficient processing method impacts downstream to other various state and federal reporting systems.
The FY 2017 project will be in collaboration with DCJS and OCA to perform the business and system analysis to extend the new Juvenile Transmission system to Adult Court Processing. The Juvenile Transmission system is currently under development by the DCJS and OCA team with FY 2015 NCHIP funds, and there is additional FY 2016 NCHIP funds to provide any enhancement that are required once the system goes into production. The FY 2017 NCHIP project will revise the current processing to incorporate case-based record processing in lieu of processing individual transactions. This will be achieved by building on the case-based juvenile transmission system to handle adult disposition reporting. In addition, the existing disposition reporting mechanism is integrated with the transfer of incoming arrest records from DCJS. The solution would separate the existing transmission of reporting of (and corrections to) arrest records. As a result, the process will also facilitate the modernizing of the arrest reporting process by redesigning the transfer process and underlying data model, which includes being implemented for all adult disposition reporting and updates to Criminal History records.
The goals and benefits of the project include increased timeliness and accuracy of criminal disposition reporting; improved criminal history records will lead to improved public safety and more accurate information made available to Federal databases; reduced costs due to inefficiencies with the current method of processing; and enhancing electronic transmission of disposition data between OCA and DCJS systems. (CA/NCF)