Florida's Criminal History Improvement Program, FY 2017

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 award, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) will conduct three projects.

Computerized Criminal History Staff Support. FDLE is required by state law to act as the central repository for criminal history records for the State of Florida. FDLE currently has more than 6.8 million criminal history records containing more than 27.1 million arrest entries. Approximately 23% of felony arrest records do not have court dispositions entered into the state file. Eight percent of subjects have fingerprint records available only on microfilm, not in the state’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). While the state makes use of technology to manage the bulk of incoming criminal history data, there are many manual processes involved in addressing the disposition and fingerprint record deficiencies. This project will continue current Other Personal Services (OPS) staff to assist in the research, retrieval, and entry of data into Florida’s criminal history systems and improve the quality and completeness of records available for background checks.

Computerized Criminal History Programming. The Florida Computerized Criminal History (CCH) system, is more than 40-years old and still serves as the primary shared stakeholder system for criminal justice and law enforcement in the state. This system is also used by the Firearm Eligibility System (FES) to complete firearm related background checks, as well as report Florida’s criminal history record information to the national system. FDLE is addressing the replacement of its older CCH system. However, that process will overlap multiple fiscal years and require the continued approval and implementation of state legislative funding. In the interim, the legacy CCH will require minor modifications, enhancements, and/or program updates to add or change functionality with disposition, firearm, biometric identification systems, and other related applications that interface or use the CCH. Continued programming to the current CCH system is required to ensure these ancillary applications communicate with and retrieve information from the CCH and maintain business workflows. In addition, CCH programming on the existing platform helps ensure the availability of NICS disqualifying records available via the Interstate Identification Index (III) and increases the percent of potentially disqualifying records that contain the necessary final court dispositions.

Comprehensive Case Information System. Florida’s digital court records contain over 134 million cases and over 400 million parties. Identifying a unique individual and then harvesting all related criminal and non-criminal case information across the state is challenging. The Florida Court Clerks and Comptrollers (FCCC) maintains the state’s Comprehensive Case Information System (CCIS), and proposes enhancement to this system to assist criminal justice partners, while also supporting and enhancing firearms background check research in Florida. CCIS is a statewide repository of court case data from Florida’s 67 counties. CCIS is linked to each Clerk’s Case Management System (CMS) and provides secure, on-demand access to the digital court files (document images). CCIS is used by Florida’s criminal justice agencies for case data research and background research.

(CA/NCF)