2017 South Carolina Law Enforcement Division 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.

Under the 2017 NCHIP award, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) will conduct multiple projects that build off of previous years efforts. SLED will continue to support their efforts to manage and reduce the backlog of expungement, missing disposition and scanning records by expanding the team tasked with these assignments. Additionally, SLED will use a multi-personnel approach at addressing the NCIC audit training and helping statewide contacts improve the reporting of the required information. Funds are also requested to assist with the development of the law enforcement message switch (LEMS) disaster recovery system. The state is seeking to implement a redundant system to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery protocols in the event of an outage at the SLED Data Center. SLED also proposes to use funds to continue assisting local agencies in acquiring livescan machines to record and transmit fingerprint cards to SLED. All state law enforcement agencies, by state regulation, must collect fingerprints for criminal charges and be sent to SLED within three days. While compliance is being worked on, locations without a livescan device are in a difficult position to maintain compliance. Challenges like these, affect the timely submission of criminal history information that is needed to make accurate decisions in firearm transactions. The above mentioned efforts will significantly improve South Carolina’s ability to provide accurate, complete, and timely information to NICS and other agencies nationwide for use in employment, licensing, and other authorized purposes.

(CA/NCF)