Pennsylvania Criminal History System Improvement Program

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 2018 NCHIP priority areas, the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) will conduct three projects: 1) to develop a criminal complaint e-filing system 2) to purchase equipment for two Central Booking Centers; and 3) AFIS fingerprint scanning.

1) E-filing System: PCCD, in collaboration with the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP), Pennsylvania Justice Network (JNET), the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC), and the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association (PCPA) will develop the “Criminal Complaint E-Filing System.” The system will eliminate future non-Offense Tracking Number (OTN) match bucket file entries and simultaneously enhance the availability of arrest and disposition records at the state and national level. JNET, AOPC, and PCPA will be responsible for specific objectives and separate sub-awards to complete the E-filing System project. JNET will design, create, deploy, and manage the technical architecture of the E-filing System project. AOPC will develop the E-filing interface and pilot the new system in a minimum of 2 of 67 county jurisdictions. PCPA will coordinate with the vendor, DataWorks, to perform the primary technical requirement associated with the E-filing System.

2) PCCD will purchase Livescan devices and equipment for 2 county locations (Hatboro PD and Northumberland County Prison). The creating of a central booking center includes 3 components: 1) Fingerprinting - The Livescan arrest reporting device replaces the ink-and-roll process with electronic scanning of fingerprints. Digital copies are transmitted to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System at the PSP for identification and storage; 2) Photo imaging - Commonwealth Photo Imaging Network (CPIN) stations capture and store digital photographs of arrested offenders; and 3) facial recognition capabilities which allow trained users to compare unknown photos of varying quality with the stored photos.

3) PSP will use overtime to convert approximately 475,000 fingerprint records to electronic files. The current process of PSP staff manually locating the individual criminal paper jacket and scanning fingerprints into AFIS is time consuming and ineffective. The project will scan the remaining 2 fingerprint records to ensure they are complete and meet the 20 fingerprint standard which will then be available to NICS. The overtime support will eliminate the backlog and make the records accessible and available on a state and national level.

(CA/NCF)