FY 2018 National Criminal History 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 FY 18 NCHIP project, the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) will conduct two projects focused on improving the reporting and quality of submissions to the Interstate Identification Index (III) by enhancing the capabilities of the system reporting this data.

In 2016, the DC Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) conducted a Federal Reporting Audit which focused on the record types and mechanisms by which information was shared with NICS/NCIC/III. The audit revealed that while the District submitted dispositions to III, it did so manually through the R84 Green Card system and only for those cases prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (USAO). This manual process created numerous opportunities for improper transcription as well as delays since the R84 Green Cards are submitted in bulk to III.

Additionally, the audit found that dispositions obtained by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) and United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (USAO), were not being transmitted to III. Overall, 353,770 of the 843,864 DC arrests in III, have no accompanying disposition.

In an effort to close this gap and increase the number and accuracy of records submitted to the III, all affected agencies believed that leveraging existing data feeds to automate the movement of information from the courts and prosecutors via CJCC’s Justice Information System (JUSTIS) to MPD for submission to III would best accomplish the task. Specifically, MPD will leverage the DC Superior Court data feed, which includes disposition information along with USAO and OAG data feeds, which contain no paper decisions, to populate MPD’s Computerized Criminal History (CCH) via JUSTIS. MPD’s CCH system will then be programmed to automatically submit all dispositions and no-paper decisions to the FBI’s III.

(CA/NCF)