Wisconsin FY18 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 this award, the Wisconsin Department of Justice (WIDOJ) will conduct two projects to contribute information to the NICS: 1) improving dispositional reporting; and 2) to purchase and deploy Livescans.

1) Disposition Improvement: WIDOJ will use NCHIP funds to modify the WI disposition reporting system to include the following: 1) Ensure all data is valid and accurate to ensure accurate dispositional reporting;
2) Review and modify the systems for timeliness of dispositional reporting which is currently hourly to ensure complete dispositional reporting; 3) Review and modify the systems to prevent dispositions from being rejected when received by III prior to the fingerprint arrest event to ensure accurate and complete disposition reporting; 4) Identify dispositions that failed since the beginning of our electronic disposition reporting and resubmit them to III to ensure complete dispositional reporting; and 5) Ongoing review of fingerprint submissions that are rejected to ensure complete arrest cycles exist prior to the dispositional reporting. Through an assessment of Wisconsin’s dispositional reporting systems, it was determined disposition reporting from Wisconsin was failing and the need for improving the process was critical. Funds will be used by WIDOJ's Bureau of Computing Services (BCS) for contractual staff associated with this project. BCS will focus on long-term data quality and driven by identification, understanding and resolution of root cause for issues negatively impacting federal reporting rates or data quality. Initial activities will focus on data and process mapping as well as analysis of both application architecture and technical infrastructure, followed by development that resolves issues to raise reporting quality in a way that is sustainable long-term.

2) Livescan purchase: WIDOJ will use NCHIP funds to purchase 25 Livescan devices for specific locations and/or agencies. The Livescans will replace locations that currently use the ink and roll fingerprint process or have outdated Livescan devices. The Livescan project will allow the state to quantify the improvements in quality and timeliness that can be expected when cardscan processes are replaced by a Livescan booking process. The information will be key to leveraging a much larger investment in equipment replacement by the state. From the federal perspective, while the state is doing well as an electronic reporting state (100%), it is in the lower third of states for timeliness of electronic reporting. When fingerprints are captured using Livescan equipment, they are immediately available to be transmitted to the state repository for identification and recording in the criminal history database. Paper and inked prints, however, are routed locally to a clerical unit where the prints wait for weekday, day-shift staff for scanning and keying. State submission statistics find that fingerprint submissions are received twelve times faster using a Livescan device versus mailing of the card to the state repository. The state received 153,936 arrest fingerprint submissions in 2017. Of those arrests, the offense charges were broken down as 28% felonies, 54% misdemeanors, 16% non-criminal, and 2% with an unknown severity.

(CA/NCF)