Enhancement of Mississippi Criminal History System

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 Mississippi Department of Public Safety (MDPS) will use funds to maintain and improve its existing criminal history system, along with the hardware and software applications that support it. MDPS will allocate funds toward achieving the following goals & objectives: 1) purchasing ASA firewalls to better manage the support and security of the Mississippi Criminal Information Center network, and 2) upgrading the existing state Automated Fingerprint Identification System that has not been upgraded since its implementation in 2008. MDPS will work with existing state-certified vendors to achieve the aforementioned goals as it continues to strive to provide the most thorough and complete criminal information for all city, state, and federal agencies authorized to attain this information. The state AFIS is at the core of information stored at MCIC where records are maintained for more than 300,000 criminals and millions of arrest records are kept. The AFIS ensures that among other things: a) each individual has a single identity, regardless of name, date-of-birth, license number, social security number, etc. provided at each arrest or recorded incident; b) the Crime Information Center provides a comprehensive rap sheet of criminal activity by linking all arrest to the single fingerprint identity; and c) links into the federal FBI system for recording and searching national arrest records.

(CA/NCF)