Missouri Support for FY19 National Criminal History Improvement Program (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 2019 NCHIP, the Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) will administer and conduct a project in collaboration with their partner agency, the Office of the State Courts Administration (OSCA), and will develop case management processes for the new case management system for associate and circuit level criminal cases.

OSCA will use NCHIP funds to continue to support the replacement of the aging Justice Information Services (JIS) with the new case management system being implemented, Show-Me Courts. The project will continue on improving the staff and processes through local criminal records audits and disposition cleanup efforts; and focus on automated methods for addressing the criminal reporting problems from partner agencies to the Criminal Records Repository. The development to the case management processes includes: 1) enhancing the initiation and disposition functionality to include associate misdemeanor and felony charges; 2) Post-Disposition activities such as tracking of probation and special programs as conditions of probation and community services; and 3) analysis, design and development for circuit misdemeanor and felony functionality.

OSCA currently has an automated process to report criminal history data to the MSHP on all felony and selected misdemeanor charges through JIS. In April of 2014, the Missouri Court Automation Committee authorized OSCA to begin programming a replacement case management system to be known as Show-Me Courts. In order to continue the indispensable criminal history interface between the courts, prosecutors and law enforcement, upon which many state and federal agencies have come to rely and benefit, it must be included and programmed for the Show-Me Courts system. These modifications will allow for more efficient and sustainable interfaces with other systems utilizing modern technologies. The current design for case entry and disposition functionalities in Show-Me Courts allows for processing of traffic and ordinance charges. The functionalities will need to be evaluated by business process for misdemeanor and felony case types to determine the level of effort to either create a new process for these types of cases or to enhance existing functionalities to allow for these types of cases to be processed and reported to MSHP. The up-front validation will catch reporting errors that were previously identified in an error log to increase federal criminal history reporting requirements to MSHP.

In addition, the MSHP will use NCHIP funds to cover the first year’s subscription costs for four Livescan devices. The Livescan devices will be implemented in the St. Louis City area to help address the need for information sharing and accurate criminal history and disposition reporting. Each agency is responsible for continuing to pay the annual fee which includes maintenance costs. Lastly, the St. Louis City Mayor’s Office Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, through MSHP, will hire a contractor to develop an interface between Regional Justice Information Sharing (REJIS) prosecutor and court case management software and the MSHP’s OCN Lookup web service application. The interface will enable users to query MSHP’s CCH system and retrieve key criminal history information.

(CA/NCF)