FY2020 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.

The South Dakota Office of the Attorney General, Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) serves as the State Administering Agency (SAA) and has been designated by the Governor as the NCHIP applicant. Under the 2020 priority area of updating and automating case outcomes in state records and the FBI’s Criminal History File, the DCI will conduct two continuation projects for 1) completing background checks with new workflow areas; and 2) purchasing Livescans.

The first project is to allow DCI to continue to fund staff to complete criminal and civil background checks. The DCI will employ two full-time employees (FTE) to continue to be responsible for the increase in backgrounds completed. The two FTEs are responsible for processing civilian fingerprint background checks, processing State Penitentiary entries, assisting with NICS requests and Index submissions, processing criminal arrest fingerprint cards, and reconciling III errors and reports. In addition, the two FTEs will capture data on domestic violence misdemeanor convictions, capture data on persons convicted of abuse of children, the elderly, and the disabled or stalking and domestic violence offenses and submit disposition information to NICS. SD’s legislature mandates that each year more and more entities need to complete the fingerprint checks prior to employment. In addition, in 2014 legislature passed requiring individuals diagnosed with certain mental health illnesses to be added to the NICS Indices. Mental Health boards throughout the state now send DCI qualifying mental health individual records to be entered in the NICS Indices.

The second project will fund the purchase of 14 Livescans for designated law enforcement agencies. Currently the 14 agencies are using Livescan equipment that has reached “end of life” and will no longer be supported by the state network to electronically submit criminal arrests to SD DCI. This project will address the NCHIP priority area of updating and automating case outcomes in state and FBI record systems. Providing 14 new Livescans and printers to the law enforcement agencies will improve the criminal history capture procedures at DCI by allowing for more timely and accurate submissions of criminal arrests, making them more accessible to III and NICS Indices. Electronic submissions from the agencies will automatically be entered into the state AFIS which will eliminate delays and errors associated with manually entering the prints and sentencing information.

(CA/NCF)