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 2020 NCHIP priority 1 area of updating and automating case outcomes in state records and the FBI Criminal History File, the New Hampshire Department of Justice (NH DOJ) will manage three projects. The NH DOJ is the State Administering Agency (SAA) for USDOJ grant funding.

NICS Software purchase: The NICS software project will create a compliant records management database that will impact the tracking of gun sale volume. The NICS software provides an approval or denial disposition and purges any personal identification in accordance with state law. Additionally, the records management system will maintain and track all cases that have been dispositioned to delay or denial status. The NICS software will allow FFL’s to submit their requests electronically to NH’s Gun Line at which time the background would be manually processed by NH DOS staff with a return status electronically forwarded back to the FFL’s. From the records management system, NH DOS staff will be able to extract information submitted by the FFL’s and instantly run all required criminal record queries through NCIC, NICS, III and State databases.

NCIC Entry Improvement project: New Hampshire currently contracts with a vendor who provides the interface software from New Hampshire CHRI to and from the FBI databases of NCIC, III and the NICS Indices. With an expansion package purchased from this vendor, the vendor will be able to download the NCIC entry files from the FBI and through automation, send the Terminal Agency Coordinators (TACs) a notification to designated email accounts along with sending a message to a NH law enforcement agency requiring validations to be completed. This will allow the agency to view their validations on their State Police Online Telecommunication System (SPOTS) terminal accompanied by a validation code. This software will only allow the agency to view its own records, eliminating the manual shuffling over a multitude of pages of entries. Once the agency reviews their record to be validated, the agency will be able to make any modifications or supplements to the record and proceed with validation.

Livescan Replacement: The NHDOJ will use funds to purchase 10 Livescans for state agencies. A review of 2019 fingerprint submissions reveals that 74% of all arrest fingerprints captured were collected electronically from Livescan sites. In 2006, the Division of State Police was collecting only 49% electronic submissions. At that time, the Livescan inventory was at 32 total machines. In 2007, eight additional Livescan were purchased and subsequent to that in 2019, three additional Livescan were purchased and deployed, bringing the state inventory to 43 total Livescanss. A few local law enforcement agencies have purchased and are using an additional sixteen Livescans, bringing the total Livescan’s in use within the state to 59 in various locations. In 2019, a comparison of electronic criminal ten-print captures with the additional Livescans from 2007 to 2019 represents a 25% increase in electronic captures. The addition of 10 Livescans with the 2020 NCHIP funds will increase the electronic captures of prints and decrease rejection rates as the quality of prints are immediately assessed and rejected during the collection phase. (CA/NCF)