NC CJIN Study:
Final Report Findings
Final report of the Criminal Justice Information Network. Prepared by Price Waterhouse, LLP
NC CJIN: History
The North Carolina Legislature, during their 1994 Special Crime Session, created a ‘blue ribbon’ Study Committee to identify alternative strategies for developing and implementing a statewide criminal justice information network in North Carolina that would permit the sharing of information between state and local agencies. An examination of the state’s current criminal justice information systems revealed the following deficiencies:
- It takes too long to positively identify persons. From fingerprints to photographs, information is scattered across different databases and filing systems.
- A single, comprehensive source for a person’s criminal history is not available in North Carolina. Bits and pieces must be assembled on each individual, causing valuable time to be wasted on information collection.
- There is no single source of outstanding warrants. A person wanted in one county could be stopped in another while the officer has no knowledge of an outstanding warrant.
- This situation compromises public and officer safety.
- Data is entered excessively and redundantly. There is no single, centralized location for all information and records so data is entered and reentered over and over again into separate databases using different coding systems.
- There is no statewide, interagency mobile voice and data communications system. Officers cannot talk to their counterparts across their own county, much less to those across the state.
NC CJIN Study: Final Report Recommendations
The CJIN Study Committee outlined the following major recommendations for removing these barriers that currently hinder the establishment and implementation of a comprehensive criminal justice information network. These recommendations also took into account the major building blocks for a statewide CJIN that were already in place in 1995.
- Establish a CJIN Governing Board to create, promote, and enforce policies and standards.
- Adopt system architecture standards, end-user upgrades, and system security standards to facilitate movement of data between systems.
- Establish data standards for sharing information, including common definitions, code structures, and formats.
- Implement Live Scan digitized fingerprint systems and Statewide Automated Fingerprint Identification System (SAFIS) technology to accomplish positive fingerprint identification within two hours of arrest.
- Implement a statewide magistrate system to streamline the process of warrant and case creation.
- Build a statewide warrant repository that contains all new and served warrant information.
- Implement a statewide fingerprint-based criminal history that includes all arrests and dispositions.
- Build a statewide identification index that includes information from all state and local agencies, as well as necessary linkages to federal justice agencies.
- Establish standards for, and implement a mobile voice and data communication network that allows state and local law enforcement and public safety agencies to communicate with each other, regardless of location in the state.
Participants
CJIN comprises both state and local and public and private representatives. The Department of Justice, the Department of Correction, the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, the Administrative Office of the Courts, the Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Division of Motor Vehicles, and the State Chief Information Officer are participating CJIN state agencies. Local representation includes Police Chiefs, Sheriffs, County Commissioners, County Information System Directors, North Carolina Chapter of Public Communications Officials International, Court Clerks of Superior Court, Judges, District Attorneys, general public appointments by the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and the North Carolina Local Government Information System Association (NCLGISA).
Initiatives
The following CJIN initiatives evolved from the CJIN Study Final Report Recommendations:
- Voice Interoperability Plan for Emergency Responders (VIPER)
- Statewide Automated Fingerprint Identification System (SAFIS)
- CJIN-Mobile Data Network (CJIN-MDN)
- North Carolina Juvenile Online Information Network (NC-JOIN)
- Statewide Magistrate System
- End-User Technology
- CJIN Network Security
- CJIN Data Sharing Standards
