NCJ Number
85117
Date Published
1976
Length
13 pages
Annotation
Using data supplied by the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) to determine State-national and national-state criminal justice telecommunications traffic volumes and data from the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (NLETS) to determine State-State traffic levels, the actual rate of traffic growth is compared with the predicted growth rate from 1973 to 1975.
Abstract
The estimates for both transactions per year and average kilobits per second have proven to be accurate to date; however, there have been differences between the actual and estimated traffic-type distributions. Criminal history exchanges have been implemented faster than expected, while crime laboratory information exchange and criminal justice planning information exchange have not yet been implemented on the NCIC system. Message lengths have increased only slightly from 67.5 characters per message in 1973 to 70 characters per message in 1975. In comparing State to State traffic with national criminal justice traffic, at the end of 1975, NLETS handled an average of .5 kilobits, while NCIC handled 2.3 kilobits. Thus, there is 4.6 times as much national traffic as there is State to State traffic. Tabular and graphic data are provided. (Author summary modified)