NCJ Number
255651
Date Published
November 2020
Length
147 pages
Annotation
This report presents an overview of U.S. criminal history record systems and how cases were tracked through disposition as of year-end 2018, based on a survey of the administrators of criminal-history record repositories in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories.
Abstract
This is the fifteenth Survey of State Criminal History Information Systems conducted since 1989. This report recommends caution when comparing trends among these surveys, because shifts in a jurisdiction's fiscal priorities or technological capabilities over time may influence the status of its criminal-history records system. A total of 49 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam reported the total number of persons in their criminal history files as 112,450,300. Just over 97 percent of the record systems were automated; 28 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam had fully automated criminal history files. In 49 states and the District of Columbia, an average of 68 percent of all arrests in state databases had final case dispositions reported. Forty-nine states, the District of Columbia, and Guam processed 25,797,200 fingerprint records in 2018; of these, 10,500,600 were used for criminal justice purposes, and 15,296,600 were used and submitted for non-criminal justice licensing, employment, and regulatory purposes. 21 tables