Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2013, $800,000)
The NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007, Pub. L. 110-180 ("NICS Improvement Act"), was signed into law by the President on January 8, 2008. The NICS Improvement Act amends the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 ("the Brady Act") (Pub. L. 103-159), under which the Attorney General established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The Brady Act requires Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) to contact the NICS before transferring a firearm to an unlicensed person for information on whether the proposed transferee is prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm under state or federal law. The NICS Improvement Act authorizes grants to be made in a manner consistent with the National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP).
As the agency responsible for maintaining Alabama's criminal history repository and computerized criminal history systems, the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center (ACJIC) will use awarded funds to:
1) improve the state's CCH to provide the FBI, state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies, and other criminal justice agencies with accurate and up-to-date information directly related to NICS checks;
2) develop a system that will provide an automated mechanism for Probate Courts to forward orders involving the involuntary commitment of persons for inpatient mental health treatment to ACJIC, and produce and conduct necessary education and training involving involuntary commitments for Alabama's probate court, local law enforcement and mental health officials; and
3) build web services using Global Standards to connect to Municipal Court case management systems in order to receive dispositions that qualify for crimes of domestic violence and integrate the data into a domestic violence dashboard to be used by local courts. ACJIC will also fund an IT Management position responsible for providing project oversight of all hardware and software developments and deployments.
The mental health and domestic violence projects will be completed with ACJIC as the primary agency providing leadership and subject matter expertise and the University of Alabama Center for Advanced Public Safety (UA-CAPS) as the technology partner. UA-CAPS is a research and development center within the University of Alabama, which is a state agency that has partnered with ACJIC for many years in the development of criminal justice information sharing tools in Alabama. ACJIC and UA-CAPS have entered into an agreement for the development of software applications systems and support related to these projects.
CA/NCF