FY 2018 Montana 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 NCHIP FY 2018 project, the Montana Board of Crime Control (MBCC) will sub-award funds to the Montana Department of Justice (MTDOJ) and the Montana Office of Court Administration (MTOCA) for two separate but related projects: Missing dispositions and Phase two (2) of the FullCourt Rapid Deployment.

Under the missing disposition project, MBCC will partner with MTDOJ to conduct several tasks:

1) researching and obtaining missing paper-based dispositions,

2) obtaining fingerprint cards for arrest events for which MTDOJ has the paper dispositions,

3) obtaining fingerprint cards for arrest events and dispositions for which MTDOJ has only correctional fingerprint transactions,

4) continuing research and processing of fingerprint cards to claim ownership of MT criminal records which are currently owned by the FBI (Correlation Project),

5) developing on-line training about operation of electronic fingerprint capture devices (livescans) and about reading and understanding rap sheets,

6) developing and delivering onsite training developing on-line training courses about the legal requirements for submission of arrest fingerprints and court disposition, about operation of electronic fingerprint capture devices (live scans), legal requirements for submission of fingerprints and dispositions, and criminal justice information system security, and

7) obtaining and deploying eleven (11) electronic fingerprint capture systems (live scans) for the remaining counties in MT which do not have this technology for timely submission of fingerprints for arrest events.

Under Phase II of the FullCourt Rapid Deployment project, MBCC will partner with the MTOCA to build off of the efforts from their FY 14 award. MTOCA will work with their vendor, Justice Systems, Incorporated and collaboratively with the Clerks of the District Court Automation and the Courts of Limited Jurisdiction Automation committees in developing, configuring, and modifying the FullCourt Enterprise case management system to meet the statewide needs of Montana’s trial courts. The expansion in this year's project will have the MTOCA taking advantage of the aforementioned momentum of the four initial pilots by continuing to fund the additional modified FTE Court Business Analysts to facilitate an expedited statewide deployment of FullCourt Enterprise.

(CA/NCF)