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State criminal record system gets funding

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The U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday it will give more than $26 million to state agencies for the additional funding of criminal record systems.

The money is intended to bolster the completeness, quality and accessibility of criminal record systems in the nation for the next year. The DOJ's Criminal History Involvement Program will provide the funding, which includes $5 million to be used specifically to improve state and national stalking and domestic violence databases.

"We're really trying to bring every state up to a common ground where their records are complete, accurate and available through the FBI's national system," said Devon Adams, state program manager for the department's Office of Justice Programs' Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The funding is part of a continuing initiative, called the National Criminal History Improvement Program, which was started in 1995. Since then, the DOJ has allocated almost $495 million to the program.

"This is the 10th year of funding, and it was originally awarded under the Brady Bill, which was used to improve records for background checks for firearms," Adams said. Other funding has come from the Crime Identification Technology Act, Adams added.

Wisconsin received $562,733 this year from the program, the 11th-highest amount among states.

The state's Office of Justice Assistance receives the funding each year, and then distributes it to local law enforcement, the court system and state agencies involved in the records system.

The amount of money each state received was based on how much individual states need to get to the same level as the FBI's record system. The DOJ used several factors to determine this, including the number of criminal history records each state had.

In addition to all 50 states, American Samoa, Guam and the Virgin Islands were also included.

The goal of the national program is to allow any state to get background records of people who have committed crimes in other states, identify felons and others prohibited from firearm purchase, check records of people working in child, elder and disabled care, track those convicted of domestic abuse and stalking and compile a National Sex Offender Public Registry through sharing of state offender registries.

State Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, who recently introduced legislation requiring all child sex predators be monitored using Global Positioning System ankle bracelets, said the funding will help keep Wisconsinites safe.

"This will provide for a full database for law enforcement and others so we know where felons are and give us a better method of tracking them," Suder said, adding he hopes his GPS tracking initiative will receive money from the DOJ allowance.

Suder said the DOJ funding assists in streamlining the process by which state officials deal with criminals.

"It's going to help with homeland security, and in addition, it will help us find out where the criminals are," Suder said. "This will help Wisconsin eliminate the possibility of losing track of serious criminals."