Harris 2002 Annual Report

To Catch
A Crook
Crime Information:
Millions of pieces of law
enforcement information
are continuously updated
and stored in “information
silos” like the one
pictured here.
[Assured Communications]
At the FBI’s National Crime Information Center
in Clarksburg, West Virginia
The FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) was established in 1967
to assist federal, state, and local criminal justice agencies in positively identifying
suspected criminals. The NCIC features a computerized index of more than 39 million
records on fugitives, missing persons, and stolen property. It is available over secure
telecom lines to 80,000 law enforcement agencies and 738,000 law enforcement
officers, 24 hours a day. For example, when an officer stops an individual for a traffic
violation, a combination of the license plate number, auto description, or occupant’s
name and date of birth is matched against the NCIC database in less than a second.
A growing number of patrol vehicles now have laptop computers and fingerprint
scanners, which allow officers to electronically receive mug shots and to match
fingerprints against those in the NCIC database.
Harris modernized the database, launching NCIC 2000 in 1999 at the FBI’s
new Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg, West Virginia. New
software and hardware systems have allowed transactions to accelerate and processing
times to drop. During 1967, the first year of system implementation, approximately
2 million inquiries were processed. By comparison, in 1999 the database processed
an average 2.1 million inquiries per day. NCIC 2000 has catapulted system capabilities
to a range approaching 4 million transactions per day. Response time to process an
inquiry is approximately 0.15 seconds. Through NCIC 2000, technology has extended
the long arm of the law.
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