Testimony of Donna Uzzell
Director of Criminal Justice Information Services
Florida Department of Law Enforcement
Tallahassee, Florida

September 28, 2004

Thank you…

I am appearing here today as the Chairman of the National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact Council, as well as the Director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Criminal Justice Information Services. But I think it is relevant for you to know that I am also a former School Board member in Leon County Florida and the mother of two daughters. I, like you, have a strong interest in making sure that when criminal background checks are done on people working with our children and other vulnerable populations, we are able to screen out those applicants who present a danger.

For over 80 years, the FBI has been the central point of collection of information about criminal offenders in the U.S. The information was originally collected in a single central database at the FBI, and the primary use of the information was to support criminal justice decisions. Over time, two changes have occurred: 1) the value of this information has been recognized for non-criminal justice screening for sensitive employment and licensing, and more recently, for firearm purchase approvals; and 2) it has become clear that a decentralized system for collecting and sharing this information is more effective in providing complete and accurate records.

The FBI remains a key part of this system, and all 50 states, the U.S. territories and federal agencies participate. The decentralization of the criminal history files is a process that is not yet fully realized. Some states, only 3 actually, continue to rely on the FBI to maintain their records. For others, the FBI acts as a central index for identifying states that hold criminal records on offenders. This system is known as the Interstate Identification Index (triple I) and contains more than 48 million subjects. A complex set of rules govern the dissemination of criminal history information in response to more than 156 million inquiries annually for both criminal justice and civil purposes. Through this index, or pointer system, states make their records available directly for criminal justice purposes, but some continue to rely on the FBI to respond on their behalf when civil background checks are done.

The passage of the Compact in 1998 by Congress was a way for states to improve this process. Because some states have statutes or policies that restrict the dissemination of records for non-criminal justice purposes, the Compact provides the states the means to release their records provided the check is fingerprint based and authorized by state or federal law.

Since 1998, 21 states have ratified the Compact; seven states are already providing their records directly for all non-criminal justice requests, and 15 are moving toward this final step of decentralization. Additionally, the FBI is a Compact participant, which means the FBI provides records for these background checks on behalf of non-Compact states as well as those Compact states that have not yet fully implemented this capability.

What’s the bottom line? When a fingerprint card on a teacher applicant is sent to the FBI, the response is based on a search of information from all 50 states. Some states, today the number is seven, will provide the records directly from their files, and for the others, the FBI will provide what is housed in its files. All 50 states do submit records to the FBI, and records from all 50 states are queried and included in the response when an applicant fingerprint card is submitted.

The states obviously have the most complete information available to them. This is one of the reasons why it is important that federal laws mandating background checks you should encourage both a state and national level check. The concept behind the Compact and the decentralization of records is that the best information is held closest to the source of the record. When states can respond to requests for information by using the FBI’s pointer system, they can provide the most complete information available for the identified subject. For example, states may have disposition information in their files that is not duplicated in the FBI file. Some will have additional arrests that did not meet FBI criteria or which were rejected for some reason when submitted to the FBI.

We believe that the appropriate role for the FBI in the long term is to maintain the III – the index of criminal subjects – and for each state to respond directly with the records in its files. When III and the Compact are fully implemented, the vision of a truly cooperative criminal justice enterprise will be realized. Efficiencies will be attained by eliminating unnecessary redundancy in data capture and processing. Quality will be easier to ensure when records are maintained closer to their source.

I was asked to respond to a few specific questions:

How does a state benefit from belonging to the Compact?

The Compact Council provides an opportunity for a joint management structure and states can participate in the policy issues such as privacy concerns, standards, and record processing.

Additionally, states will see an efficiency that is realized by not having to support their system and records housed at the FBI. The duplication of effort is eliminated.

Finally, the major benefit for a state comes when other states ratify the Compact as the information received as a result of non-criminal justice requests contains the best information available from that state.

Has belonging to the Compact assisted the State in getting information for teacher background checks?

By participating in the Compact and by encouraging other states to become participants the overall information available to each state on any authorized background check becomes more complete.

Does belonging to the Compact make the background check process more effective?

The Compact process eliminates redundant handling of records, reduces opportunities for error, and provides for the most complete records to be supplied. In particular, hiring decisions generally must be based on convictions, so making court disposition data available is truly value added. Again, the effectiveness will be fully realized through the expansion of the Compact, through the full participation of all states in this cooperative venture.

What sort of hurdles did the State have to overcome in order to join the Compact? Was it worth the effort?

Florida was one of the pilot states for decentralization, therefore, passage of the Compact was made easy because all of the processes were already in place. What we hear from other states is that the major concerns or obstacles deal with personal privacy and the costs associated with making necessary programming changes. In several instances, these concerns were easily nullified when the legislature learned the records were already being distributed by the FBI and that that overall efficiencies from the system would outweigh any upfront programming costs.

The system is not perfect and there is still work to be done. The changes in technology afford options to our users today that were not even contemplated when these systems were built. With the help of Congress, grants such as the Crime Identification Technology Act, or CITA, and the National Criminal History Improvement Program, or NCHIP, have had a tremendous impact on local and states agency efforts to improve the quality and accessibility of the nation’s criminal history records as well as upgrade criminal justice information systems and identification technologies. States continue to strive to improve the record screening process, amid the increasing demand to use this information for a variety of screening purposes. The states rely on this funding to meet these new challenges. Additionally, state leaders need to be educated on the Compact so that they can make informed decisions on whether to participate.

Knowing how important complete, timely and accurate criminal records are for teacher screening, I would urge this committee not to focus fully on whether the state or the FBI provides the response. Rather, I would urge continued support for the improvement of these criminal records, for improved automation of both arrest and court disposition reporting and for the continuing decentralization of these records by expansion of the Compact.

I was also asked to provide for the committee a brief example of some innovative processes occurring at the state level in the area of school employee background checks. In Florida, we have had a statute in place for a number of years requiring all instructional and non instructional personnel to be screened. Effective this year, however, in addition to those personnel, the Florida Legislature has mandated checks for student teachers, interns, substitute teachers and contractors. I wanted to particularly highlight the contractors. In reviewing best practices for emergency preparedness plans for schools, it is highly recommended that school administrators know about the vendors who are providing food to the school and contractors who have access to the heating, cooling, ventilation and security systems. And actually, as we have learned from the Russian school tragedy, you can make the same argument for people who do renovations in our schools. According to press accounts of the incident, Russian security officials indicated that the gunmen and women had pre-planned extra weapons and explosives, smuggled into the school during rebuilding work over the summer holidays, and hidden them beneath floorboards. In Florida and I believe in many other states, more and more of these services are privatized which is why our state chose to include them in the background requirements.

In addition to conducting state and national fingerprint based checks, the Florida Legislature has now required that we retain these prints and check them against incoming arrests so that the school district is immediately made aware if a current employee is arrested in Florida, as opposed to waiting for their 5 year recheck.

Thanks to the funding support of Congress through NCHIP and the support of our state, Florida has advanced technology in this arena and our school districts who are conducting these checks receive the state and the federal information within 48 hours of submitting the fingerprint. In Florida, we use secure applications via the Internet to submit the prints electronically and respond back using the same technology. This enables the schools to continue conducting their business of providing services and assuring bus drivers, cafeteria workers and school teachers, are hired and in place, while not compromising the safety of the school community. This is the direction most states are going.

There are approximately 39 other states that take advantage, in some form or another, of this technology and are seeing similar advances in facilitating the ease and timeliness of these checks. According to the FBI, 79% of the FBI’s total non-criminal justice fingerprint submissions are submitted using digital technology that enhances the response time and eliminates the need for the paper fingerprint card.

I mentioned that the use of criminal history information for the non-criminal justice community has seen a tremendous increase over the past few years. In fact, nationally at the FBI, the incoming fingerprints for background checks are now exceeding the incoming fingerprints processed for arrests. In Florida, over the past few years we went from 300,000 requests to now 600,000 requests. States see the benefit of requiring these checks for persons employed in sensitive positions and with vulnerable populations. The availability of technology, the ease in which these checks can be processed and the continued improvement in the time it takes to receive a response has created a new awareness and interest from states. In fact 45 states and the District of Columbia have now enacted statutes requiring federal background checks for education personnel or teacher certification.

The safety of our children is of paramount importance to all of us. Today that is the issue we address. Of course, we all realize that these records have a much greater use and importance. I appreciate the interest you have shown in the state’s perspective on the criminal history record screening process and in the Compact itself and I thank you for this opportunity.…..