In 2019, the General Assembly amended § 19.2-388 of the Code of Virginia to require the Department of State Police (Department) to provide a report by November 1 of each year to the Governor and the General Assembly “on the status of unapplied criminal history information and any updates to fingerprinting policies and procedures." As directed under this provision, the Department’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS), Central Criminal Records Exchange (CCRE), has reviewed its current efforts to achieve better reporting of criminal history information. The current processes and projects associated with criminal history reporting are described in this report.

The Department, through the CCRE, receives and processes criminal court disposition information weekly. This information is transferred electronically through secure file transfers from the Supreme Court of Virginia, Fairfax County Circuit Court, and Alexandria Circuit Court.1 Once received, this information is validated to identify errors or omissions that require human intervention to resolve before applying dispositions to criminal history records. Disposition information that is free from errors and contains a corresponding fingerprint-based arrest booking on the criminal history record automatically applies to the criminal history records. Dispositions that do not have a related fingerprint-based arrest booking on the criminal history record are stored in the Computerized Criminal History (CCH) hold file until the matching fingerprint-based arrest booking is received and applied to the criminal history record.

Pursuant to Chapter 783 of the 2019 Acts of the Assembly, the Department has undertaken efforts to increase the reporting of criminal history information to the CCRE and to improve the quality of the data received. Examples contained in this report include notifications to criminal justice agencies related to unapplied criminal history information, ongoing outreach efforts with the courts to improve disposition data quality submitted to the CCRE, internal progress on resolving unapplied criminal history information, and continued CCH system functionality development. This report will outline the strategies that are currently underway in an effort to resolve unapplied criminal history information.