This report presents findings and recommendations of an audit of the Illinois criminal history record system for the time period of 1994 to 1998.
The Illinois State Police (ISP) is designated by statute to manage the State central repository for criminal history record information (CHRI) on individuals arrested in Illinois. To ensure the quality of CHRI, State law requires the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) to act as the sole, official, criminal justice body of Illinois to conduct periodic audits of the procedures, policies, and practices of the State central repository for CHRI, to verify compliance with Federal (the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)) and State laws and regulations governing this information. This audit, supported by BJA, presents a statewide audit of CHRI accuracy and completeness of the criminal history information disseminated by ISP, the reporting timeliness of required events to the repository by local criminal justice agencies, and flagging the records of convicted felons for the computerized criminal history (CCH) database re-design time period of 1994-1998. A statewide sample of 2,072 arrest records for 1994-1998 was used for the assessment of record accuracy and completeness and a sample of 4,644 arrest cards, State’s attorney decisions, court dispositions and custodial submissions mailed in 2001 were tracked for timeliness. Findings and recommendations are presented in the areas of arrest information, accuracy, timeliness, completeness, and conviction status indicator. While Illinois is not in complete compliance with BJA standards, improvements have been made. In general, audit findings indicated progress made by ISP toward improving the quality of Illinois criminal history records. Tables and appendices A-J