SCI-CRIS: A Cooperative System to Track Criminal Records
From 1996 through 2001, ASG pioneered a system to integrate criminal and judicial data from different state and county agencies and implemented it for South Carolina. The South Carolina Integrated Criminal Records Information System (SCI-CRIS) united massive amounts of data from multiple storage systems and integrated the data into files associated with specific individuals. The project was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Justice.
SCI-CRIS was a highly efficient criminal tracking system that organized and cross-referenced thousands of records stored by criminal justice agencies. It was built on the Integrated Criminal Records Information System (I-CRIS) platform, a solution developed by ASG for records integration and data sharing. SCI-CRIS was highly secure and available for use only by authorized criminal justice agency representatives.
The SCI-CRIS architecture included a four-processor IBM computer for records integration. The project incorporated many systems already developed by ASG with data gathered and contributed by other criminal justice agencies.
The system successfully incorporated six sets of records:
- Four years of South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) prison inmate records and six years of local jail occupancy records. SCI-CRIS had a one-way link to receive and integrate data from the inmate database created by the Jail and Prison Information Network project for South Carolina.
- Six years of local magistrate and municipal court docket records. SCI-CRIS had a one-way link to receive and integrate data from the summary court docket database created by the Court and Warrant Information Network for South Carolina.
- Six years of warrant records. SCI-CRIS had a one-way link to receive and integrate data from the warrant database created by the Court and Warrant Information Network for South Carolina.
- Fifteen years of central court docket records. SCI-CRIS had a one-way link to receive and integrate data from the Central Court Docket System for South Carolina Court Administration, which contained data on general-sessions, family, civil, and estate-probate court cases.
- Fifteen years of South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services (PPP) records. ASG created a database using Oracle software and mapped the PPP data into SCI-CRIS. Each record showed an individual pardon, parole, or probation action.
- Twenty years of South Carolina identification records. ASG created a database using Oracle software and loaded 4.6 million driver’s license records into SCI-CRIS. This database served the primary identification files.
SCI-CRIS cross-referenced primary identification data with records from other databases in SCI-CRIS through "fuzzy matching," a type of analysis that could associate or "match" records even though all data fields may not agree. ASG created matches, or database joins, for cases in which any Social Security number, name plus date of birth, or driver's license number from the primary database matched similar identifiers in the other databases.
ASG designed a secure website to display all matches. The search results exhibited the primary identification profile at the top of a web form, followed by a line for each criminal or judicial record, listing the date, agency, matching codes, action (such as arrest or conviction), crime, and remark. By clicking one of these lines, a user could view the data contributed by an agency. The system also featured maps for visualizing data.
SCI-CRIS proved the viability of an integrated records system. It could easily be scaled to incorporate more data from many other types of agencies. Such a system could be invaluable for improving government efficiency through information sharing, providing a system for digital data management among government agencies.
In 2001, the SCI-CRIS project was completed and the South Carolina Department of Corrections assumed maintenance and support. For SCI-CRIS support and information, please call the South Carolina Department of Corrections toll-free at (800) 270-9493.
SCI-CRIS is the South Carolina implementation of I-CRIS, a solution for data integration.
