Summary of Report 02-013

December 2001

Report Number 02-013

Based on our review of the Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS), we believe that, overall, controls to ensure the completeness and accuracy of CJIS data are stronger today than they were five years ago. However, the Department of Public Safety (DPS) must make additional improvements to further enhance the completeness and accuracy of its portion of CJIS, including improvements in identifying incomplete and duplicate records, strengthening information technology controls, and bolstering disaster recovery planning.

In addition, the Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) must make agencywide technology improvements to correct weaknesses affecting the Corrections Tracking System (CTS), its portion of CJIS. CTS still lacks some basic controls to capture and store reliable data. TDCJ should continue working to address all requirements of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Chapter 60, and should continue to strengthen information technology (IT) controls that will improve CJIS data.

• DPS needs to implement procedures to better match court dispositions with arresting events. Information in CCH, which is the DPS portion of CJIS, is incomplete because DPS is not always able to match court dispositions with arresting events and complete the criminal history records.
  
  
• Some offenders have more than one state identification number (SID). Although each offender in the CCH system should have one unique SID, for various reasons arrest fingerprints of persons with prior criminal histories do not always match against the fingerprints already on file. This causes some offender criminal history files to be incomplete.
  
  
• DPS should strengthen password controls within CCH and improve the management of planning and purchasing to ensure that data is protected, users are held accountable, and expenditures are appropriate to accomplish goals. Disaster recovery planning should also be improved.
  
  
• It is critical that TDCJ comply with the Texas Code of Criminal Procedures requirement to add Incident Tracking Numbers (TRNs) to CTS. When TRN information is unavailable, there is a risk that TDCJ will not be able to ensure that complete and accurate offender information is reported from the time an offender is arrested until the time the offender is released.
  
  
• TDCJ must ensure that its Community Supervision Tracking System (CSTS), which is used for offenders on probation, is expanded to include the functionality it was intended to offer. Currently, CSTS does not contain SIDs for all individuals in the system. Since notifications concerning arrests of probationers or parolees are flagged and sent out using SIDs, it is impossible for the notification feature to work properly until each individual in the CSTS has been assigned a SID.
  
  
• TDCJ needs to strengthen basic information technology controls to provide a more effective and accountable IT environment. This includes restricting access to the production environment, following change management procedures for system enhancements or maintenance, and planning for the rollout of new systems and processes.
  
  

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