Evaluation of Department of Defense Compliance with Criminal History Data Reporting Requirements

We evaluated whether DoD Military Criminal Investigative Organizations (MCIOs) and other DoD law enforcement organizations reported offender criminal history data collected from service members convicted of qualifying offenses and submitted the data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division as DoD policy mandates. 

 

Specifically, we determined whether fingerprints and final disposition reports for 1,102 Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps service members convicted of qualifying offenses between June 1, 2010, and October 31, 2012, were submitted to the FBI’s CJIS Division for inclusion in the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) (now called Next Generation Identification) database. Our analysis did not determine the reasons that fingerprints or final disposition reports that should have been included in IAFIS were not. 

 

We were not able to evaluate Army fingerprint and final disposition reporting and submission compliance due to data validation limitations. Army evaluation results will be published in a subsequent report. Any reference to MCIOs and other DoD law enforcement organizations generally is exclusive of all Army law enforcement organizations.

  

Fingerprints for 304 Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps convicted offenders in our evaluation sample period were not in the FBI’s IAFIS criminal history database. The evaluated Services had an overall fingerprint collection and submission compliance rate of 72 percent. 

 

Final disposition reports for 334 Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps convicted offenders in our evaluation sample period were not in the FBI’s IAFIS criminal history database. The evaluated Services had an overall final disposition reporting compliance rate of 70 percent.

 

We recommended the Secretaries of the Navy and Air Force take prompt action to submit the missing 304 fingerprints and 334 final disposition reports to the FBI for inclusion into IAFIS. 

 

In addition, we recommended the Secretaries of the Navy and Air Force take prompt action to ensure fingerprints and final disposition reports for future arrestees and convicted offenders conform to DoD Instruction 5505.11, “Fingerprint Card and Final Disposition Report Submission Requirements.”

 

Comments from the Secretaries of the Navy and Air Force addressed all specifics of the recommendations, and no further comments are required. They agreed with our recommendation to promptly submit any missing fingerprints and final disposition reports to the FBI for inclusion into IAFIS, but expressed concern regarding their jurisdictional and legal authority to collect criminal history data from individuals no longer subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. W e recognize there may be hindrances in attempting to collect the missing data. However, we believe the Services should pursue all possible avenues in their efforts to collect and submit the required fingerprints and final disposition reports to the FBI.