WHEREAS, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) is meeting at its 109th Annual Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota between October 5 and October 9, 2002, and

WHEREAS, the IACP Private Sector Liaison Committee (PSLC) has collaborated with the Department of Defense (DOD) Personnel Security Research Center (PERSEREC) to produce “Guidelines for Improved Automated Criminal History Record Systems and Effective Screening of Personnel”; and

WHEREAS, incomplete and inaccurate automated criminal history information can jeopardize law enforcement investigations and place police personnel and the public at risk; and

WHEREAS, the DOD, law enforcement, local, state, and federal government agencies, non-profit and for-profit agencies all draw on the same criminal justice agency resources through their shared interest in appropriate and reliable criminal background screening of personnel; and

WHEREAS, incomplete and inaccurate automated criminal history information at state criminal history data repositories increases the need for requestors to also seek criminal information from individual criminal justice agencies, which can risk wasting scarce agency resources, and

WHEREAS, the guide has been prepared in a similar manner to earlier joint efforts between the PSLC and PERSEREC, entitled Combating Workplace Violence: Guidelines for Employers and Law Enforcement and Guide for Preventing and Responding to School Violence; and

WHEREAS, representatives of the IACP, PERSEREC, DOD, SEARCH, NASCO, IASIR, FBI’s CJIS, state repositories, state licensing agencies, international agencies, and the private sector have reviewed and edited the input from content experts from around the world and from 10 focus groups held across America involving national, state, and local law enforcement, state criminal records repositories, social services, and private industry; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED that the IACP encourages all criminal justice agencies to submit complete and accurate criminal history information to their state criminal history repositories and recommends the use of the Guidelines for Improved Automated Criminal History Record Systems and Effective Screening of Personnel as a tool for enabling and supporting appropriate use of centralized, automated criminal history record information to screen personnel for positions of trust.