Enrolled Bill Summary

            The Department of Public Safety is responsible for maintaining a computerized criminal history system that serves as the record creation point for criminal history information maintained by the state. The state auditor or a designated examining entity is required to conduct an examination of the system once during each five-year period. House Bill 776 amends the Code of Criminal Procedure to require the department, within a year of the date the examining entity completes its examination, to report to the Legislative Budget Board, the governor, the state auditor, and the Criminal Justice Policy Council on its progress in implementing the recommendations and to submit a similar report each year until all of the recommendations are implemented.

            House Bill 776 requires the department to enter reports of prosecution or court disposition information from a jurisdiction for which corresponding arrest data does not exist into a non-fingerprint supported file and to grant access to the records in the same manner as it grants access to criminal history record information. The bill provides that, on receipt of a report of corresponding arrest information, the department is required to transfer the record from the non-fingerprint supported file to the computerized criminal history system.

            The department is required to develop a plan no later than January 1, 2003, to encourage local criminal justice agencies to report criminal history data to the department for inclusion in the computerized criminal history system and to evaluate the necessity of imposing sanctions on local criminal justice agencies that do not report. The bill requires the department to monitor the submission of arrest and disposition information by local jurisdictions and to annually submit a report regarding the level of reporting to the Legislative Budget Board, the governor, the state auditor, and the Criminal Justice Policy Council. This provision expires December 31, 2005.

            The bill requires a criminal justice agency to enter into the law enforcement information system maintained by the department information pertaining to persons who make threats against a peace officer, and it requires the bureau of identification and records to establish and maintain a central index in the information system to collect and disseminate information relating to those threats.

            The bill also amends other provisions relating to the auditing and monitoring of facilities operated under contract with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the terms of those contracts, access by local jurisdictions to criminal history information, the monitoring of the development of the corrections tracking system, and the implementation, operation, and maintenance of the criminal justice information system.