BILL ANALYSIS
By: Haggerty
Committee Report (Substituted)
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Criminal history records are an important public safety tool. Accurate and complete records are crucial to criminal justice. In addition, such records are used to screen people prior to various types of employment and before the purchase of firearms. The 71st Legislature required the creation of the Texas Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS). HB 967 would modify information supplied to CJIS for improved efficiency.
RULEMAKING AUTHORITY
It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.
ANALYSIS
The bill amends the Code of Criminal Procedure to add an individual's state identification number and an incident number to the state promulgated felony judgment form. The bill also mandates that all courts use this form to enter felony judgments.
The identification and tracking numbers are currently required to be submitted to the Department of Public Safety as part of the criminal history (Article 60.052(A)(2) and 60.052(A)(4)). The addition of these numbers to the form will allow the DPS to match a specific arrest event to its corresponding disposition, providing a more complete record. The unique offender identification and tracking numbers will also provide the Texas Department of Criminal Justice a means to match records upon commitment of a person to TDCJ with DPS records.
The bill deletes obsolete provisions.
The bill requires the DPS to report semiannually to local jurisdictions each arrest during the preceding 12 months for which there is no corresponding disposition and to make monthly reports of longstanding arrests for which there is no record of disposition.
EFFECTIVE DATE
September 1, 2005
COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL TO SUBSTITUTE
The differences between the substitute and the original are that (i) the title of the act has been changed and (ii) the word "should" in line 10 of page 1 of the original bill has been changed to "shall" in line 11 of page 1 of the substitute, (iii) Section 2 of the substitute bill has been rearranged, (iv) the reporting requirement has been reduced to a monthly publication on the DPS website of arrests without corresponding dispositions, and (v) new sections 4 and 5 have been added to the substitute bill to amend the Transportation Code to require the DPS to accept offender identification cards as proof of identity.