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2012 NCHIP Project Summaries

The State of Connecticut did not receive an NCHIP Grant in 2012.

 

NCHIP Related Grant Awards

2012 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Act Record Improvement Program (NARIP)

The NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007, Pub. L. No. 110-180 (“the NIAA”) was signed into law on January 8, 2008. The NIAA amends the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 (“the Brady Act”) (Pub. L. No. 103-159), under which the Attorney General established NICS. Among other things, the Brady Act requires Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) to contact the NICS before transferring a firearm to an unlicensed person to obtain information on whether the proposed transferee is prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm under state or federal law.

The NIAA seeks to address the gap in information available to NICS about such prohibiting mental health adjudications and commitments and other prohibiting factors. Filling these information gaps will better enable the system to operate as intended to keep guns out of the hands of persons prohibited by federal or state law from receiving or possessing firearms.

In this regard, the NIAA authorized a grant program to assist states in providing certain information to the NICS.

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Year:
2012
FED Award:
$1,272,151.64
OPM Grant ID:
NARIPJUD1202
State Match:
$0.00
Agency:
Judicial Branch
Title:
CRMVS Criminal Disposition Module (Phase 2) and Mental Health Reporting
Summary: The second phase of the criminal disposition module project will build upon the infrastructure put in place in Phase I by supporting the development and testing of the relational database, and the development and testing of the user interface that will power the criminal disposition module and connect CRMVS to other criminal justice information systems. When the criminal disposition module becomes operational, it will facilitate the exchange of disposition records and result in a dramatic increase in the number and accuracy of records resulting in firearms disqualifications to NICS.  While the module development is underway, manual reconciliation of disposition records and manual entry of firearms disqualifications into NICS will also continue during the second phase.  This phase is critical to reaching Connecticut’s long-term plan for making all of its state and federal firearms disqualification records available to NICS.

With regard to the concentration on the reporting of mental health adjudications,  in the 2012 NARIP project, the Judicial Branch is planning to begin automating its processes for making mental health records from the criminal courts available to NICS. New types of mental health firearms disqualification records also were identified during the 2011 NARIP project; these new records will also be addressed in the 2012 NARIP project.
FED Grant ID:
2012-NS-BX-K005 
TOTAL Project Cost
$1,272,151.64

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Year:
2012
FED Award:
$140,977.00
OPM Grant ID:
NARIPPCA1203
State Match:
$0.00
Agency: Office of the Probate Court Administrator
Title: Probate Case Management System (PCMS)
Summary: Currently, the 54 probate courts in the State of Connecticut use two separate systems (Probate Case Management System -PCMS and LaserFiche) for maintaining their records, both of which are maintained by Probate Court Administration (PCA). There are four (4) types of mental health adjudications in Connecticut relevant to NICS reporting:  1) Involuntary civil commitments, 2) Involuntary conservatorships, 3) Criminal incompetence, and 4) Criminal insanity. Probate is responsible for originating both the involuntary conservatorships and involuntary civil commitments.

As part of NARIP 2012 project proposals, PCA is planning to streamline the conservator and commitment modules within the Probate Case Management System to improve the overall accuracy of the data collection process by automating and integrating PCMS and LaserFiche. This will include tools to allow court personnel to perform better data validation, including in-house, cross court searches / validation, case lookup, person lookup, decree lookup, central hospital lookup, integration with the Probate Court document management system (LaserFiche) and online attorney lookup/ validation for involuntary conservator matters.

The integration of PCMS and LaserFiche will enable local probate court clerks to tag a case with associated decree to further automate the current manual process. This proposed solution will help local probate court clerk to effectively validate the record data and reduce duplicate records being reported to the state and NICS systems. This proposed solution needs infrastructure, hardware improvements and software development.
FED Grant ID:
2012-NS-BX-K005 
TOTAL Project Cost
$140,977.00

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Year:
2012
FED Award:
$211,386.00
OPM Grant ID:
NARIPPCA1204
State Match:
$0.00
Agency:
Office of the Probate Court Administrator
Title:
Probate Court System Improvements (Phase 2)
Summary: To ensure the completeness, accuracy and availability of all probate court mental health records for both the State and the Federal systems, the Office of the Probate Court Administrator is seeking additional funds under the 2012 NARIP project proposals to continue this work for four (4) additional years of records auditing from 1997 to 2000. All the equipment purchased as part of NARIP 2011 grants for records auditing will be utilized to continue four (4) more years of auditing. The effort required to review four (4) years from 1997 to 2000 of previous conservator and commitment matters is a substantial undertaking.  Connecticut’s probate courts typically adjudicate approximately 2,300 conservatorship and 900 commitment matters per year and it is anticipated that this portion of the project will result in approximately 16,400 additional files that must be reviewed and entered into these systems.

This component of Connecticut’s 2012 NARIP Project will be composed of two major activities: (1) Identify mental health records in local probate courts for an additional ten (10) years (1991 to 2000) and (2) Validate and enter mental health records data into PCMS to be made available to MHAR and NICS system.
FED Grant ID:
2012-NS-BX-K005 
TOTAL Project Cost
$211,386.00

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Year:
2012
FED Award:
$225,338.00
OPM Grant ID:
NARIPOPM1201
State Match:
$0.00
Agency: Office of Policy and Management (OPM)
Title: Support Relief from Disabilities / NICS Task Force (Phase 2)
Summary: The goal of OPM’s 2012 NARIP project is to continue to increase the number of records that are available for firearms eligibility determinations and to automate the delivery of such records to NICS through these initiatives. The activities summarized below support the NARIP initiatives with priority placed upon mental health adjudications that may result in firearms prohibitions:  (1) Lead and support the NICS Record Improvement Task Force; (2) Provide support to maintain the required “Relief from Disabilities” program; (3) Support to improve reporting of Mental Health Information to NICS; (4) Develop and Implement the State’s NICS Record Improvement Plan; (5) Provide support for the completion of the annual NIAA Estimates.
FED Grant ID:
 2012-NS-BX-K005
TOTAL Project Cost
$225,338.00

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