FEB. 8, 1999

I’d also like to take a moment to salute SEARCH, which is celebrating its 30th Anniversary. Three decades ago, SEARCH took a leadership role in developing the interstate capability to electronically exchange criminal history records. Since this successful effort, SEARCH has matured into a multifaceted organization -- representing the collective voice of states on national information management issues. All Americans have benefited from SEARCH’s dedication to improving the criminal justice system through the intelligent application of technology. You have made America’s neighborhoods safer. Thank you.

I have been asked to speak today on the subject of anti-crime technology and the issue of integration. This is a particularly timely topic for me, because of the recent enactment of my legislation called the Crime Identification Technology Act (S.2022 or CITA).

This new law gives us all an even greater opportunity to realize the objectives that will be addressed by this symposium.

While reviewing my remarks, I was reminded of a story of what can happen when e-mail messages go astray. Consider the case of an Ohio man who left the snow-filled streets of Cleveland for a vacation in Florida. His wife was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick e-mail. Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her e-mail address, he did his best to type it from memory. Unfortunately, he missed one letter, and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher’s wife, whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor in a dead faint! At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen:

"Dearest Wife, Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow. P.S. Sure is hot down here."

If there is one thing that more than 25 years of experience working in the criminal justice system has taught me, it’s that information is absolutely crucial to successful law enforcement. As a prosecutor in Greene County, Ohio; as Lieutenant Governor overseeing Ohio’s anti-crime and anti-drug efforts; and as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and now the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have learned that decisions we make in law enforcement are only as good as the information we have available.

My belief in the importance of anti-crime technology has led me to work on several new initiatives over the years. All of these have now become law -- and they are up and running.

I’m talking about the 5% set-aside for criminal history improvement from the Byrne grant program; the State Identification System Program, under the 1996 Antiterrorism bill; and my yearly support for appropriations for the DNA improvement program, the Regional Information Sharing program, and other programs to support the development and modernization of anti-crime technology at all levels of government. I must confess, through my work on these programs I’ve learned something about the need for integration.

We need to do more. Two fundamental factors have converged in recent years to make the integration of criminal justice systems even more important as we face a new millennium. First, revolutionary improvements in information and identification technologies have created opportunities, indeed responsibilities, for all our nation’s criminal justice agencies to build integrated information, identification, and communications systems. We now have the tools necessary to build the kinds of systems and the linkages between systems that are so desperately needed to allow our justice agencies to realize their full potential. Technology continues to be a powerful tool in the arsenal of weapons available to justice agencies in their fight against crime.

Second, the business of law enforcement is changing in fundamental respects, as a consequence of the availability and power of new and emerging technologies, but also because of the growing demand for information by other agencies and by the general public, and a demand for greater accountability. With rapid advances in technology, justice agencies are able to capture, collect, transmit and analyze an expanding array of information (such as photographs, maps, fingerprints, investigative records, etc.) with extraordinary speed and flexibility. Justice agencies increasingly recognize the inherent value and power of the community within which they operate, and contemporary trends in community-based policing, community-based courts and community corrections leverage local resources to better respond to crime and its social roots. Law enforcement agencies have adopted sophisticated crime mapping and forecasting technologies to proactively target crime at its source. By sharing information and decisionmaking with other city and county agencies, as well as the community at large, in new and innovative ways, they are able to marshal vast resources in their efforts to combat crime, and these programs and the technologies that support them certainly share some of the credit for the significant reductions in crime we have witnessed across the nation.

One of my major purposes in sponsoring the Crime Identification Technology Act last year was really to achieve integration in its broadest sense. Of course, CITA provides for system integration, permitting all components of criminal justice to share information and communicate more effectively and on a real-time basis. There is also, however, a tremendous need to integrate the patchwork of Federal programs that fund anti-crime technology. If we continue this mandated, discrete approach they’ll never be enough money, or integration. In this connection, the intent of CITA is to provide a dedicated, integrated stream of funding to help states establish and upgrade their anti-crime technology, while providing accountability and efficiency to a disparate government funding matrix. You may be aware that the model for CITA was N-CHIP, the National Criminal History Improvement Program, which is an excellent example of how state crime technology needs can be met, and limited federal resources maximized, through an integrated Federal-state approach.

CITA attempts to address virtually every technology-based, information identification and forensic need of state and local criminal justice agencies. In addition, we wanted to make sure that states had the resources to participate in our national information and identification systems, namely, the Interstate Identification Index and the Compact, the Integrated Automated Information System, the National Criminal Information System 2000, the Combined DNA Index System, and the National Integrated Ballistics Network.

A foundation is also laid in CITA for the Interstate Identification Index Compact, the National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact. The compact would establish a unform standard for the interstate and federal-state exchange of criminal history records for certain public safety purposes. Clearly, this is a wonderful example of SEARCH’s vision of integration, and the public’s demand for protection that have converged to create this law.

As you know, CITA authorizes $250 million a year over five years for anti-crime technology grants for states and local governments. However, the President’s budget earmarks only $50 million for FY 2000 to support the Crime Identification Technology Act. I think this is a huge mistake, This Act has terrific potential to integrate anti-crime technology and improve crime-fighting at the Federal, state, and local levels. CITA deserves full funding.

I would like to ask you to work with me to let your Members of Congress know how important this law is to you -- and the difference it would make in your communities if it were fully funded.

If we do this, together we will make a difference in every neighborhood in this country.

Thank you, and have a wonderful conference.