Improving arrest warrant and criminal disposition reporting from courts
and other local agencies to state and federal criminal databases

Confidence in the justice system is critically important in a rule of law society.

That confidence is damaged when sentencing or pretrial release decisions are made without full information about outstanding warrants and previous convictions. Millions of criminal histories are kept in a variety of disparate databases across the nation. Successfully sharing warrant, conviction, and sentencing information among justice partners protects public safety, increasing public confidence in the justice system.

Individual justice entities have implemented information systems to meet the specific needs of their organizations, often utilizing unique technology or database structures that make it difficult to exchange information with other systems. The U.S. Department of Justice encourages criminal justice agencies at all levels throughout the country to share information electronically because sharing information ultimately strengthens the justice system as a whole and improves public safety. The Bureau of Justice Assistance has provided this toolkit as a resource to jurisdictions working to share data in an effort to improve the reporting of arrest warrants and criminal dispositions from the courts to the state criminal history repositories.

To learn more about the Warrant and Disposition Management project, see About the Project.