CJIS: Serving the Nation for Two Decades

Construction of CJIS main building in 1993 in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The main complex was dedicated in May 1997. 

Twenty years ago this month, then-FBI Director William Sessions approved the consolidation of the Bureau’s criminal justice information systems—at that time spread across several FBI Headquarters divisions—into a singular entity to be known as the Criminal Justice Information Services Division that would be located in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The reason for the consolidation was two-fold. First, to ensure that as those systems grew and as new systems were developed, they would be closely integrated in order to “talk” to one another. And second, to offer our local, state, federal, and international partners access to the state-of-the-art identification and information services they needed to effectively perform their missions in an ever-more challenging criminal justice environment.

Since 1992, we have continued to enhance our existing information systems—including the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, the National Crime Information Center, and our Uniform Crime Reporting program. We have also developed new systems and initiatives during the past 20 years—like the Law Enforcement National Data Exchange (N-DEx), the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), and the Next Generation Identification (NGI). And as we move forward into the future, we will continue to innovate our information and identification systems to equip our law enforcement, national security, and intelligence community partners with the criminal justice information they need to protect the U.S. while preserving our nation’s civil liberties.