The Georgia Crime Information Center or GCIC was officially established in 1973 as an operating division within the GBI. It has since then served as the chief provider of criminal justice information services in the state of Georgia. The primary mission of GCIC is to help officials and agencies that are related to the criminal justice system to fulfill their responsibilities and offer constant access to required information.
The Crime Investigation Center in Georgia is officially mandated by the Georgia law and also by binding agreements with federal agencies in order to monitor and apply the current laws and regulations, both state and federal. Also, the Georgia Criminal Justice Information System Network is being coordinated by GCIC teleprocessing specialists. The network provides direct access to databases that are computerized and maintained by legal agencies in the state and also by the FBI Criminal Justice Services Division. It counts more than 1,500 agencies as members that operate 10,000 terminals which can instantly communicate with tens of thousands of terminals throughout the US. It is currently handling more than 13 million messages on a monthly basis.
The GCIC also maintains the state’s computerized criminal history database which features the fingerprint and also criminal history of more than 2,600,000 individuals. As a side note, you should know that Georgia ranks among the top states in the nation when it comes to the number of criminal fingerprint records that are being processed on a yearly basis. The GCIC is also the first state criminal records repository that has ever had an Automated Fingerprint Identification System, and can create and update criminal history records. It uses a by-product fingerprint identification process to do that. On an average GCIC is currently receiving one thousand electronic submissions on a daily basis. This also implies that the criminal databases accessed by the public are constantly updated in real time. The criminal justice community can therefore do its job more effectively and improve the quality of the information revolving around criminal justice at the national level. You can also benefit from all of this, in case you need to access these databases. These databases are also responsible for providing Georgia’s statistical input for the overall Crime in the United States, a report that is being published every year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Also, the data is used to complete the yearly summary report, which is compiled by GCIC. This report can be accessed online.
State protective order registries are also required by the law in the state of Georgia; in this regard, the Georgia Protective Order Registry has become operational on July 1, 2002 and it is an online service storing protective orders that have been issued by the Superior Courts of Georgia. The goal is to improve the safety of the victims by offering them with the services of law enforcement officers, as well as attorneys and courts functioning 24/7. More than 43,000 orders have been received since the launch of this program and more than 1,100 users have access the web site.
Moreover, the Georgia Sexually Violent Offender Registry has been functioning since 1997, having been reenacted by the General Assembly in 1996. It has registered 8,655 offenders. Moreover, 5,800 images of registered sex offenders have been displayed online since 1998.