April 13, 2016
Governor Ducey signs House Bill 2154
New law will enhance public safety for all Arizona citizens by closing gap in accurate criminal history records
PHOENIX – The Arizona Criminal Justice Commission (ACJC) applauded Governor Ducey’s signing of House Bill 2154 on March 7 which will enhance public safety by closing a critical gap in accurate criminal history records. “With Governor Ducey’s signature of House Bill 2154, Arizona took an important step towards enhancing public safety by helping to ensure that everyone that is arrested and convicted has an accurate criminal history created for that offense,” said ACJC’s Executive Director John Blackburn, Jr. “We would like to thank House Military Affairs & Public Safety Committee Chairman Sonny Borrelli for introducing and championing this important bill through the legislative process.”
House Bill 2154 continues the work that ACJC has undertaken to close the gap in accurate criminal history records that was identified when research found that some criminals were not being properly fingerprinted in order to create an accurate criminal history in the Arizona Computerized Criminal History (ACCH) system.
In order to create an accurate criminal history it is necessary for a ten-print fingerprint to be taken for each crime. In some cases it was found that a person was arrested, booked, attended their court proceeding, and even served their sentence at a Department of Corrections facility without the ten-print fingerprint being taken.
The result of this was that a criminal history record was never created and entered into the ACCH system and the potential for the person to be arrested again or applying for a job where a fingerprint clearance card was necessary without there being a record of their crime.
House Bill 2154 will enhance public safety by cleaning up the definition of failure to appear by combining duplicative provisions in current statute; and, defining the county sheriff as the “booking agency” for all felonies and misdemeanor domestic violence, sexual assault, and DUI charges. Specifically it:
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Combines duplicative statutes and provides one definition for failure to appear in the second degree
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Defines the county sheriff as the “booking agency” which is required to collect the ten-print fingerprint in order to create a criminal history record in the ACCH system for all felonies and misdemeanor domestic violence, sexual assault, and DUI charges.
