Law enforcement agencies across the nation are moving away from fingerprinting individuals upon arrest and toward writing citations for offenses and releasing the individual. This practice is known as "Cite and Release."

However, in some cases, law enforcement officers are not capturing individuals’ fingerprint images during Cite-and-Release events. Fingerprint images must accompany criminal history record information (CHRI) for inclusion in the Next Generation Identification (NGI) System. If a state or local agency does not submit an individual’s fingerprint images to the FBI, the FBI cannot establish or update CHRI for that individual, and that information will not be available to authorized NGI users. This gap in information creates a risk for authorized criminal justice agencies and noncriminal justice agencies that use CHRI.

The Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division of the FBI offers the following policy guidance for Cite-and-Release events:

• At a minimum, federal, state, local, and tribal agencies should collect 10 rolled and four plain fingerprint impressions of all 10 fingers for felonies, misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence, violent misdemeanors, drug offenses, or other crimes that could be potentially disqualifying as part of noncriminal justice background checks or for firearm purposes as indicated in Title 18, United States Code (U.S.C.), section 922(g) or 18 U.S.C. § 922(n).
• Whenever possible, agencies should collect 10 rolled and four plain fingerprint impressions of all 10 fingers for all arrests, including criterion offenses related to Cite-and-Release events. The agency should add these events to the state’s repository. States that do not participate in the National Fingerprint File Program, especially those states that do not support all-purpose codes, should add these events to the state’s record and provide them to the CJIS Division for inclusion in NGI. Federal and tribal criminal justice agencies should provide 10 rolled and four plain fingerprint impressions of all ten fingers for Cite-and-Release criterion offenses to NGI.
• Federal, state, local, and tribal agencies should self-audit their CHRI systems to ensure all criterion offenses related to Cite-and-Release events and/or arrest data is appropriately reported to the state CHRI system and, if applicable, to NGI.
• Federal, state, and tribal courts should collect fingerprints when the individual appears for court or is convicted (if the agency had not previously collected the individual’s fingerprints) and should submit the Cite-and-Release event, the arrest information, and disposition information using the Criminal Tenprint Submission (Answer Required) Type of Transaction (TOT) into NGI. This process establishes an arrest and disposition cycle at the state level and/or within NGI.
• For Cite-and-Release events in which the individual does not report for fingerprint collection, the agency may enter failure to appear and bench warrant information into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Wanted Person File in accordance with state, local, and tribal procedures when meeting existing criteria. Individuals under supervision because of Cite-and-Release events may qualify for their information to be included in the NCIC Supervised Release File.
• Federal, state, and tribal agencies that participate in the NGI’s Rap Back Program may submit Cite-and-Release data to the program for individuals under supervision in accordance with existing procedures.
• If an agency captures 10 rolled fingerprint impressions for a Cite-and-Release event, the agency should update the event with disposition information when it becomes available.

State dispositions must be submitted to the State Identification Bureau first and then provided to NGI via:

• Email to R84@fbi.gov
• The III Disposition Message Key
• In Machine Readable Data format
• Via the Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification Disposition File Maintenance Submission Request TOT

Federal dispositions may be submitted via:

• Email to R84@fbi.gov
• The III Disposition Message Key
• Via the Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification Disposition File Maintenance Submission Request TOT

For assistance with submitting fingerprints, contact the CJIS Division’s Customer Service Group by email at ck_csg@fbi.gov. For questions related to CHRI, contact the CJIS Division’s Criminal History Information and Policy Unit via email at fbi-iii@fbi.gov. For questions related to Cite and Release, agencies should contact their CJIS Systems Officer or state identification bureau.

References
¹ Becki R. Goggins & Dennis A. DeBacco, “Survey of State Criminal History Information Systems, 2018,” National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics (Sacramento, CA: November 5, 2020), accessed December 15, 2022, https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/255651.pdf, 9.
² Ibid.
³ Title 28, Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.), section 20.32, titled “Includable offenses,” provides that CHRI maintained in the Interstate Identification Index (III) and the Fingerprint Identification Record System (known today as the NGI System) shall include: “a serious and/or significant adult or juvenile offense,” but excludes arrests and court actions concerning “nonserious offenses” that are not accompanied by a serious and/or significant adult or juvenile offense.
⁴ 28 C.F.R. § 20 Subpart C provides the legal framework that requires fingerprints to establish and support criminal history record information within the III. The Appendix to Subpart C § 20 states: “This section defines the criminal history record information system managed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Each state having a record in the III System must have fingerprints on file in the FBI CJIS Division to support the III System record concerning the individual.”

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