Levels of CHRI

There are three levels of criminal history records.  The first level is the local law enforcement agency (police department or sheriff's office).  A criminal history record is established at the local agency when an individual is arrested, booked in or a citation is issued to that person.  The second level is the state central repository.  In Wisconsin that is the CIB.  The CIB will only establish a criminal record for someone when a fingerprint card is provided to the CIB from a Wisconsin law enforcement agency.  If an agency does not fingerprint the individual or does not submit the fingerprints to the CIB the arrest/conviction information will not be in the CIB database.  The third level is the FBI and the same rules apply.  They only have information in their database if a fingerprint card was sent to them from the contributing state.  FBI criminal history records are maintained in a database called the Interstate Identification Index (III).