Participating State File

The participating state file referred to in this manual is a criminal history record system maintained by a designated agency in a state and containing records based on arrest fingerprint cards submitted by arresting agencies within the state. A state referred to as an III participant provides records from its file upon receipt of notification from the NCIC III.  For a state to be an III participant, it must meet the minimum standards for participation.

The III will continually interface with participating state systems to provide status information regarding the states’ records. When a person is arrested for the first time in a participating state, the state will be advised if the record is single-state (no federal arrests or no arrests in other states) or multi-state (arrests having occurred in other than the participating state). When the status changes from single-state to multi-state or multi-state to single-state, the participating state agency will be automatically advised. The status information is provided by the FBI Identification Division from fingerprint cards submitted by arresting agencies. This service becomes an integral part of the processing of fingerprint cards by state identification bureaus. Once an offender is indexed in III, the state bureau can better serve agencies within the state since the state will know when additional records are maintained elsewhere. If the state can identify a fingerprint card with a prior record, local agencies can be provided a complete record by the state without waiting for the fingerprint card to be processed by the FBI.