Retention Period for Stolen Article

An unrecovered stolen article record is retained in the NCIC Article File for the balance of the year entered plus an additional year. Following this retention period, an Article File record is automatically removed at the next file purge. For example, an article entered in 2003 would be purged at the first file purge in the calendar year 2005. Agencies will be furnished a listing of their purged article records.

Article file records containing a type field code of T (Toxic/Hazardous Materials) will be retained until cancelled by the entering agency.

An exception to record retention periods will occur in the event a serious error is detected in the record file. For information concerning serious errors see he Validation and Quality Control Section.