For the third year in a row, the SMART Office continues to fund the Tribal Access Program and provide subject matter expertise on how TAP can complement or enhance a tribe’s sex offender registration program. By the end of September 2018, a total of 47 tribes will have direct access to federal databases through TAP. Participating tribes receive the necessary hardware and software and ongoing technical assistance for direct access to national crime information systems for both civil and criminal purposes, including the National Crime Information Center and the National Sex Offender Registry.
The Yavapai Apache Nation is the latest Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act tribe to receive a workstation. From June 26-28, members of the U.S. Department of Justice’s TAP team provided hands-on training to tribal personnel from several criminal justice agencies, including the tribal police, probation and child protective services. SMART Senior Policy Advisor Yahya Fouz attended the deployment and provided subject matter expertise on SORNA’s information sharing requirements.
During the roll-out, the Yavapai Apache Nation SORNA Officer Lucinda Morrow successfully collected fingerprints and palm prints from a registered sex offender and immediately submitted the prints to the FBI electronically using the TAP workstation. In addition, the SORNA officer entered the registered sex offender’s biographical information directly into NCIC/NSOR. This marked the first time this registered sex offender was entered into NSOR, which is significant given that his underlying conviction was for sexual assault of an 8-year-old child. The successful submission of this registered sex offender’s biometrics and biographical information into the requisite federal databases will ensure that if criminal justice personnel nationwide conduct a criminal history check on him, they will be alerted with a “flag” indicating that he is a registered sex offender.
The SMART Office plans to fund the Tribal Access Program at $2 million in fiscal year 2019 to ensure that even more tribes have direct access to NCIC/NSOR, and encourages tribes to apply for the new TAP phase, beginning in fall 2018.