citizenship or serving as a volunteer (e.g., at a child or senior day care center) and requires a national fingerprint background check as part of the screening process. A civil card is submitted regarding an individual who is seeking employment in certain positions, such as federal employment, the military, or the banking/securities industry or is adopting a child seeking U.S.
It is the fingerprints of an individual who has been arrested and charged with a crime. military or have been or are employed by the federal government.Ī criminal card is exactly as the name implies. The civil file predominantly contains fingerprints of individuals who have served or are serving in the U.S. Today, the FBI's master criminal fingerprint file contains the records of approximately 47 million individuals, while our civil file represents approximately 30.7 million individuals. Our fingerprint holdings are divided into two categories - criminal and civil. Over the years, the size of our fingerprint files has grown and the demand for the program's services has steadily increased. At that time, 810,188 fingerprint records from the National Bureau of Criminal Identification and Leavenworth penitentiary were consolidated to form the nucleus of the FBI's files.
Since 1924, the FBI has been the national repository for fingerprints and related criminal history data. I thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee in order to discuss the FBI's fingerprint identification program. Kirkpatrick and I am the Assistant Director in Charge of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the FBI.