Iowa is a national leader in criminal justice information sharing. Since 2007, CJIS has served as a “system of systems” that integrates and shares criminal justice information among Iowa’s justice agencies in a seamless, real-time, and secure manner. CJIS makes Iowa’s justice system more efficient and effective by allowing agencies to share or receive critical information immediately and automatically, eliminating outdated methods and unnecessary manual entry.
Historically, criminal justice information systems have been developed in isolation, resulting in independent systems that are unable to effectively communicate with each other. CJIS was created to allow these separate systems to share information with each other using a centralized computer system that exceeds all federal and state security requirements.
In a typical month, CJIS sends over 400,000 separate secure data exchanges for 260 local police departments, all 99 county sheriffs’ offices, 67 county attorney offices, and several state agencies.