Summary: The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) has provided grants to develop a computerized register of persons involved in organized crime. Although funds awarded for the Interstate Organized Crime Index have been spent, the system is not in operation, only a manual system is being maintained.
It is difficult to measure whether the index is directly responsible for increasing the number of indictments, arrests, and convictions. In many cases, contributing member agencies did not provide public record support for entities in the index, although a special condition of the grants required entities to be based on such information. Verifying information stored in the index and discarding outdated and inaccurate data has been primarily the responsibility of each contributing member agency. The grantee said that it would verify the information being computerized, but it has not yet done so. Controls exist to assure that information in the index is provided only to authorized representatives of member agencies. There is a need for LEAA to monitor intelligence-related projects.
