# National Crime Information Center **Acronym:** NCIC **Entity class:** Federal criminal-justice information system **Parent:** [[wiki/Federal Bureau of Investigation|Federal Bureau of Investigation]] / Criminal Justice Information Services Division ## Definition The **National Crime Information Center (NCIC)** is the FBI-operated computerized index through which authorized criminal-justice agencies query and exchange records during law-enforcement work. The FBI described NCIC in 2017 as a nationwide system populated by local, state, and federal agencies, organized at that time into 21 files and handling roughly 14 million transactions a day. For watchlisting, NCIC is one distribution and encounter surface rather than the authoritative watchlist itself. The FBI's [[wiki/Threat Screening Center|Threat Screening Center]] makes an NCIC-accessible subset of terrorism-screening information available to law enforcement. A routine police query can therefore trigger handling instructions and a potential-match process. GAO reported in 2026 that agencies using this pathway did not always understand or consistently report the required response, making training and encounter fidelity part of the security architecture. This distinction matters to [[wiki/Watchlist Misidentification|Watchlist Misidentification]]. A wrong or ambiguous identity state can become operational during an otherwise ordinary encounter, while a later correction must propagate through every receiving system that used the earlier state. ## Relationships - **operator:** [[wiki/Federal Bureau of Investigation|Federal Bureau of Investigation]] and its [[wiki/Criminal Justice Information Services Division|Criminal Justice Information Services Division]]. - **watchlist nexus:** [[wiki/Threat Screening Center|Threat Screening Center]], [[wiki/Terrorist Screening Database|Terrorist Screening Database]], [[wiki/Watchlisting|Watchlisting]], and [[wiki/Watchlist Encounter Process|Watchlist Encounter Process]]. - **harm pathway:** [[wiki/Watchlist Misidentification|Watchlist Misidentification]], [[wiki/Distributed Erroneous State|Distributed Erroneous State]], and [[wiki/Correction Latency|Correction Latency]]. - **collection:** [[collections/Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the Intelligence Environment|Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the Intelligence Environment]]. ## Sources / Provenance - [FBI — “NCIC Turns 50”](https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/ncic-turns-50) (2017-01-27). - [FBI — Threat Screening Center](https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism/tsc) (accessed 2026-09-23). - [GAO-26-108650 — Terrorist Watchlist: FBI Should Improve Outreach Efforts to Nonfederal Users](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108650) (2026-01-12). **As of:** 2026-09-23