The Federal Bureau of Investigation

The largest federal police agency is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the principal investigative arm of the Department of Justice established by President T. Roosevelt in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation and given its current name in 1935, the original agency’s jurisdiction was limited to five offences including bankruptcy, fraud, and antitrust violations. Its responsibilities expanded and the agency grew from 35 agents to approximately 23,000 people, including some 9,500 special agents in 56 field offices nationwide and 16 foreign liaison posts.

In 1924 Congress authorized the establishment of the Identification Division of the FBI, which became a national repository for fingerprints designation of the agency as the collector of crime statistics nationwide – through the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) further secured the FBI place at the head of the nation’s law enforcement community. For decades the FBI was considered the sole authoritative source of crime statistics.

In 1939, President T. Roosevelt gave the FBI responsibility for matters related to espionage, and violation of neutrality laws. This new responsibility led to the arrest of some spies working on behalf of the German government during the Second World War.

In recent years the FBI has reordered its priorities and focused on areas such as white-collar crime, public corruption, organized crime, terrorism, drugs and violent crime. The FBI also develops and maintains advanced forensic research capabilities, training facilities, and extensive date based of information on crime and criminals.

The Laboratory Division collects and analyses evidence for its own investigations as well as for other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

Fingerprints are still maintained in the Identification Division that was established in 1924. Today, the bureau’s files contain more than 181 million fingerprint cards, including more than 96 million that contain criminal history data on some 24 million people.

Approximately 31,000 additional fingerprint cards arrive at the Identification Division every day. The FBI also maintains the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), a nationwide network of criminal justice information available to law enforcement agencies in all fifty states that contains records on stolen property, wanted persons with outstanding arrest warrants, criminal histories on persons arrested for serious offences, processed per day at the NCIC.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14