Half of FBI Rap Sheets Are Missing Case Dispositions

Nearly half of all FBI criminal history records (rap sheets) fail to include the final outcome of a case — whether charges were dismissed, the defendant was acquitted, or the record was expunged. The FBI's Interstate Identification Index relies entirely on state and local agencies to submit disposition data, and those agencies routinely fail to do so. This matters because an arrest without a disposition looks functionally identical to a conviction on a background check. When an employer or landlord sees 'arrested for felony assault' with no resolution, they assume the worst and reject the applicant. The National Employment Law Project estimates that 600,000 workers per year are directly harmed by these missing dispositions — denied jobs they are legally and morally qualified for, based on incomplete government records. The reason this persists structurally is that there is no federal mandate requiring courts and prosecutors to report dispositions to state repositories within a specific timeframe, and no penalty for failing to do so. State courts are chronically underfunded and understaffed, so updating FBI records is low priority compared to processing active caseloads. The FBI has no authority to compel timely reporting, and no centralized system exists to flag when a disposition is overdue. The result is a federal database that is treated as authoritative by millions of employers but is, by design, permanently incomplete.