The Minnesota Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) recently learned that some records were accessible on the state’s public criminal history website when they should not have been. The issue that caused this error has been corrected. 

Criminal history records held by the BCA are kept in the Minnesota Criminal History System (CHS). A computer process copies public records from CHS to the public criminal history website. In some instances, CHS was not recognizing the most recent activity on a record, which may have included court actions that would render a record not public. This caused some records to be accessible on the public website in error.

• Certain records for a total of 595 people were available on the public criminal history website for a varying amount of time.
• Vendors received these records in response to data requests for all public criminal history data.

It took approximately one month to complete the analysis, development and testing to fix the issue. The fix was implemented on Feb. 25.

The BCA will prepare a report. To receive a copy of the report, send an email to BCA.DataResponse@state.mn.us and indicate whether you want a copy sent via email or mail. Please provide the appropriate contact information. The BCA takes the security of data in all our systems very seriously and regrets that this occurred.