OJJDP FY2019 Strengthening Investigative Tools and Technology for Combating Child Sexual Exploitation

This program provides funding to increase the technological investigative capacity and associated training for law enforcement, prosecutors, and other professionals through the development, refinement, and advancement of investigative tools, methods, and technologies that address child pornography, child exploitation, and child sex trafficking. This program is authorized pursuant to the Department of Justice Appropriations Act, 2019, Pub. L. No. 116-6, 133 Stat. 13, 115.

The National Criminal Justice Training Center (NCJTC) of Fox Valley Technical College (FVTC) will strengthen and enhance several investigative tools and apply artificial intelligence to increase and share data between programs, improve search functionality to help automate investigations and increase the data sets, assist law enforcement in identifying and arresting more offenders who pose a greater risk to children, and identify high risk victims more quickly. The project will focus on 1) Enhancing the ICACCOPS system and related P2P and Chat investigative tools; 2) Grow Project VIC-US data set and Expand its use; 3) Enhance the Spotlight (child sex trafficking) tool, and 4) Enhance Freenet and Darkweb investigative tools and techniques. The enhancements of these investigative tools will allow for increased data shared between tools, increased searches, and increased investigations. The increase in the speed and effectiveness of the investigations will result in identifying a greater number of offenders who pose the greatest risk to children, quicker identification, arrest, and prosecution of high-risk offenders. FVTC will provide training and technical assistance to law enforcement, prosecutors and forensic investigators on various updates and features of these tools.
CA/NCF