NCAWARE maintains detailed information about criminal processes, such as warrants, magistrate orders, citations that lead to an arrest, criminal summons, orders for arrest, release orders, and appearance bonds. It also tracks information and details for all people and businesses involved in such processes.
The statewide system is a custom-developed, web-based system that was designed, written, tested and implemented by the N.C. Judicial Department's Administrative Office of the Courts (NCAOC). NCAOC also trains law enforcement officers and court officials statewide to use the program.
The statewide system launched in June 2008 in Johnston County and is being rolled out county-by-county. Statewide implementation of the system is expected to be complete in 2010.
Although not all counties are yet using the program, all magistrates have access to the warrants in it through the Statewide Warrant Search.
Once the system is fully implemented, NCAWARE will replace the current computer-based Magistrate System. As each county implements NCAWARE, their unserved criminal summons, warrants and orders for arrest information in ACIS (Automated Criminal Infraction System) for the year 2000 and forward will be converted. The current estimate of potentially unserved processes available for conversion for all 100 counties is estimated at nearly three quarters of a million records. This figure is made up of approximately 350,000 orders for arrest and 350,000 criminal summons and warrants. The number of person records available for conversion (i.e., defendants, complaintants and witnesses) is estimated to exceed five million.
Once the system is fully implemented in all 100 counties, the number of users of NCAWARE, including law enforcement, is estimated to reach 35,000.