Pen. Code, § 13000 · Article 1. Duties of the Department

Pen. Code, § 13000

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

(a) All statewide automated fingerprint identification systems shall be maintained by the Department of Justice. For purposes of this section, “automated fingerprint identification system” means electronic comparison of fingerprints to a data base of known persons.

(b) Any state agency is exempted from this section if the agency’s director finds that the automated identification system needed to meet programmatic requirements is less costly than an identical system available through an interagency agreement with the Department of Justice, or is not provided by the Department of Justice.

(c) Information contained in these systems shall be released to state agencies only on a need-to-know basis pursuant to any of the following:

(1) Statutory authorization to the extent permitted by federal law.

(2) A court order or decision that requires release of the information.

(3) An interagency agreement with the Department of Justice to develop and operate a system.

(d) The department may charge a fee to be paid by the agency for the actual cost of supporting the service.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Added by Stats. 1994, Ch. 875, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 1995.

Source of truth

Edition: As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&sectionNum=13000.
Text hash: sha256 7931c059ffef35617906387910fe34e9a671a11df417cc1795c975df4cd53514
Composed by: compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

Procedural information only. Not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Confirm the current text with the official publisher before relying on it.