If you are arrested and charged, your personal information, including your name, fingerprints and what you’re charged with, will be collected by the police and entered into its computer system. It is entered into the PRIME – BC system and shared with the Canadian Police Information Centre – CPIC – which is a national information-sharing system. Each of these systems are discussed below.

The RCMP operates PRIME-BC, a British Columbia-wide computer system connecting the information from municipal police departments, the RCMP at the federal, provincial and municipal level and the Greater Vancouver Transit Authority Police Service. It provides access to information about criminals and crimes instantly to all of these police agencies.

The information on the system can be accessed by police officers from mobile units in their police cars. Files created in the mobile units are immediately accessible by the police detachment. The mobile workstations give officers access to the whole file, including mugshots, fingerprints and other digital images. Officers can create, update, browse and search a file and update and review details of court proceedings from the time charges are laid to the disposition of the case.

The mobile workstation contains a card swipe feature that allows an officer to swipe a BC drivers’ license. All the information stored on the sriver’s license is instantly uploaded onto the system to create a file.

Sharing Information from PRIME-BC to Other Systems

PRIME-BC integrates all police information within BC, and the information is shared out to other agencies throughout Canada using the Police Information Portal (PIP) and the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC).

How to Find Out What Information is Held About You in PRIME – BC

You have a right to request access to your personal information held by the RCMP, including information that may be in PRIME-BC. However, you may not be given access to all of your personal information if a legal exception to your right to get access to the information applies.

If you want to make a request for access to your personal information held in PRIME BC, find out how to make a request for access to personal information under the Privacy Act.

You may also want to make the same or similar access request to your local police department, because a different access law applies to your local police department than to the RCMP, so the information is managed locally. There may be similar limits on your right to see your personal information as those that apply to the RCMP, but because you will be dealing with different agencies, making the request may be worth a try.