What is LAWS made in the Nixon administration?
I came upon following sentences when I read NEEDFUL THINGS by Stephen King.

"He'd call the Attorney General's Office in Augusta first, have them check Gaunt's name against the con file. If there was nothing there, they could send the name on to the LAWS R&I computer in Washington - LAWS, in Alan's opinion, was one of the few good things the Nixon administration had ever done.

Is it an abbreviation? Does anybody know where it came from?

Question

What is LAWS made in the Nixon administration?
I came upon following sentences when I read NEEDFUL THINGS by Stephen King.

"He'd call the Attorney General's Office in Augusta first, have them check Gaunt's name against the con file. If there was nothing there, they could send the name on to the LAWS R&I computer in Washington - LAWS, in Alan's opinion, was one of the few good things the Nixon administration had ever done.

Is it an abbreviation? Does anybody know where it came from?

Answer

Because LAWS is capitalized, it is most likely an acronym.  It may well be made up for this book, but King probably wants the reader to understand that the database is law-related.

Answer

It is an abbreviation of some sort of crime database. I am not familiar with the specific system, but R&I means "Record and Identification." So he is going to check the name against a federal crime database.

Answers · 2

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