California Bureau of Investigation is a fictional law enforcement organization of the U.S. state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

 of California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 featured predominantly in the TV series The Mentalist

The Mentalist

The Mentalist is an American police procedural television series which debuted on September 23, 2008, on CBS. The show was created by Bruno Heller, who is also the show's executive producer...

.

There is an entity known as the Bureau of Investigation & Intelligence (BII) in California which is commonly referred to as "CBI" so as to distinguish it from its federal counterpart, the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...

 (FBI). BII commonly works on a variety of cases, some of which have some subject matter overlap with the CBI portrayed on The Mentalist

The Mentalist

The Mentalist is an American police procedural television series which debuted on September 23, 2008, on CBS. The show was created by Bruno Heller, who is also the show's executive producer...

.