Fingerprint identification technology

Wednesday, September 05, 2001

Dr Fred Preston discuses the introduction of the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) to police forces across England and Wales

This year has seen the achievement of a major milestone for my team at the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO). The National Automated Fingerprint System (NAFIS) is live and operational in all police forces in England and Wales giving fingerprint bureaux a major boost in the national fight against crime.

For the first time we have been able to give all forces the ability to check locally captured fingerprints and crime scene marks against a growing national database that is searchable in a matter of seconds.

The successful completion of the national roll out marks the end of a long and challenging road for PITO and our partners TRW. The process began in pilot forces in 1998 and was completed with the delivery of the system, on time and on budget, to the Lancashire and Warwickshire forces.

In the past, forces have held their own fingerprint records on disparate manual or electronic systems making it difficult for an investigating officer to interrogate records held by forces further afield.

But the development of NAFIS brings together cutting-edge automated fingerprint technology and national criminal justice records to make life difficult for the criminal – especially those operating across force boundaries.

Already the database comprises a collection of nearly five million tenprint sets – a complete set of fingerprints from both hands of convicted criminals – as well as marks from the scenes of unsolved crimes.

Although it is still in the early stages of its operational life, NAFIS is already making an impact in forces. In the Met, the system is being used to run a unique fast tracking system. Marks lifted from certain categories of crime scene are being lifted and forwarded to the fingerprint bureau at New Scotland Yard by overnight despatch and scanned on to NAFIS.

Officers are told of positive results within 24 hours – a critical time frame that studies have shown can boost the chances of arrest and detection.

In addition to a steady supply of identifications from burglaries and car crime, the fast track system has thrown up identifications for over half the robberies dealt with by the Met fingerprint bureau.

Many forces have already pinpointed access to the national database as a major benefit of NAFIS. Although it was one of the last forces to switch NAFIS on, Hampshire has already benefited from access to the national database.

Crime scene marks from a recent series of travel agent robberies in the county, code-named Operation Cossack, were shown to be from suspects in the Metropolitan Police area.

From Operation Dempsey, a recent post office robbery, the two outstanding suspects were identified in 24 hours from crime scene marks left in their abandoned car.

It is a similar story in Kent where it is estimated that more than a quarter of the force's NAFIS identifications are made through national rather than local database searches. Most importantly for Kent, NAFIS has given the force the ability to tap into an estimated 1.5 million tenprint marks for the neighbouring Metropolitan Police area.

In Essex, a spate of armed robberies at service stations had proved difficult for police to crack until NAFIS was brought in to play. The robber, who was armed with a knife, had threatened forecourt staff in a series of raids around main roads. But NAFIS threw up a match from a scene of crime mark and an arrest was made shortly after in London. It turned out that the robber had committed further offences, some in the London area, and is currently serving a 12-year sentence for his crimes.

While this kind of technology will never be a substitute for the skills of a trained fingerprint officer, there is little doubt that NAFIS is a key addition to the investigator's toolkit.

One of the big pluses for NAFIS is that it is growing all the time. As the national NAFIS database grows and more forces adopt add-on capability like Livescan - automated fingerprint capture technology offered by TRW – the system will be in a stronger position to support police forces at the front-line.

Added to the announcement that PITO has secured funding to develop a national automated system for palm prints, this really is an exciting time to be involved in identification technology at PITO.