East Midlands Police Forces to Digitise Fingerprint Records
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Three British police forces are to become the first in the country to have all of their paper fingerprint records digitised and stored on a computer system.
Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire police joined forces to create the East Midlands Special Operations Unit (EMSOU) Forensic Services in 2012, but they have since been struggling with a shortage of space in which to keep documents.
This was also costing a lot of money, as the three forces had more than 500,000 records between them that dated back to 1999.
A project has now been launched that will see all of the paperwork scanned, catalogued using unique reference numbers and then securely stored in encrypted files.
The EMSOU hopes that as well as saving a significant amount of money, the move may help to catch offenders whose prints are stored on the system quickly and easily.
Head of forensic services Ian Gledhill said: "We now have the imaging and print quality to satisfy the requirements of the courts, making the need to hold paper records obsolete. This process will effectively make our bureau paperless."
He added that once the task is completed, it should mean that identifications of offenders can be made within minutes of a print being taken from a crime scene.
The Association of Chief Police Officers is following the project and may roll it out nationwide if it proves successful.
It comes after UK Policing director of resources Matthew Bennion-Pedley told Computer Weekly that 38 police forces are keen to get involved with an e-commerce initiative to make more services and public-facing transactions paperless.
The first will be an online firearms licensing service set to go live this autumn and it will be based on the transactional model operated by Amazon and similar firms.
It is hoped that people will find it much more convenient than having to seek out police staff themselves and fill in paperwork, as they will be able to do everything online.
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