Anyone still using "paper prints"?

[antonroland]

Hello all

What I mean is working with an archive of known tenprints and palms?

I suppose by now justabout everyone has moved on to an electronic AFIS/ IAFIS type database or am I wrong on this?

Have a great day!

Anton

[Cindy Rennie]

Hello, Anton.

We still use hard copy (paper) ten-prints to verify the AFIS crime-scene idents. A keying entry or a scanning blip could result in an incorrect ID number being assigned to an individual, so we want to make sure we have the correct name before we notify the investigators.

We have LiveScan technology, and keep all ten-print images on the AFIS database. The first set of prints taken of an individual becomes the "Master" copy and is printed out and filed.

We also have hard-copy ten-prints from years back (our files date back to the 1940s). We have back-loaded some of them, but keep the rest on file...just in case we get some 90-year-old cat burglar.

Hey, you never know.....

C

[H. B. James]

Hi, Anton, good to have you join us.

I believe most Federal and State agencies in the US have converted exclusively to live scan. The thing you have to keep in mind is that the US does not have a unified national police force like most countries. We have a number of Federal (national) agencies, some of whom do not like to talk to each other, and fifty separate State Police agencies. Then each state has Counties with law enforcement agencies (usually called Sheriff's Departments) and within those counties, each city or town may have its own police department. In any given spot on the map, you might be subject to four or more layers of law with four or more police agencies all trying to enforce their own laws (Federal, State, County, and City).

So, I think all Federal and State agencies have gone to live scan. Most counties use live scan, as do most large cities. Many small towns and probably some small counties still use inked fingerprints. Most people arrested for felonies are probably fingerprinted on live scan systems as they go up through the system, but many people arrested for low level misdemeanors (drunkeness, etc.) probably fall through the cracks.

The way the US government is organized, and with all the intergovernmental jealousies, we will probably never have one police agency or one overall police force. Live scan will become universal as cost comes down.

As for me, I still prefer good inked major case prints for comparison purposes, but I have to admit that some of the new live scan systems I have seen yield fingerprints and palm prints that are comparable in quality to the best inked prints. And live scan takes better prints when the jailer taking the prints isn't careful with ink.

Hope this helps. How are you doing things in South Africa?

[Tash]

I work for a state agency, and we have quite a few smaller counties that do not use live scan. As of right now these inked cards are mailed to us, we scan them into the state database, and submit them to the FBI. The cards are then filed and retained. There are advocates in our agency for not retaining the inked cards once they are scanned into the database, but as is common the quality is diminished so we will see what happens.......

[Gerald Clough]

For some perspective for those from elsewhere -

Although most of the news and nearly all of the television and film drama is set in large-agency jurisdictions, the most accurate characterization of policing in the U.S. is that is it a function of very small agencies. The mean size among all state and local agencies (17,876 agencies) is 52 sworn officers.

For local police, the average is 35 sworn officers, and that includes consolidated police-sheriff agencies. And since that includes some very large agencies, there are a great many local agencies of fewer than 12 officers. Those very small agencies very often do not have the budget to hook up to and use AFIS. When I was with one of those small agencies, I kept three sets of cards - property crooks who were on the loose, property crooks who were in prison at the time, and people I thought might become serious property crooks. I made a fair number of cases just by going through those card sets. Beyond that, it had to go to the state lab or one or another friendly denizen of big agencies.

In addition to the predominance of small agencies, there are perhaps thirty distinct and independent law enforcement agencies operating in the county where I'm sitting and perhaps 16 or more with actual jurisdictional responsibility on this spot.

[antonroland]

Thanks for all the responses folks - much appreciated.

We are well advanced in the transition from paper to electronic systems but, no doubt, you will appreciate that our legal system is rather different from that of the U.S. for example.

Cyndi, maybe I should PM you sometime about your legal system as our Constitution is greatly modeled on yours

A great day to all of you!

[RL Tavernaro]

For the 'what it's worth' department:

Many agencies in the U.S. with AFIS databases have required that the 'owner' of a tenprint card (the agency that entered the card in the system) keep a hardcopy on file. That included both inked prints scanned in to the system & livescan prints.

The policy was generally supported by latent print examiners who wanted the best exemplars possible for comparisons. As previously mentioned in this thread, livescan printouts have not always been of optimal quality; and tenprint printouts have not always been readily available through AFIS.

This info reflects what was common four years ago, when I was last actively involved with AFIS. Both quality & availability of tenprint printouts have improved significantly in the past few years. Perhaps others still active with AFIS can comment if policies have changed.
Regards, RLT

[Cindy Rennie]

...and (as former colonies) both of our systems are modeled on the British system, wot?