The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Police Announce New Criminal Tracking System

POSTED: 4:19 pm EST November 5, 2004
UPDATED: 5:42 pm EST November 5, 2004

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. -- Gov. M. Jodi Rell calls it a criminal's worst
nightmare -- a new fingerprint scanning system that allows police to pull up an offender's file within minutes.

Connecticut State Police

The Automated Fingerprint Identification System replaces the old setup of mailing fingerprint cards to the state or FBI for history checks. That process took two to five months to complete.

Now, with just a touch of a button, a local police officer will have an offender's complete criminal history at his or her disposal. Electronic fingerprint scanners, called Life Scans, immediately pull up information from both state and FBI records.

"The system now allows Connecticut law enforcement officials to use
fingerprints lifted from local crime scenes to identify perpetrators
from across the nation," Rell said. "Think about it this way; state
boundaries will no longer provide anonymity to these criminals."

Rell was on hand Friday, along with local and state police, to
introduce the new tracking system. Connecticut partnered with neighbor Rhode Island in using the program. There are 55 Life Scans located in agencies across Connecticut that will have tracking capabilities, and officials say that's just a start.

"We hope to roll it out so every department that makes arrests will be ableto do this," said Rep. Robert Farr, R-West Hartford, who estimates that 70percent of arrests will be online within months.

The project began about five years ago and included scanning in 2.4
million fingerprint cards to build the new system. Each Life Scan unit costs about$30,000, said Capt. Scott Martin, commander of the Criminal Justice Information Services Section.

Martin hopes the new system will also help the state catch up on the
numberof background checks it performs each year for non-criminal agencies.

State police frequently field requests for information on teachers and
school bus drivers. Connecticut's two casinos ask for about 20,000 background checks for new employees each year, Martin said.

Officials expect to eventually use the system to take digital
photographs of offenders that can be stored in the database, as well as photographs oftattoos or scars that can help identify wanted criminals.

"It's the concept of, 'You can run, but you can't hide,"' Farr said.
"With this system, people are not going to be able to hide.
If we catch them and we book them for anything, we will know who they
are."

Submitted by Kym Clark --- KClark@FIFTHAVE.ORG