The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System

The use of computer technology has revolutionized many parts of today’s society. Everywhere one looks there is the use of computers. In most cases, computers are extremely beneficial to many people in various occupations and even in their personal lives. In one way or another, the use of computer technology can be linked to almost every occupation in the world.

The use of computers can be helpful in many ways they can make difficult tasks easy, store and share data effectively, and make it easy to communicate with co- workers and managers. The use of computers has drastically changed Law Enforcement from years past. In later years, Law Enforcement agencies had to enter all data from police reports, witness statements to criminal information, and crime scene investigations by hand and had to store all those files in secure locations.

“Thousands of times each day across the United States a police officers books a suspect, stops a suspicious character near a crime, or pulls over a speeder, and takes his or heir’s fingerprints.” (Scigliano 63.) With all those fingerprints, fingerprint information it all adds up within a department and there can be overflowing of all the information depending on the size of the department. IAFIS system allows for faster and for effective response time within sending information. Fingerprints are not the only information that is stored within the IAFIS system. “Not only fingerprints, but corresponding criminal histories; mug shots; scars and tattoos photos; physical characteristics like height, weight, and hair and eye color and aliases.”(IAFIS 1)

Imagine this; you are a police officer that has worked for years in a department. You have always had to enter a suspect’s fingerprint information into the...

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...ous fields. With computers, there is the risk that there will be computer hackers. Those same hackers attempt to steal someone’s personal information over the internet. This can be bothersome to the police because it can be hard to pinpoint the exact person who attempted to hack the computer system. If the servers for a computer system crash or get shut down people that are connected to the server do not know what to do.

Works Cited

Miller, Mark R. Police Patrol Operations. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000. Cengage Learning 2nd Ed. Print

Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Information System-fbi.gov (2013, 11-10-2013), web Retrieved 11-15-2013, from www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/figerprints_biometric/iafis

Scigliano, Eric. "The Tide of Prints." Technology Review 102.1 (1999): 62-67. Applied Science & Technology Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 18 Nov. 2013.