A man arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol is brought into the booking facility at the Brazos County Jail where he’s fingerprinted and photographed. The man, who has five previous drunk driving arrests under five different aliases, believes he can give authorities the slip by giving another false name when he’s being booked. By the time they find out, he’ll already have been released from jail and be out of town, or so he thinks.
What he doesn’t know is that the Brazos County Sheriff’s Office uses “live scan” technology to electronically record and store his fingerprints, rather than the old ink and paper way. Jailers electronically scan the man’s fingerprints and transmit the prints to the Texas Department of Public Safety database in Austin. Within minutes, the DPS can match the man’s prints to the previous arrest records already on file and jailers can instantly confirm the man’s true identity and his criminal history.
From far West Texas to the suburbs of Houston, counties across the state are turning to the latest in electronic fingerprint identification and recording technology to get cleaner prints while also improving the efficiency and speed of checking identities and creating and verifying criminal records.
Sgt. Carey White with the Brazos County sheriff’s department said a “live scan” fingerprint identification and reporting system has been in place at the jail for almost four years and has helped positively identify several people who tried to give false information when they were arrested and booked into the jail.
Brazos County Sheriff Chris Kirk said, “It’s happened several times for us where someone will submit a name and when we get a print out back, we find out this person is already on file under another name. So, this technology is certainly a benefit for us.”
White, who supervises booking and release of inmates at the jail, said if a fingerprint match was found within the DPS database, the response time back to the local agencies with the suspect’s real identity and criminal record could be as quick as two to three minutes.
The Bell County Sheriff’s office also is in the process of implementing an electronic fingerprinting system at the jail.
Sheriff Dan Smith said electronic fingerprinting would vastly speed up his department’s ability to properly identify people and prevent any problems with mistaken identity.
“It will allow for thousands of arrests of suspects wanted on warrants that might not otherwise be made because suspects can be more efficiently and quickly identified,” he said.
The prospect of establishing someone’s identity at the beginning of the booking process is one reason Dallas County Assistant Chief Deputy Pat McMillan is excited about implementing the “live scan” technology at the county jail. She said the new technology would prevent jailers from relying on arrestees to provide positive identification.
“Under the old system, if we had a person come in and give us the name John Smith, he would be booked in and we would create paperwork under that name,” she said.
If officials at the jail later found out that the arrestee had used an alias and had outstanding warrants, all the paperwork the jailer just completed would have to be merged back under another number that matches the person’s true identity.
“It’s a very time consuming paper process and this new technology will eliminate a lot of that,” McMillan said.
The “live scan” system is expected to be up and running later this month, McMillan said.
Brazos and Dallas counties are two of 31 law enforcement entities in the state, including four cities and 27 counties, that are receiving the “live scan” fingerprint identification and reporting system through federal grants allocated through the Criminal Justice Policy Council.
White with Brazos County said “live scan” operated in a similar way to a scanner at a grocery store by taking a laser scan of all 10 fingerprints.
Once the fingerprints are electronically scanned, the jailer then sends copies of the prints electronically to the DPS headquarters in Austin where they are entered into the state’s automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS). AFIS is a mainframe processor at DPS headquarters that stores and compares millions of fingerprint images. AFIS uses state identification numbers, rather than suspects’ names, to verify fingerprint matches.
If a match if found within the database, the DPS sends a report back to the local agency giving the suspect’s identifying number. This eliminates the possibility that someone could slip by using an alias. If there is no match, the AFIS system assigns a new number to the suspect.
White said once local officials received the report back from the DPS, it was up to them to run the suspect’s number to get his or her name and criminal history.
If the arrestee has no previous criminal record, it could take up to 30 minutes to receive a response from DPS, but normal response time is several minutes, White said.
He also said one of the biggest advantages of electronic reporting was that it reports the arrest instantly to the DPS.
An arrest could show up on that person’s file as soon as four hours, or up to 24 hours, after it is reported, depending on how backlogged the DPS system is, he said.
So, even if an arrestee bonds out of jail, leaves town and is arrested again the next day, the arrest will show up on his or her record.
Sheriff Smith also said the newer technology was beneficial for law enforcement agencies because information about a suspect, including fingerprints, mug shots and criminal history, could be accessed at a fingertip without searching through flat files in storage with the more traditional paper system.
Many law enforcement officials praise “live scan” for doing away with the manual process of taking prints and eliminating the need for ink and paper.
Currently, most law enforcement agencies use either a totally manual process to take prints or a partially automated process using a remote AFIS terminal.
In the early 1990s, the state funded 30 remote AFIS terminals at booking sites across the state that were networked to the state host in Austin in order to process fingerprint cards more efficiently than a completely manual process.
Gene Draper, deputy director of the Criminal Justice Policy Council, said the state was replacing the existing remote AFIS terminals at those sites with the newer “live scan” technology.
At booking sites with the remote AFIS terminals, jailers must physically roll all 10 fingerprints through ink and record them on a fingerprint card. The card is then fed into the remote AFIS terminal and transmitted to the host AFIS system in Austin.
Draper said this process has a slower turnaround time compared to the “live scan” system. And, the manual process of taking prints could result in inconsistent print quality.
“(The AFIS workstations) were like high quality fax machines,” Draper said. “(Live scan) is much more sophisticated.”
Agencies without AFIS terminals also manually roll fingerprints and mail fingerprint cards to the DPS. The agencies must then wait for the DPS to mail a copy of the report after the fingerprints have been entered into the AFIS system.
Local agencies that use a remote AFIS terminal also face the additional delay of having to send a paper fingerprint card through the mail to the DPS before a permanent record can be created.
Until that point, the DPS can only maintain a temporary arrest record.
By comparison, the “live scan” fingerprint system improves the use of the DPS AFIS by allowing a permanent fingerprint record to be created within 24 hours after the local agency sends the fingerprints, instead of 14 to 30 days or longer under the older system, Draper said.
The electronic reporting also speeds up the process of conducting national background checks of Texas arrestees through the Federal Bureau of Investigation AFIS.
Under the older system, it takes six to eight weeks for local agencies to receive a background check from the FBI. Using the “live scan” technology, it takes only about two hours.
Because the “live scan” system operates without ink and paper, there is no more smudging or smearing and jailers can create better quality prints.
McMillan said one of the most frustrating aspects of the older, manual system was that jailers had to be extremely careful when taking prints with ink.
Jailers must physically roll all 10 fingerprints through ink and print anywhere from four to six cards. Right now, McMillan’s staff hand roll about 300 to 350 prints every day using the traditional ink and paper method.
If a mistake is made or the prints or smudged or smeared, they might not be readable once they reach the DPS database, in which case, the jailer has to start all over rolling the prints again, she said.
With the new “live scan” system, if the prints are unreadable or not good quality, the computer alerts jailers and they can be instantly rescanned on the spot.
Installation of the “live scan” electronic fingerprint identification and reporting system at the 31 sites is part of the CJPC’s Texas Criminal History Improvement Program (TCHIP). The CJPC received funds from the federal government to implement TCHIP to improve fingerprint and criminal records reporting to the state.
The first local site with “live scan” technology became operational in 1998. Since that time, 250,000 fingerprint cards have been submitted electronically instead of on paper.
The state targeted large metropolitan areas and medium-sized areas to be the recipients of the “live scan” technology because they have a high volume of arrests at their booking sites. More arrests mean more fingerprints entered into the state system for comparison.
And using “live scan” technology at local booking sites is beneficial to the state because DPS staff don’t have to handle paper cards or type data into the system, which eliminates the potential for errors, Draper said.
The DPS also gets higher quality prints through electronic reporting, he said.
However, not every law enforcement agency that uses electronic fingerprint reporting received the technology through the CJPC grants.
Some counties, like Bell County, obtained the technology through another federal grant.
Harris County used local funds to install and maintain a remote AFIS terminal and “live scan” system, but Draper said that wasn’t an option for most law enforcement entities because of the cost.
The system costs about $80,000 to $90,000, he said.
The technology requires reprogramming of computer systems, installation of telecommunication lines and regular maintenance.
Draper said if law enforcement agencies in smaller counties or cities have a low volume of bookings, the expense of maintaining the system might not justify purchasing the newer equipment.
“They have to ask themselves, ‘Do you have the money to support this in the future?’“, he said.
But, electronic fingerprint and arrest reporting is becoming the wave of the future for many law enforcement agencies.
The CJPC also assists the Criminal Justice Division of the Governor’s Office is distributing federal funds for the Electronic Disposition Reporting program.
Right now, 48 local sites, including county and district clerks and prosecutors, have been electronically submitting prosecutorial and court disposition records to DPS instead of on paper through the EDR program.
Draper said grant funding was still available for that project.
In fact, more and more agencies are going to electronic systems to operate more efficiently and improve accuracy.
Smith from Bell County said his department was migrating to more electronic recording and storing of information to have better control and accountability.
And, Kirk from Brazos County said the new “live scan” system was only one part of his department’s efforts to move forward with digital technology.
The department will soon implement digital photography to take mug shots and will install a new computer system that will enhance the department’s ability to operate virtually paperless, he said.
The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office also will soon implement LiveID, another computer system that will help cross check identifies of jail inmates before they are released from jail.
When a suspect is about to be released, LiveID allows jailers to take one fingerprint of the suspect on the spot and then call up an electronically captured mug shot and one of the suspect’s fingerprints taken previously. Jail staff are able to instantly compare the fingerprints and mug shot to make sure they are releasing the right person.
Right now, jail staff must visually compare fingerprints and double check the suspect’s identity with a coded plastic ID bracelet similar to what is used in hospitals.
Sometimes, visual checks of suspect fingerprints is not always an accurate process and can lead to the wrong person being released from jail, McMillan acknowledged.
“Once in a awhile, we’ll get people who switch armbands and claim to be one person they are not and the prints can sometimes be close. People get in a hurry and can make a mistake,” she said.
McMillan said the LiveID system would create faster and more reliable confirmation of suspect fingerprints before releasing them.