READ: Fingerprints

Digital Imaging for Fingerprint Evidence

Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS): What is it?

 IAFIS is a national computerized system that allows fingerprints found at a crime scene or of a person of interest to be compared to a database of known fingerprints maintained by the FBI. In addition to fingerprints, the database also contains criminal history information about convicted persons, as well as mugshots, information about tattoos or distinguishing marks, physical characteristic such as height and weight, and aliases. It is one of the largest fingerprint databases in the world housing the prints and criminal history of 70 million convicted persons, as well as 34 million civilians! It also contains the prints and information (as it is available) of 73,000 known or suspected international terrorists! While that is a huge number of prints that the computer must sort when looking for matches, it generally takes less than an hour to get possible matches from the database. In fact, the average wait time is only about 27 minutes! 

How does IAFIS work?

Once a fingerprint is uploaded, the computer system will search for similar prints in the database. The computer will then print a list of close matches that a trained fingerprint examiner will use to ultimately determine a final match as outlined in the ACE-V Process. Before the IAFIS system, fingerprint examination was much more laborious and often took weeks or months to locate matching fingerprints in older paper-based systems. While today's system does not have instantaneous results as you may see on television, it is certainly a vast improvement over previous methods!

Did you know that fingerprints collected at a police station or for civilian purposes such as pre-employment background checks are now usually scanned directly into a computer rather than using the ink and card method of the past? These new fingerprint capture devices often use a liquid such as water on a scanner screen to create a print that is scanned. The prints can then be printed on a standard fingerprint card and submitted for the intended purpose as well as directly uploaded to IAFIS. This is a vast improvement because the finger can be scanned repeatedly as needed until an acceptable, very clear fingerprint is captured.

 Georgia Virtual, Fingerprints, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0