Biometric Criminal ID and Records: Can It Patch the Loopholes in Criminal Identification?

History of crime is probably as old as the history of the mankind itself; however, early crimes were settled with Darwin’s law rather than the court of law. In the modern society, we have well-defined criminal code and the penalties. Judiciary can be a large system depending on many sub-systems to serve justice. Law enforcement is one of the sub-systems of it. Criminal procedures in law enforcement applications can generate a lot of data, for example: personal details of criminals, demographics, details of offences or crimes committed details of court hearings and sentences, etc. Along with criminals, law enforcement officers have to manage their data as well, which may not be any less troublesome than handling criminals.

For the same reason identification of individuals required in any organization or institution; for example, identification of employees in an office or of students in a college. Law enforcement agencies deal with a large numbers of criminals and without an identification system in place, it would become impossible to process and manage them. Different criminals may have different severity level, those who are convicted for felony may require closer monitoring. In jails and prisons as well, criminals serving sentence may have different sentence particulars, needs and access to services, and an identification system helps manage all that. Jails and prisons are the important parts of overall judicial system with identification challenges unlike any other institution. An identification system helps uniquely distinguish criminals from each other.

Criminal identification is something that cannot afford errors. Errors in criminal identification can lead to many complications, which may sometimes be fatal. We have seen some of the deadliest terrorist incidents in recent history and they seem to be getting more and more intense. Influx of refugees due to civil unrest in countries like Syria, Iraq, etc. have also presented risk of terrorists and criminals crossing international borders as refugees. No host country would want criminals out of its refugee shelters. Having refugees identified during their shelter formalities can save from many undesirable incidents later.

Creating a unique ID is the first step towards criminal identification. How unique this ID is depends on what data is used in creating it. It may be a combination of certain demographics like criminal’s name, date of birth, place of birth, etc. that makes the ID unique. Using combination of demographic data has been used since early days of computer based record management of individuals. This approach is good as there is a very few chance that two persons will have all same demographics, even twins will have their names different. This approach is good as long as there are limited numbers of records with sufficient staff members to manage.

Criminal ID with demographics, however, can be lacking efficiency as well as data integrity. It can be prone to errors and duplication of records. In another approach, a unique string of numbers and/or alphabets can be used for each criminal record and as the criminal ID. Unique string idea may sound promising but it can be hard to remember when need of identification arises. Maintaining a large number of criminal records with manual/traditional criminal ID can be troublesome. With these criminal ID approaches, you should either have enough time to process records or enough tolerance for errors, both of which are hard to find in law enforcement applications.

With the demographic based approach, looking up a criminal record will require you to enter her/his name or other data, which may have possibility of typos. Typing error may also occur during creating or updating criminal data.

Ideally, identification of an individual should be inherent and should not depend on external means, including demographics, which can be changed at will. Criminal IDs created with demographics or serial numbers can be prone manipulation. In such scenario, the only viable solution remains is biometric Identification, which uses criminals’ physiological or behavioral traits to uniquely identify them.

How critical identification of criminals is can be explained with the historic existence of identification methods specially designed to identify criminals. Bertillon method (also known as anthropometry; a series anthropometric measurement of unalterable parts of the body using specially designed callipers, gauges and rulers) was one of such methods that used a series of anthropometric measurements of unalterable parts of the body using specially designed callipers, gauges and rulers. Developed in 1879 by Alphonse Bertillon, a French police officer and biometrics researcher, this method leveraged the fact that alteration of body parts is impossible (at that time at least). It resulted in higher reliability in identification of criminals and gained some success too, however, it was a very time consuming method. Bertillon’s method gave an early glimpse of future of criminal identification.

Fingerprinting has also been a reliable method of criminal identification. It has been serving law enforcement applications for more than a century; however, its existence was not as apparent as now. Now fingerprints can be used as biometric criminal ID to maintain criminal records. Biometrics has matured over the years and now we have large scale identification systems like AFIS and IAFIS that can store large volumes biometric data and process match requests more efficiently than ever.

Biometric ID offers a viable solution for all the problems associated with traditional criminal IDs. Now with advance biometric systems, we can directly submit a biometric query and all the data linked with the biometric identifier will be fetched. Since biometric identification methods use unalterable anatomical (or behavioral) characteristics of individuals, it becomes impossible to manipulate them. Demographics can always be changed but changing a person’s biometric identifiers is near possible. Today biometric identification enjoys huge penetration in civil applications as well, increasing its reliability and acceptance among people. Mobile biometrics has played a major role in the admiration biometrics has earned over the years. It has also helped diminish the stigma of being a criminal identification method.

There may be a large number of criminals in a jurisdiction depending on its size. On the other hand, there may be different law enforcement agencies at local, state and national levels that have to work together and keep things in sync. It takes a lot of efficiency oriented approaches to get things right. In criminal identification, this level of efficiency can be achieved with the use of criminal biometric ID. Use of criminal’s biometric identifiers can help law enforcement agencies at different levels be on the same page and it also brings consistency in the operations. Law enforcement agencies also accept criminal background check request from employers, landlords, etc., in which they seek background information of their prospective hires or tenants. It becomes much easier to search with a biometric query than by demographics in criminal background check requests.

In small to medium scale biometric applications like physical or logical access control, identification, authentication, etc. the biometric systems used are mostly standalone equipment that may or may not be connected to a computer or network. These standalone systems have ability to scan and match biometric identifiers (e.g. fingerprints) locally and independently. They also come with the ability to store fingerprints as well as transactions performed (enrollment, granting or denying access, etc.). Storage capacity may range from a few hundreds to a few thousands, depending on the specifications and cost of the equipment.  These systems are good for applications in which a limited number of people need to be identified or authenticated, for example: office attendance application, door access application, etc.

However, ability of these systems falls short when it comes to large scale identification, which requires millions on people to be processed with high level of accuracy. Large scale identification applications like civil ID, criminal identification, etc. may also have additional requirements like ability to store a large number of records with scanned images as well as biometric templates. For such applications, specially designed biometric identification systems called AFIS and ABIS are leveraged. AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) is a computerized fingerprint identification system for sorting, comparing, and exchanging digital fingerprint data. Processing large number of fingerprint records with the help of normal biometric systems or computers can take a substantial amount of time.

ABIS (Automated Biometric Identification System) is comparatively a newer concept in which AFIS systems are given ability to leverage other biometric identifiers as well. FBI’s IAFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System) is an AFIS system used by the law enforcement agency.

In law enforcement or civil identification applications, there may be several requests to process in a day for example: background check, employment screening, criminal identification, criminal id lookup, criminal record check, criminal history check, criminal background check, creating records of criminal booking, etc. Processing such requests is not possible on standalone biometric system, not even on biometric systems backed by normal PCs as they lack the processing ability required to do the job. AFIS systems are equipped with powerful hardware that provides enough computing ability to handle large scale identification application. Unlike commercial biometric systems, which return match or no match out of a biometric scan (either it will let you in, or it will deny), AFIS systems return a score based match of top 5/10 matches.

To maintain civil order and safety of law abiding citizens, it is very important that criminals are accurately identified and no criminal is able to escape or take advantage of an identification system’s loopholes. A biometric criminal ID can address the shortcomings present in traditional methods of criminal identification and provide multiple benefits that overhaul how system works. Following are some of the fronts where biometric ID can make a difference.

Checking criminal records can be a routine job in law enforcement applications. Law enforcement agencies like FBI house fingerprint and other biometric identifiers of millions of criminal, terrorist and civil subjects. The agency also accepts request from other local or state level law enforcement agencies for criminal record check and background check. Civil applicants may also seek verification of criminal history records or criminal background check for various reasons.

1. If someone is being processed as a criminal (e.g. during criminal booking).
2. If someone is taking up an employment position that has probability to be taken undue advantage of. E.g. home help, nanny, law enforcement officers.
3. During purchasing controlled commodities that may pose threat to others lives (e.g. firearms, some chemical substances, etc.).
4. Crossing international borders (depending on the country, but now most countries require some form of biometric identifiers).

In present day scenario, in which threats may intrude as friendly faces, it has become very important that a comprehensive background check is performed on people that are getting through the scenarios discussed above. From a nanny to intelligence agents, criminal background check can make sure that people with questionable background are not hired for sensitive positions.

A criminal background check cantered around biometric identifier like fingerprint can produce trustworthy results from all level of law enforcement agencies, provided that they maintain their criminal records using biometric identifiers as search key. As we have discussed above, criminal records maintained or queried with demographics have a lot of possibility to produce errors. A Biometric criminal ID can reduce a lot of time wasted in procedural errors.

Capturing fingerprints is a standard process during criminal booking. During the criminal booking, all criminal records are checked against the biometric data (e.g. fingerprints, if system allows) or demographics of the defendant. If no records are found at local, state or federal levels, fresh record of the newly arrested criminal is created. Capturing fingerprints is a standard process in most jurisdictions during the criminal booking. Other procedures like mug shots, body search and examination also take place during the criminal booking process. Capturing fingerprints at the time of booking provides an opportunity to create a biometric criminal ID, which can be advantageous throughout the criminal’s judicial proceedings and beyond.

Criminals make a huge part of overall population, making law enforcement agencies to deal with large numbers of individuals and their records. Identification of criminals is an important, yet overlooked activity in criminal procedures. Using traditional or manual criminal identification methods claim a lot of time of law enforcement officers, which slows down the overall judicial system. Biometric technology offers an opportunity to leverage criminal biometrics and create a biometric criminal ID using fingerprints or other biometrics, which can resolve many complications and patch loopholes present in manual criminal identification.