Inkless Fingerprinting

The Otter Tail County sheriff’s office, located in Minnesota, provides law enforcement services to the public as part of its mission to serve and protect the community. These services also include providing fingerprint-based background check services.

The County Sheriff’s Office provides fingerprinting services for various reasons, but the majority of them are for gun permits, guardianship, nursing license, real estate license, and many other jobs that require fingerprinting.

This case study corresponds to the Otter Tail County sheriff’s office’s adoption of Bayometric’s live scan software for processing inkless fingerprints.

Just like any other county jurisdiction, the sheriff’s office of Otter Tail County wanted to ensure smooth and efficient fingerprint-based background check services for the community. The fingerprinting services provided by the Otter Tail County sheriff’s office are used for background checks for purposes such as licensure, gun permits, certification, and employment. Some professions require fingerprinting as part of the licensing process, such as teachers, nurses, and other healthcare workers.

The sheriff’s office also provides fingerprinting services for those who are required by law to be fingerprinted, such as those applying for a concealed carry permit. Otter Tail County sheriff’s office was using ink-based fingerprinting which is not very consistent and wanted to find a digital solution to capture and print fingerprints on FBI fingerprint cards.

Can digital fingerprints be printed on cards?

A Live scan fingerprinting system can capture highly accurate and precise digital fingerprint images.  Its underlying fingerprint quality check algorithm ensures fingerprints captured are of great quality. Fingerprints captured digitally can also be printed on the standard FD-258 fingerprint cards, thanks to Bayometric’s live scan software.

Otter Tail County Sheriff’s office was looking for a solution that could allow them to print digital quality fingerprints on FD-258 fingerprint cards. After conducting market research and due diligence, they got in touch with Bayometric.

With traditional ink-based fingerprinting, Otter Tail County sheriff’s office was not able to meet its objectives of providing smooth and efficient fingerprinting services to the community. The ink-based fingerprint was not only messy and slow but also had a high rate of rejection. The county sheriff’s office wanted to capture fingerprints and personal information digitally and print this info on fingerprint cards – i.e. submit FD-258 fingerprint cards with digitally captured fingerprints printed on them.

Their requirements perfectly matched with Bayometric’s Print to Card – a customized live scan fingerprinting solution that allows capturing fingerprints digitally and printing on fingerprint cards. Fingerprints captured with the live scan equipment can be printed on a standard FD-258 fingerprint card using Bayometric’s live scan software. County Sheriff’s Office was pleased with our product demonstration and found it ideal for their requirements.

Once the contract was signed, Bayometric delivered and installed the Print to Card System which consisted of live scan fingerprinting software, fingerprint scanner, signature pad, and driver’s license reader. The system has been up and running for over a year and the sheriff’s office has fingerprinted a large number of applicants, hence we thought it would be a good time to get in touch with the sheriff’s office to find out how the system was performing for them.

According to the sheriff’s office, the system is “super easy to use”, extremely user-friendly, and worked very well for them. Furthermore, not a single fingerprint card has been rejected by the FBI ever since they started using our system.

They are also extremely happy with the level of service provided. According to them, our account manager has been super helpful through the process and has handled the small number of issues we have had very quickly!

Since we also supplied the driver’s license reader to automate the data entry process, we wanted to receive feedback on that as well.

According to the sheriff’s office staff – “The driver’s license reader has been awesome and very helpful when entering info. It makes the process faster and easier without having to type in all the info after you scan the license you only have to enter a few items.”

We were pleased to hear that the county sheriff’s office had processed hundreds of prints since the deployment of the system and never encounter any case of false rejection.

Following are the business benefits that the Otter Tail County sheriff’s office was able to achieve:

Speed and efficiency

Live scan fingerprinting is a faster and more efficient process than ink fingerprinting. The electronic capture of fingerprints eliminates the need for ink fingerprinting, and the fingerprints can be transmitted electronically to authorized agencies as well as printed on fingerprint cards. This has saved them time and resources.

Improved accuracy

Live scan fingerprinting produces high-quality, accurate fingerprint images that are less prone to smudging or errors than ink-based fingerprints. This leads to fewer rejections and delays in the processing of background checks and other applications.

Automated quality control

The live scan fingerprinting system comes equipped with an inbuilt fingerprint quality check algorithm that identifies poor-quality fingerprints and asks the user to re-capture these prints.