Biometrics has emerged to be future of human identification for diverse sectors like transportation, security, access control, border control, and government, including law enforcement. Currently, the law enforcement segment is facing myriad challenges in creating and maintaining a track record of criminals, which ultimately leads to an increase in the number of the crime rate.

With the rising number of criminal cases, the law & order officers are looking for a modern solution to curb the crime, catch the culprits immediately, and maintain a digitized database of the suspects.

How reliable the current Criminal Record Tracking System was?

In the wake of the current scenario, the police department or the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) are capturing and storing the details of suspects or criminals in a paper-based document, as per the conventional practice. Not only the demographic details of culprits are recorded on paper, but also their fingerprints are inked onto it.

These paper-based criminal records, however, can be lost or torn. It may also involve the risk of replicating original document with forged details of a suspect. Furthermore, with the paper-based criminal record tracking system, the fingerprint impressions of offenders have to be matched manually.

As per the NCRB reports, 70% of crimes are performed by the repeated culprits. And detecting or tracking these repeated offenders with the current becomes quite challenging as well as time-consuming. That’s when the forces of law and order across the country felt a strong need for a digitized criminal maintenance record or tracking system to track down the repeated culprits without any delay.

How biometrics can modernize the paper-based criminal tracking system

The latest biometric technology holds great potentiality to modernize the criminal tracking system by making it fully automated, digitized, and completely reliable. The biometric identification system can precisely capture an offender’s physical attributes like a fingerprint, IRIS, or facial images with the help of advanced biometric sensors.

The demographic, as well as biometric details of all the criminals or suspects, can be captured efficiently, and accurately using innovative biometric devices. The captured biometric data of criminals can further be fed systematically into a centralized server of the law enforcement agencies.

In a way, the modern biometric criminal tracking system can not only assist police squad in maintaining the criminal records across the state but also track down these offenders without undue delay through biometric identification.

Additionally, the portable biometric systems can offer assistance to the police force in probing absconded criminals from the crime scenes. The biometric details of the offenders obtained from the crime scenes can be matched efficiently with his/her past criminal records.

In a nutshell, biometric-based criminal tracking and identification system can act as a Google search for all the law enforcement agencies to capture, & store criminal records digitally, identify them and trace them down within seconds.

What lies ahead

Recently, the Maharashtra government has launched an Automated Multimodal Biometric Identification System (AMBIS) in 94 police stations of the state on a trial basis. AMBIS can capture the fingerprint, IRIS, and facial images of the suspects to create an instant digitized criminal database. AMBIS will further assist police forces in probing criminals based on their biometric details, on the click of a mouse.

So far, over 2,600 police personnel have been trained on how to utilize the system. Within just four days of the trial, more than 85 cases of robbery, dacoity & house break-ins have been resolved and 599 offenders have been identified through AMBIS. The system can store up to 20 lakh criminal profiles.

Benefits of biometric criminal tracking system

Reduction in crime-rate

Prevent criminals from escorting police

Speed-up the investigation of criminal cases

Increase in crime detection and conviction rates

Assists in maintain law & order in the best possible way

Biometric details recognize a culprit even after a disguise

Find and identify suspects within seconds at the click of a mouse