Palm matching now available across the UK

The Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) has completed the roll-out of Palm Searching capability to all police forces in England and Wales.

Palm prints have been collected over the last two years, but previously there was no way of searching this database. The new search, which is accessible by all forces across England and Wales, is the first major software extension of IDENT1 – the biometric technology platform which supersedes NAFIS (National Automated Fingerprint Identification System).

IDENT1 extends the capability of NAFIS and provides a strategic platform for future biometric capabilities and a wider range of identification services being developed by PITO. IDENT1 will allow searching of all mainland UK records for the first time, Scotland having signed up to take the platform. The training bureau in Scotland also has access to the new Palm Searching capability.

David Goodwin, Fingerprint Manager at Northamptonshire said: “Members of my team were being trained on the software when they noticed similarities between two palm prints and further analysis of these proved a match. As another tool in our armoury Palm Searching will undoubtedly prove very useful.”

Humberside Police has reported 20 hits since starting to use the capability at the beginning of the month. Richard Gallagher, Head of Fingerprint Bureau at Humberside said: “We would not have been able to achieve these matches without the new palms tool as we did not have the associated finger marks to go on in each case.”

Further initiatives already underway – including mobile fingerprint checking (Lantern), facial imaging (FIND and face recognition) and video identification (NVIS) – will be able to exploit the IDENT1 platform.