In March 2012, the Attleboro Police Department went online with the FBI to process digital fingerprints. The department purchased the The Cross Match ID 500 Live Scan. The system replaces the need for ink printing. The Cross Match ID 500 is connected to The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, more commonly known as IAFIS, is a national fingerprint and criminal history system maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division.
The IAFIS provides automated fingerprint search capabilities, latent searching capability, electronic image storage, and electronic exchange of fingerprints and responses, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As a result of submitting fingerprints electronically, agencies receive electronic responses to criminal ten-print fingerprint submissions within two hours.
The database, which went live in July 1999, is the culmination of 10 years’ work. However, the idea is much older. “The FBI has been creating a national fingerprint database of subjects arrested for criminal offenses since 1924,”. But before 1999, this fingerprint library had been maintained only in hard copy form on fingerprint cards. That made national searches next to impossible. Now, searching a set of prints against the 45 million on file takes only a couple of minutes.
