Marion Edmunds
WHILE Pagad is baying for quick justice from blood- stained streets, the police at head office are scrabbling for money to buy a fingerprinting system which would remove one of the key blockages in the criminal justice system.
The purchase of an automated fingerprint system Afis would speed up police investigations and court trials by up to two months. But the system would cost about R200-million and the police do not, to date, have the money for it in their budget, although it is listed as a priority in draft strategy documents.
Meanwhile, their manual fingerprinting service is buckling under the strain of increased crime, arrests and criminal trials: so much so that earlier this year, the police sent letters to attorneys general apologising for delays and explaining the problems.
The letter indicates the police are receiving 3 000 new sets of fingerprints daily for processing,. Of all the fingerprint queries it receives, the police say 72% take 20 days to process, 21% take 40 days and 8% take 80 days. Not only are fingerprint checks essential in police investigations, but they are also neccessary in criminal trials where the harshness of sentence is relative to the number of previous convictions of the accused. In magistrate’s courts, particularly, sentencing is delayed as fingerprints are checked, with the accused either having to apply for bail or spend up to two months in prison until the records are found.
The police have almost five million sets of prints in their records to sift through by hand. Afis would cut down the two-month delays to half an hour.
The Department of Home Affairs is to tender for an Afis system in November, but this system will not be shared by the police who will have to get their own.
A police representative said the police were also looking at a system where people could be identified by their retina by using a computerised eye-scan for criminals.