An Analysis of Saps Partnership with Other Government Departments in Identifying First-Time Offenders Through Fingerprints

Abstract

The South African Police Service`s (SAPS) fingerprints system can only identify persons who had previously been charged of an offence, meaning it cannot identify latent prints of innocent people or first-time offender with no prior criminal charges. As a result, over 100 000 first-time offenders were unidentified even though there were positive latent prints collected from the crime scene. This is because the South African Police data capturing system does not have information of first-time offenders while other departments such as Home Affairs and Transport including Traffic department is in possession of such fingerprints. The only challenge is to access that particular information lawfully. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to explore the use of fingerprint systems to identify latent-prints of first-time offenders. This is to ensure that other government departments which collect fingerprints from their clients, are partnering with the South African Police Service in an effort to identify first-time offenders. The research approach used in this article is a qualitative approach with a purposive sampling of extracting rich data from identified experts who are working with the fingerprint system. The researchers interviewed 19 participants in this article due to the capacity of fingerprint experts. The findings of this article confirms that the SAPS Local Criminal Record Centre (LCRC) cannot identify latent prints of first-time offenders and that many case dockets are still closed with positive fingerprints because of the lack of identification information. The implemented Person Identification Verification Application (PIVA) system which integrates the fingerprint systems from a few government departments cannot identify latent prints. The article recommended the implementation of a system that will allow LCRC to identify first-time offenders who are not on the Automated Fingerprint Investigation System (AFIS). It also recommended that the SAPS should have a database of fingerprint information from the citizens who are applying for security checks. This database can store information separately from that of the criminal records. To avoid poorly obtained fingerprints as it has been a concern of all participants, police stations should be issued with digital fingerprints scanners.