Results of the automation of fingerprint collections in Russia for 2002-2009

Close cooperation of our company with the Main Information and Analysis Center of the Ministry of Interior of Russia began in 1993, when PAPILLON AFIS was installed at the MIAC free of charge to start research on technologies for automating large fingerprint collections.

In 1997, the MIAC of the Ministry of Interior installed a palmprint version of the AFIS (PAPILLON-7) with a database of 700 thousand tenprint records (AFIS-MIC) for testing its operation on the level of a region. According to the test results, the system was recommended for implementation as a standard for automating regional fingerprint collections.

In 1997-1998, our company successfully put into operation the first regional AFIS in Russia in the Perm region with a database capacity of 1 million tenprint cards and a network of remote AFIS and electronic fingerprinting stations.

Over the next 4 years, 11 more regional databases of 500 thousand to 2.5 million tenprint records were also successfully automated.

Research on interregional fingerprint searches has begun in the AFIS-MIC. Unsolved latents from the scenes of serious crimes stored in the Forensics Center were matched against the AFIS-MIC database and gave several dozens of interregional identifications, when the latent detected in one region belonged to a person fingerprinted in another region.

Based on these results, by order of the Ministry of Interior of Russia in 2000, a Federal Automated Fingerprint Information Data Bank for solving interregional and serial crimes was created on the basis of the AFIS-MIC with a database capacity of 3.5 million tenprint records. This data bank stores tenprints amassed in the MIAC and in a number of regions. Its pilot operation confirmed the high efficiency of interregional fingerprint checks.

In 2001 at a joint meeting, V. A. Vasiliev, the Deputy Minister of the Interior, and G. O. Gref, the Minister of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation, decided to finance since 2002 further development of the AFIS-MIC and creation of interregional AFISs in a number of federal districts with the view to deploy AFISs in all regions of the Russian Federation.

Inspired by the experience gained in years of testing, comparisons, trial and full-scale operation of the AFIS in the Main Information and Analysis Center and some regions, the Russian Ministry of Interior has admitted the PAPILLON AFIS technology to be the best for performing the assigned mission.

Thus, the project launched in 2002 to create a multi-level system of automated fingerprint databases was preceded by a decade of hard work. The result of this work was participation of our company in a project that is unprecedented in its scale not only in Russian, but also in the world practice.

Since 2002, the government has allocated funds from the state budget on creating:

• Federal AFIS-MIC in the Main Information and Analysis Center of Russia with the database capacity of 35 million tenprint records
• 10 interregional automated fingerprint data banks in federal districts (AFIS-FO) with the database capacity of 3 to 10 million tenprint records

The AFIS sites were put into operation step by step, with a gradual increase in database capacity and throughput, being at each step fully functional and efficient systems.

A striking example of comparing the results of using different systems is the replacement of the Delta-C AFIS system produced by Cogent, an American company, with PAPILLON AFIS in the course of deploying an AFIS in the Central Federal District in the GUVD of Moscow in 2005. During the years of using Delta-C (1999-2005), latents relating to 1,590 criminal cases were identified. After the collection of tenprints and unsolved latents was converted to PAPILLON AFIS and new searches were conducted, latent prints of 2,842 cases were solved. 823 of those cases were stored in Delta-C as unsolved. Additionally, PAPILLON AFIS enabled the identification of latent palmprints on 521 criminal cases, while Delta-C did not work with latent palmprints at all.

The work on creating a Federal AFIS-MIC and interregional AFIS-FOs was fully completed by the end of 2006. By the end of 2007, all regional databases were automated. 70 regional AFISs with remote AFIS local sites were put into operation.

In 2005, the AFIS-CFC (Central Fingerprint Collection) started working in the Forensic Science Center of the Russian Ministry of Interior.

The total database capacity of all AFISs at the federal, interregional and regional levels amounts to 138 million tenprint records, 3.8 million latent fingerprints and 700 thousand latent palmprints. More than 1,000 jobs (AFIS operators and administrators) were created.

The key executor of the projects throughout the entire period from 2002 to 2007 was the PAPILLON Company. All AFISs were put into operation with databases created using the «bulk» entry technology and with candidate lists generated.

All dactyloscopic information accumulated in the Ministry of Interior of Russia was converted into electronic databases of AFISs. These are tenprint slips of persons convicted of committing crimes, accused, suspected of committing crimes, who committed administrative offenses, migrants, as well as latents lifted at the scenes of unsolved crimes and previously stored on paper layouts and lifting tapes.

Besides, all AFIS databases have partitions for tenprint records of voluntary and mandatory (law enforcers, armed forces personnel and other categories of government employees and potentially dangerous professions) registration.

In total, from 2000 to 2008, about 76 million tenprint cards and 3.5 million latent finger and palm prints were entered into the AFIS databases of all levels, of which 52.5 million tenprints and 380 thousand latents were inputted by the staff of the «bulk» entry department of our company.

The operation of regional AFISs has shown their high efficiency in investigating crimes committed in regions. Interregional AFIS-FOs and the Federal AFIS-MIC turned out to be an effective tool in countering criminal activities of a migratory and serial nature.

In 2002-2009, with the help of the AFISs at all levels, forensic agencies of the Russian Ministry of Interior identified more than 500,000 persons involved in the commission of crimes. During the same period, more than 106,000 unknown dead were identified with the help of the AFISs.