CrimTrac - Australia’s link to national crime fighting
Technology is a wonderful thing - unless, of course, it is being used by people intent on committing a crime. In Australia, the names of unsavoury characters using technology to advance their illegal causes have found a home within CrimTrac’s National Police Reference System, which is taking crime fighting to a whole new level.
CrimTrac is an Australian government agency serving as a link between the country’s law enforcement organisations. It was established on July 1, 2000, with a purpose to ‘develop the technology required to give police ready access to information needed to solve crimes. Its primary role is to provide national information sharing solutions to support the effective operation of police services and law enforcement agencies across state and territory borders. It brokers a wide variety of information to assist investigations by law enforcement agencies and is responsible for finding emerging information technologies and opportunities to enhance information sharing.’
According to the CrimTrac website, its mission is to contribute to enhanced community safety by delivering and maintaining high-quality, timely and cost-effective national policing information services, advanced national police investigation tools and national criminal history record checks for accredited agencies.
CrimTrac also assists Australian police services to take advantage of opportunities opened up by forensic science, information technology and communications advances. The agency supports policing by providing information and investigative tools to:
• provide faster suspect identification
• clear the innocent
• shorten investigation times so more crimes can be investigated
• increase crime clearance rates.
It achieves these goals through the delivery of four key systems, which improve information sharing for police. These systems include:
• an enhanced National Automated Fingerprint Identification System
• a National Criminal Investigation DNA Database
• a National Child Sex Offender System
• the National Police Reference System (NPRS).
The NPRS, which is an electronic crime-fighting information-sharing capability that provides police and law enforcement agencies with a nationwide view of persons of interest, won the Australian Information Industry Association’s iAward in 2008.
“The National Police Reference System will be fully rolled out across the country by the middle of the year [2010],” said CrimTrac CEO Ben McDevitt.
Australia’s police services will be able to access NPRS data via a web application, police jurisdiction operational systems, portable biometric devices and hand-held devices such as palm pilots or car-based devices.
“The system holds information including warnings, warrants, offence history, orders, firearms, bail information, whether the person is wanted or an unidentified body or person, a missing person or an escapee. It also reveals whether they are on the Australian Child Offender Register,” said Mr McDevitt.
“We’d like to ensure that when a person is brought up on the NPRS, their details are known because if police are going to engage a person in the normal course of their duties, then it’s important that they know if, for example, that person has a history of violence or high-risk behaviour,” he said.
While the majority of names on the register are those of known criminals, law-abiding firearm owners can also be found on the database. SSAA Federal Parliamentary Lobbyist Tim Bannister says he and fellow SSAA members take exception to being listed on the NPRS simply because they own firearms. “I personally don’t have the problem with the authorities knowing I am a firearm owner,” he said. “However, I, like other shooters and hunters, believe that information could be stored on a separate system outside of the dubiously named CrimTrac system. Licensed shooters with registered guns have gone to great lengths to follow the law and we are exactly that - law-abiding firearm owners.”
Tim said that while CrimTrac has benefits, there are flaws within the agency. For example, the paedophiles database is apparently limited to ‘paedophile acts’ that are committed within Australia’s borders. However, there is no facility for authorities to list information on known ‘tourist paedophiles’ (ie, those who go to places such as Thailand for the sole purpose of hiring underage children for unlawful acts).
When CrimTrac was first established, it was run by a staff of 21 and processed 425,154 criminal history checks. In 2009, more than 2.6 million criminal history checks were conducted by a staff of more than 210. Additionally, CrimTrac’s relevance to law enforcement agencies has continued to grow each year. As a result, in 2008, it was invited to join the Heads of Commonwealth Operational Law Enforcement Agencies (HOCOLEA) forum.
CrimTrac is currently working on a number of major projects. According to its website, the agency is working on Automated Number Plate Recognition, Biometrics and a National Firearms Identification Database.
The Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system uses camera and optical character recognition (OCR) software to capture an image on a vehicle, locate the numberplate within the image and then convert the numberplate value to a text string.
Biometric technologies (fingerprint, face or iris) assist identification through a search image being compared to a reference image and return a result without human intervention. It can be done on a stand-alone device or using a network connection to a centralised server containing reference images.
The National Firearms Identification Database (NFID) is currently investigating possible options that can improve national firearms management through the establishment of a common reference tool, which will improve national consistency of firearms recognition, categorisation and data consistency. The reference tool will identify the particular firearm’s attributes that determine the firearm type. This can be used Australia-wide, improving consistent categorisation, registration, tracking and management of firearms.
According to CrimTrac, the NFID will improve community safety via increased efficiency and effectiveness of policing. The provision of a common language across jurisdictions to define and describe firearms with greater accuracy will improve national law enforcement and enhance Australian and international information-sharing capability. This results in the increased cross-jurisdictional integrity of firearms and data holdings and potentially links firearms and firearm parts with crime and suspects with greater accuracy and faster response times across the nation.
It is expected that the NFID could also be used as an investigation reference tool. Depending on the option, the NFID may be able to support police investigations through the provision of information about the identification of firearms. This may narrow down possible matches against recovered stolen firearms, or those used in crime where serial numbers have been defaced or parts have been found at a crime scene. It may also help in identification of rebirthed firearms.
CrimTrac is also working to implement a secure ‘extranet’ - a private network that uses internet protocols - that will allow the 42 law enforcement agencies and police jurisdictions currently requiring access to CrimTrac business systems to share sensitive crime-fighting information in real-time.
For more information, visit www.crimtrac.gov.au
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