What was once purely investigative work into crime is now not only enhanced but often replaced by cutting-edge tech that can speed up and improve how we find evidence and suspects. Of the many investigative tools at our disposal, MegaMatcher criminal investigation is used in latent print analysis and is fast becoming one of the most valuable allies to forensic investigators worldwide.
The Rise of Biometrics for Law Enforcement
There are many biometrics that law enforcement can use to confirm identity or trace a specific person, including fingerprints, facial features, iris scans, or even voice identification. A law enforcement agency may use any of these biological markers and match that data to an individual to not only confirm a person’s identity but also track criminal activity and history. Forensic investigations also benefit greatly. For example, as we all know, fingerprint analysis is one of the most advanced in law enforcement and biometric technologies.
However, as crime grows ever more sophisticated and interlinked, even latent print analysis requires more than an expert with good vision and a steady hand. This is where forensic software solutions such as MegaMatcher come in to match and improve fingerprint identification for law enforcement agencies, especially in high-stakes crime and case investigations.
MegaMatcher and Latent Print Analysis
MegaMatcher criminal investigation used in latent print analysis is specifically intended to aid forensic professionals in the identification, review, and application of prints left at crime scenes. Latent prints are hardly ever perfect and visible, making them difficult for a regular forensic investigator to capture, prepare, and study. Software can now take over many of these aspects from an expert or team of experts, taking partial or otherwise limited or low-quality prints to gather, enhance, collate, and compare to other similarly gathered prints stored in a local or national database. The comparison to a database is more accurate while also being much faster than human analysis.
The software, thus, as readers can imagine, speeds up the process of comparing any latent print, matching any found data immediately, or comparing a preliminary, prepared-for-tag print to the same data in a database.
Forensics Software and Law Enforcement
Advanced forensic software of the modern era can do a lot more than pipe fingerprint matches to a database list. These are most relevant to law enforcement and agencies with access to databases and deployments for solutions, such as MegaMatcher, to provide enhanced and easy-to-use versions of their latent print analysis capabilities. Data for other types of biometric data is often already available and accessible, such as with facial recognition, iris, or voice identification. MegaMatcher’s capabilities can be integrated so that an agency can cross-reference and search any collected data, including fingerprints, facial recognition, and other biometric case data.
Integrating Biometrics in Law Enforcement
The use of biometrics in law enforcement facilitates benefits that directly correlate to an agency’s abilities and eventual results.
- First, biometric technology bolsters the accuracy and reliability of suspect identification. When identifying the true perpetrators of crime, wrongful arrests are less likely, and justice can be served.
- Second, biometrics enable higher levels of efficiency and speed of results. Because it automates parts of the investigative process that would typically require costly man-hours, the analysis of latent prints in fingerprint biometrics is vastly more efficient with the latest software solutions.
- Finally, forensic and biometric evidence is often easier to defend in a court of law, due to the fact that quantitative biometric data, as evidence, is often more cut-and-dry than qualitative eyewitness accounts and circumstantial evidence. Therefore, it facilitates stronger legal defensibility.
The Future of Biometrics, Law Enforcement, and Beyond
The integration of biometrics in law enforcement, and all biometric modalities in general, begs for a natural technological progression. Throughout the 21st century, it is likely that advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, in conjunction with powerful algorithms, will enable more accurate fingerprint imaging. Additionally, modern biometrics are increasingly biometric-modality agnostic.
Therefore, it’s clear that agencies wishing to achieve a higher level of biometrics law enforcement integration will turn to latent print and biometric matching technology. In this regard, there is no more reliable and effective latent print analysis technology than MegaMatcher.
