Crime-fighting tool too costly for Scots

SCOTTISH police forces have scrapped plans for a new crime-fighting tool that will allow officers to identify offenders on the street because they say they now cannot afford it.

The country's eight forces have pulled out of a 50 million, UK-wide Project Midas, aimed at issuing officers with mobile fingerprint scanners, citing "the current economic climate".

The technology, used by roadside patrols, speeds up criminal investigations by slashing the amount of time officers have to spend verifying the identity of people stopped for questioning. Prints can be checked against a national database, which contains the records of nine million people, without officers having to make time-consuming journeys back to base.

Chief officers, some facing crippling budget deficits, yesterday said they could not build a convincing case for the scanners, even though an English trial of the equipment had declared it a "stunning success". The decision highlights the choices that police forces will have to face over the next few years as public sector cuts bites and even if political promises to increase police numbers are held.

Police south of the border found the scanners, which are about the size of an iPhone and cost 1,000 each, saved hours of police time. One of the machines also helped snare a paedophile, who had been on the run for 11 years after raping an 11-year-old girl.

A contract to supply a first batch of 3,000 scanners for the police in England and Wales was signed in March. But the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (Acpos) has decided, after a short trial of its own, not to buy any.

George Hamilton, the assistant chief constable of Strathclyde and Acpos' spokesman on crime issues, said: "Midas (Mobile Identification At Scene] has some potential to benefit Scottish forces, but this potential has to be set against the current economic climate and the need to demonstrate a convincing business case for new national projects with proven benefits for all Scottish forces and the communities they serve.

"Following consultation with all Scottish forces, Acpos made the decision that at present there is an insufficiently strong business case for implementation of Midas across Scotland."

Scottish police forces could ultimately have faced a bill of up to 5m to buy the devices and the software backup. Acpos officials yesterday declined to specify the potential cost of Midas north of the border, citing commercial confidentiality.

The UK's National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA), which is championing the new technology, had previously insisted Scotland would adopt the technology. In 2008, a spokesman said a national roll-out would begin last month and would include forces in Scotland. "Forces will want this, as they've already been proved to save time for police. The only question is how many they will want."

The mass roll-out of the scanners will now begin in England and Wales in September or October. Half of all the forces in England and Wales have already agreed to issue the scanners.

NPIA chiefs said a trial of an earlier version of the technology, called 'Lantern', in 20 forces had been a "stunning success". Along with the paedophile rapist, police officers caught several other offenders and saved huge amounts of time by not having to return to often distant police stations to check identities.

Nine out of ten fingerprint checks using Lantern took less than two minutes. By contrast, it takes an average of 67 minutes to take a suspect back to a custody suite to have fingerprints scanned using old-fashioned desktop computer systems.

NPIA believes Midas will save an average of 30 minutes of police time for every case in which they are used. Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, chief executive of the NPIA, said: "From hours to minutes, advances in fingerprinting technology are helping the police to identify one person from many. Identification is crucial to police investigations and giving officers the ability to do this on-the-spot within minutes is giving them more time to spend working in their communities, helping to fight crime."

Scottish Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken said that although the device appeared to have benefits, "we are entering a period of severe austerity and these scanners have to be viewed as something that would be 'nice to have' but that we simply cannot afford".

Midas has not been introduced without controversy. English civil rights group Liberty has already questioned the system, warning that it could encourage officers on the streets to test the identities of people without sufficient need.

John Scott, the Edinburgh-based human rights lawyer, said: "The concern for me would be that there would be far more stops carried out by police, and far more scope for abuses. I suspect that Scottish forces have looked at this and wondered just how often they really have to find out who somebody really is."

Strathclyde Police, the country's largest force, expects to have a budget deficit of 35m this financial year.