Scottish Biometrics Commissioner reviews fingerprinting in policing

Police in Scotland may be failing to fingerprint more than 12,000 a year due to inadequate operational practices and a lack of supervision. This includes officially accused persons, including those arrested for serious crimes.

The police force is also losing fingerprint records due to unauthorized deletion, pointing to a lack of training in using fingerprinting equipment, according to a new review published by the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner on Tuesday.

The joint assurance review of fingerprinting in policing examined how biometric data was collected for criminal justice and police purposes in Scotland. During a three-month sample period, police forces failed to fingerprint more than 3,200 individuals officially accused, according to the findings.

“Not fingerprinting someone who has been arrested and brought into custody results in lost investigative opportunities, both now and in the future,” says Scottish Biometrics Commissioner Brian Plastow. “It means Police Scotland cannot use its Livescan fingerprint technology to verify the person’s identity in real time, preventing misidentification and any attempts to defeat the ends of justice.”

Significant issues were also detected in supervision and quality control of fingerprinting: The Scottish Police Authority (SPA) Forensic Services returned 24 percent of all fingerprints due to problems such as missing and inaccurate information.

In addition, Police Scotland is experiencing a shortage of trained staff for the Livescan fingerprint machine, leading to unauthorized data loss. Due to technical difficulties, Police Scotland’s Criminal Justice Services Division (CJSD) sometimes resorted to “bulk-deleting” fingerprints to reboot the terminal, resulting in the permanent loss of those fingerprints.

Missing fingerprint data could mean that the prints cannot be searched against unidentified crime scenes in the UK or internationally.

“It can also result in criminal justice inefficiencies, including where the arrested person subsequently becomes an ‘officially accused’ but cannot then be traced to acquire criminal justice samples, including fingerprints,” says Plastow.

Police Scotland is still taking around 1,000 manual paper and ink sets of fingerprints each year and primarily at custody centers not equipped with Livescan.

In November 2025, Police Scotland held 831,014 fingerprint forms for 455,040 people on the UK law enforcement fingerprint database, IDENT1. Another 1.1 million fingerprint forms are held ‘off database’ in a national collection of paper records.

Another issue that has been detected is the failure to photograph significant numbers of officially accused persons, even in higher volumes, according to the assessment.

The Scottish Biometrics Commissioner makes several recommendations for policing forces, including improving operating practices, introducing a structured system of controls, and providing better training for operating Livescan fingerprint devices.

Police Scotland should consider the pros and cons of a ‘take all’ policy for fingerprints and custody images from adults arrested for any offence, and run them against Non-Verified Live Identification (NVLID) to reveal any matches to unsolved crime scenes.

The assessment also lays out future plans for upgrading police fingerprint and multi-modal biometric collection at the UK level.

The Strategic Matcher Platform will roll out enhanced mark-to-print search capabilities across all fingerprint bureaus in 2025/26, delivering more accurate search results.

Separately, Police Digital Services is exploring the integration of the Digital Fingerprint Capability with the UK IDENT1 fingerprint database — a move that would streamline workflow. Digital Fingerprint Capability enables forensics teams to send captured images from crime scenes to fingerprint bureaux, analyse and compare prints digitally, and import and export data from biometrics databases.

Interim technical refreshes will maintain service continuity until a full replacement of the IDENT1 desktop and central architecture is complete.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  criminal ID  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  fingerprint scanners  |  law enforcement  |  Police Scotland  |  Scotland  |  Scottish Biometrics Commissioner