DW Group’s Digital Image Booth was installed at the Wirral custody centre earlier this year and following a successful trial, the force are now set to acquire eight booths as they try to capture FIND-compliant shots of people arrested for a criminal offence.
FIND, operated by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), will eventually provide police services in England and Wales with the capability to search, retrieve, store and transmit facial images.
The NPIA has said that the key to the database’s success is the submission of compliant images by custody staff, and DW Group see their product as the ideal solution. Results from the trial showed a first-time successful capture rate of 83%, with 94% of pictures meeting minimum standards after two or fewer attempts.
Simon Furnivall, the pilot’s Project Manager, described what happened:
“Over an 8 week period nearly 500 custody images were taken in the booth. To meet the minimum requirements for a FIND-standard image the measurements had to achieve 70% success, but we decided to set the ‘pass’ threshold at 90%, so that each successful image would far exceed FIND requirements.”
He said, “We believe that these practical improvements will improve the success rate still further when we install the final DIB units into our custody centres.”
Using a simple traffic light system, the Digital Image Booth aims to take high-quality FIND-compliant images without the need for additional work to integrate with current force systems. JPEG images can then be stored on the database with attachments such as name, date of birth and other personal details.
“Ultimately the investment in this new Digital Image Booth will improve policing performance and give us the best return on investment,” said ACC Simon Byrne, who gave the final approval for the eight DIB units to be installed in Merseyside.
The booth is a self-contained unit, with a footprint of 125cm x 71cm. DW Group say it has been built and tested to withstand the rigours of everyday use in a custody suite including a tough metal shell and a non-slip PVC floor.
