Why Is Afis Important

Automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS) are primarily used by law enforcement agencies for criminal identification purposes, the most important of which is the identification of a person suspected of committing a crime or linking a suspect to other unsolved crimes.

What are the two advantages of AFIS?

• Fingers to search and rules of use.
• Case priorities.
• System reliability and response time.
• Hours of operation.
• Ability to maintain separate databases.
• System upgrades and new technology.
• Service and maintenance.

How does AFIS help solve crimes?

The AFIS database also contains more than 12,000 unidentified fingerprints left at crime scenes and on items of evidence. Using AFIS, ISP forensic scientists compare a fingerprint found at a crime scene to the millions of known fingerprints in the database to identify a suspect (“a hit”) in a matter of hours.