County Jail gets a handle on messy task

A new machine at the Baker County Jail takes fingerprints without messy ink.

By CHRIS COLLINS
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The job of fingerprinting inmates as they are booked into the Baker County Jail is not as messy — or as time consuming — as it used to be.

“Now we don’t have a lot of ink to clean up all over the place,” said Janice Clement, a corrections deputy who explained how the machine works at the jail Thursday.

That’s thanks to a $27,000 federal Criminal Justice grant that brought the process into the 21st century.

The grant was used to purchase an electronic scanner, which captures images of each prisoner’s fingerprints during booking.

The scanner is linked to the Oregon State Police’s Law Enforcement Data System (LEDS) in Salem. And a push of the send key automatically transmits the fingerprints and other information about the inmate to LEDS.

“That’s the only way anything is put on a criminal history is through fingerprinting,” said Sheriff Mitch Southwick.

Criminal history records are used routinely by law enforcement officials, employers and volunteer organizations.

In the past, the sheriff’s department’s 12 corrections deputies pressed suspects’ fingers onto an ink pad and then rolled them across identification cards during booking. The cards were then mailed weekly to Salem.

In the case of a person whose identity was unknown, the fingerprints were faxed to LEDS for identification.

With the new equipment, in addition to fingerprints, deputies also scan each palm and the sides of each palm during booking to further help law enforcement officers identify crime suspects.

Thanks to the new scanner, deputies no longer have to type in each inmates’ personal information on an identification card using a typewriter. When the information is logged into one computer in the jail during booking, those details now can be automatically transferred to the Livescan machine to be included with the digital fingerprint images.

Also under the old system, if there were any problems with the way the fingerprints were stamped onto the identification cards, LEDS would send them back to be redone, which would take more time.

Livescan notifies the jail staff immediately if the scanned prints do not meet LEDS specifications.

“If it’s not a good print, the screen will turn red,” Southwick said.

Clement showed how the staff uses the equipment, but she wasn’t able to give a complete demonstration because of a technical glitch that had not been resolved today.

In a demonstration of the old system, Clement made the process of rolling fingerprints across an ink pad look easy, but that’s because she’s an expert, Southwick said. He’s not so good at it, he admitted.

Clement honed her technique over her  nearly six years as a corrections deputy. She spent 2fi years with the Grant County Sheriff’s Department and has been with the Baker County Department for three years.

“It’s a nice machine,” Clement said. “It works very well (when it’s working) and it’s a great system for us to be able to use.”

Southwick said the fingerprint scanning technology has been available for quite some time and has been used in most larger jurisdictions for years. The price tag kept the technology out of reach for Baker County until the federal  grant was awarded.

The new machine is being used only in the jail at this time.

If another grant is successful, Southwick hopes to add a portable scanner for use in fingerprinting people who apply for concealed handgun permits or who are required to be fingerprinted for their jobs. That includes teachers, nurses and Department of Human Services employees, Southwick said. It would be housed in the hallway between the lobby and sheriff’s department offices.