The News Room [News Archive]

Sheriff Contact: John Roach: 313-224-0615
Release Date: Thursday February 10, 2004

Modernization of Sheriff’s Office gets lift with new digital inmate booking system --- Computerized data will help track county jail’s 40,000 annual prisoners

For years, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, which is Michigan’s largest county jailer, has limped along with an antiquated inmate booking system that relied on Polaroid mug shots, handwritten cards and sparse computer data to track the thousands of inmates that pass through its doors each year.

Today, the system is undergoing a major overhaul that will provide for a searchable database of information and photos that will be a tremendous intelligence-sharing tool for local law enforcement agencies, according to Sheriff Warren Evans. The county has agreements with most communities in Wayne County, including Detroit, to participate in the new system.

"With this new system, a huge intelligence hole in the local law enforcement community is being plugged," Evans said. "This will bring the Sheriff’s Office into the Information Age and on par with other major agencies throughout the state and nation."

Evans said that the new centralized $152,000 grant-funded system would have multiple benefits, including:

• Establishes foundation for countywide criminal database that will allow each participating agency to submit booking data themselves and retrieve data entered by other agencies. An inmate booked by the Detroit or Livonia police department, for example, will be entering the photos and information into the same database as the Sheriff Office.
• The ability to conduct digital police lineups. Police agencies can either see a digital line up, or select inmates out of the system for a live lineup based on their physical characteristics.
• More reliable identification of inmates and reduced likelihood of mix-ups. With the previous system, inmates could more easily switch ID wristbands and some have attempted to escape.
• The new bands have photos and bar codes printed on them and are virtually impossible to remove without destroying them.

Over the past several weeks, the department has been implementing its new digital booking system at its Hamtramck jail, which houses sentenced non-violent offenders. Beginning this week, the downtown jails, which house pretrial felons, began using the new system.

Each year, approximately 40,000 individuals are booked into the county’s three jails – enough to sell out Comerica Park. Once all new and current inmates are entered into the system, the department will have access to a growing pool of critical information that will include digital photos of scars, tattoos and other distinguishing marks that police can use for identification in other cases.

"Unfortunately, we know many of the people who pass through our doors will commit other crimes later on," Evans said. "This new system will make available to other agencies vast amounts of data and images they can use to positively identify someone they are holding in connection with a new crime."

If some one who was previously booked into the county jail is ever suspected in another crime, the county can print an instant “Wanted” poster that includes a mug shot, photos of identifying marks and other information, which can be distributed quickly to other agencies, the media and the public.

Out with the old
Although the county's existing computer Inmate Booking System contains general descriptive information about each inmate, it does not include photographs and other descriptive information. Until just recently the only photo records of inmates who have passed through the Wayne County jail were thumbnail-sized Polaroid photos stapled to a small yellow card that was filled out by hand.

Due to space constraints, the ID cards would be boxed up and sent to a storage facility, making it nearly impossible to retrieve an individual card or photo when needed. The new system will provide a permanent digital record of the inmate that will be retrievable at the click of a mouse.

More updates still planned
Evans said the he is expected additional grant funding to be approved to pay for a new fingerprint verification system that will further streamline the booking process.

"Eventually, we plan to be at a stage where an inmate walking into the jail will place two fingers on a device and all the information available on him or her – identifying data, criminal history and photos – will be accessible immediately," Evans said.

» Go To Top