THE low-tech nature of the Pakistan police is a much decried issue. Such criticism is valid — but to some extent only. In fact, the problem is not the absence of high-tech facilities that allow advanced forensics; it is the lack of follow-through and the inefficiencies that have not been removed from an evolving system. As a case in point, consider the Pakistan Automated Fingerprints Identification System that was set up in Islamabad in 2008. Jointly funded to the tune of $13m by international donors, it constitutes a centralised database holding records of criminals’ fingerprints and offers the facility of comparing and/or matching fingerprints collected from crime scenes with those on record. The biometric system, which is spread over more than 50 Punjab districts, has just in Lahore helped the police make arrests on the basis of fingerprint matches in at least 37 cases of crime against property. It would be reasonable to assume that the database is proving valuable. Unfortunately, that is not the case. PAFIS has been lying inoperative for over a year because it is outdated, the capacity of its hardware and software exhausted. One problem is that the amount of the data was underestimated — at the moment, it holds the fingerprint data of some 2.5 million criminals countrywide. Having completed its five-year life, it now awaits funds from the government for upgrading and the attention of the National Police Bureau of the Ministry of Interior, the project implementation body.

That a database that could prove of immense value has been allowed to reach such a pass is shocking. Militancy and terrorism may be the most challenging aspect of policing Pakistan, yet the fact remains that in terms of numbers the bulk of crime is of a nature that is theoretically easier to solve if the right tools are available — and fingerprint-matching is amongst the oldest and most well-established tools in the arsenals of law enforcers across the world. There are other inefficiencies in the system, too. Nadra, for example, also has a fingerprints’ database; but the police must pay a fee. Can the gaps be plugged so that tools available to help in crime detection are put to use? It depends, as always, on political will.