Image Quality Assurance Case Study

Case Study: Image Quality Assurance

Standardised Custody Images Save Time and Cost for Hertfordshire Constabulary

The UK’s first 40-cell custody centre complete with remand court, opened in July 2008 in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. This state-of-the-art facility is a milestone in Hertfordshire Constabulary’s self-funded programme to improve custody management across the county.

Facial image capture is recognised as an important part of the overall programme to improve custody services. “The new custody centres gave us the opportunity to implement new image-capture technology”, commented Chief Inspector Richard Beechey. “Our task was to find a solution that could meet our current needs for good quality custody images, as well as our future requirements for facial recognition applications.”

Following a 4-week trial, Hertfordshire Constabulary purchased DW Group’s Digital Image Booths (DIBs) with OmniPerception’s AFIT.QA™ image quality assurance software built in, for all ten of the county’s custody suites. “The Digital Image Booth ticked all the boxes for us,” said CI Beechey. “Most importantly it delivers consistent, high quality images and staff find it very easy to use.” He confirms that, his force’s experience, after 5 months in operation, is that the DIB images are giving custody staff much better images, allowing for much easier verification. Facial ID Officers are also seeing the benefits of better quality images in witness albums.

Using AFIT.QA™ software, the system provides a consistent environment where custody staff are able quickly and easily to take a facial image that meets police imaging standards for capture – right first time.

Hertfordshire’s data shows that in the first 5 months of usage 99.9% of images taken in the DIBs reached the required standard in the first take. Altogether, the DIBs, with OmniPerception’s AFIT.QA™ software built in, are helping the force achieve faster and more efficient throughput and significant savings in police time.

Steve Raine, Senior Fingerprint Officer in charge of the Criminal Records Department summed it up when he confirmed that: “From day one we could see the benefits of having higher quality images stored against nominal records, with valuable time saved in each custody centre.”