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Unknown Offenders' Prints Stored in FBI's Unsolved Latent File

NCJ Number
191126
Journal
CJIS Link Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Dated: Summer 2001 Pages: 1-6
Date Published
2001
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article describes the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Unsolved Latent File.
Abstract
With the second major upgrade to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) in the summer of 2000, law enforcement agencies gained access to a national repository of latent (crime scene) fingerprints from unsolved crimes. The Unsolved Latent File (ULF) is actually three files: one for local and State law enforcement agencies, one for the FBI, and one for Federal agencies other than the FBI. The IAFIS ULF has space for a total of 250,000 latent images: 125,000 for State and local agencies, 75,000 for the FBI, and 50,000 for other Federal agencies. The ULF is divided into subfiles to preserve the ownership distinction of the records. Additionally, since the subfiles are expected to fill at different rates, this implementation ensures that FBI records are not deleted by local and State agencies and vice versa. The turnover rate of the subfiles should allow a record to remain in the file for at least 2 years.