Philadelphia can boast nearly 100 percent rates when it comes to fingerprinting arrested individuals, but its surrounding counties can’t do the same, according to a map from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.
In the first half of 2013, both Bucks and Chester County police fingerprinted 77 percent of individuals arrested on criminal charges, while Delaware County fingerprinted 79 percent.
See the map and other dataAcross Pennsylvania, fingerprints are not recorded for about 15 to 20 percent of those arrested on criminal charges, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency built a map and other tools with fingerprinting compliance rates to help get compliance numbers up, said Lt. Kevin Deskiewicz, the Pa. state police’s director of criminal records. The tool raises awareness about low compliance rates, he said.
There’s a roughly one year lag time of the data because of the way the data is produced: the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency compares fingerprint data from the state courts to arrest records from the state police in order to find discrepancies.
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