The recording of fingerprints had not changed for over a century until in 1991, when the Home Office gave permission for a small number of police forces to form a consortium to develop an Interim digital system. This was until 30th June 2001 when it would be replaced by a national system which, in addition to England and Wales, would include Scotland.

Not wanting to wait for a decade, the ‘Interim Solution’ grew to include 37 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales. It was called The Automatic Fingerprint Recognition Consortium (AFRC) and was based at West Mercia Police Headquarters, Worcester, where the author, Brian Humphreys was then a Chief Superintendent.

He retired to become a self employed Assistant Project Manager (Service Manager) for the Consortium. Following a high level civil action it took against its service provider, it developed another system with its software company based in Tacoma, Washington State in the USA.

The system became so successful that the Project Office moved to larger accommodation at nearby Droitwich. Interpol learned of its successes and wanted the system to include all Caribbean Islands.

In Brian’s words, he was ‘forced’ to go and work in these Islands for long periods of time. Sadly, during a proof of concept pilot operation which reaped in many successes, the parent software companybased in France, decided that they would not be continuing to invest in the project.

Despite many English and Welsh forces and Caribbean Islands wishing to continue with AFRC’s digitised system, the Home Office was soon to impliment its British system as was agreed when the AFRC first launched itself in 1991. A second litigation ensued which eventually saw the collapse of the AFRC later in 2001.

Brian describes all aspects of his journey with AFRC and very much regards it as the ‘Last Chapter’ in his ‘Life Story’ which he originally wrote many years prior to these exciting, yet ‘bumpy’ rides through, England, Wales and most of the Caribbean Islands. For that reason, his vocational story is occasionally punctuated with various land mark domestic occurrences in his personal life.

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