NPRS - National Police Reference System
To facilitate the brokering of information, CrimTrac hosts the National Police Reference System (NPRS), which enables Australian police and law enforcement agencies to exchange information about persons of interest. In the first instance, the NPRS enables police to rapidly access national information to determine if a person of interest is:
- a threat to police safety;
- a threat to themselves or others; or
- wanted by police.
The NPRS provides up-to-date comprehensive information on persons of interest to:
- provide faster suspect identification and clear innocent suspects;
- shorten investigation times and improve crime clearance rates, particularly in relation to crimes exploiting inter-jurisdictional boundaries.
The police jurisdictions collectively determine what data should be shared, the minimum set of data that makes each record sensible and who can access the data. NPRS has been designed to allow each police service to determine its own rules for providing and querying data. Detailed information can be stored at CrimTrac, or retained at its original source and is rapidly accessible by 50,000 police users through web service transactions via:
- the CrimTrac hosted browser-based web application;
- police jurisdiction operational systems;
- portable biometric devices;
- hand-held devices (e.g. PDA, palm pilot); and
- car-based devices.
Officers can make decisions equipped with knowledge recorded by their colleagues across the nation. This is a powerful innovation that greatly improves an officer’s ability and confidence to respond to events and to investigate them comprehensively.
The NPRS positively impacts on:
- officer and public safety;
- custody management practice;
- developing suspect and offender profiles;
- warrant execution;
- bail determination;
- court brief preparation;
- criminal history checking;
- person and suspect identifications;
- unidentified body investigations;
- criminal investigations; and
- missing person investigations.
