BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - THE Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force’s move to digitize information and instances of crime received a boost when the new Police Records Management Information System (PRMIS) was formally handed over by CariSECURE.
At a ceremony held at the Police Training School last Wednesday (Sept. 18), the PRMIS will see information gathering being shared across the Police Force, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution and other law enforcement agencies.
In the absence of Prime Minister Dr. Timothy Harris, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Security, Osmond Petty noted that the system would aid in upgrading the national and regional security data system through data management and analysis.
The system, according to the PS, would ease the police force’s use of paper records in dealing with the crime problem.
“It is expected to capture all of the interactions the police may have with the public, whether they are victims or perpetrators of some sort of incidence of crime. PRMIS will comprise of several models, incidence of crime report, address registry, person registry, vehicle registry, property and evidence, crimes and charges modules, warrants, arrests and booking modules, jail modules, firearm registration modules, traffic accident modules and, of course, other things like sex offenders and deportees and so on.”
No mention on cost of the system was made.
Meanwhile, Clinton White of the United States Agency for International Development spoke of how the implementation of PRMIS would help the local police force to better understand instances of crime and the area most prone to such.
“Data, when transferred into intelligence, allows law enforcement and policy makers to better understand the root causes of crime and violence and design responses that bring about greater effectiveness in policing,” White said.
“The system…will transform the way police do business on a daily basis by providing access to real time disaggregated crime data that enhances intelligence gathering. It will provide officers with the ability to generate victim and offender profiling, which will assist with a faster police response and effective based decisions,” he added.
The roll out of the system has already begun in three areas - St. Peter’s Police Station, Frigate Bay Police Station and the Cotton Ground Police Station – as part of the pilot phase that is expected to last for six months, before the Government fully implement the system across the entire Federation.
Also present at the handing over ceremony was United Nations Development Programme Resident Representative Magdy Martinez-Soliman, who acknowledged that crime in the region continues to advance and police must do likewise in its fight to combat the problem.
He said that crime continues to have an impact on the socio-economic development of countries in the region, and against that backdrop capacity building is critical in the crime fighting strategy.
“Evidence-based crime prevention starts by building capacity within the organisations, and this is precisely what St. Kitts and Nevis is achieving and what USAID is supporting. This project has been designed to respond to the reality that no one is trying to hide or even to sugarcoat,” he added.
