A COMPUTERISED fingerprint matching system is helping police catch an increasing number of crooks just months after being introduced.

The Nafis - National Automatic Fingerprint Identification System - allows County Durham and Cleveland Police to identify offenders rapidly.

Suspects' prints are fed in to find a match against those of 4.5 million criminals held on the central database at London's New Scotland Yard.

Before Nafis was introduced, suspects' prints were compared with those recorded on paper.

In January, the Durham and Cleveland Bureau, based at Durham Police headquarters, Aykley Heads, Durham City, was one of the first in the country to connect to the central database, a move which has increased identification rates.

The number of criminals identified by the bureau was 1,837 between April 1998 and March last year.

Aided by Nafis, this rose to 2,218 between April 1999 and March this year.

The bureau is on target to beat this figure by up to 15 per cent during the next financial year.

John Bainbridge, bureau manager, said: "The old manual system was very time consuming. An average search could take up to half a day.

"This method is a lot quicker, and if it's a real priority case we can have a result back within minutes."

Nafis will be used directly by every force by next summer.

The bureau employs 29 staff, including fingerprint experts who will feed an estimated 25,000 fingerprint forms onto Nafis and deal with 8,500 scenes of crime cases this year.

Earlier this week, fears were raised that fingerprint evidence produced nationally was not being thoroughly and independently checked before going to court.

But two independent audits of the Durham and Cleveland bureau have shown its evidence to be sound. It is in the top ten of the country's 42 bureaux.

Staff follow strict guidelines which state fingerprint identifications must be checked by three people independently.

There are also unannounced spot-checks - or dip samples - to identify any problems in the process.

Detective Superintendent David Grey, of Durham Police, said: "The independent audits showed we were complying with, and in some cases exceeding, Home Office and Association of Chief Police Officers' standards.

"Fingerprinting is a very precise science and one that has served this country well now for a great many years, and will continue to do so.

"It is perhaps the most reliable form of evidence that the police use.