Police shifting away from paper-based information collection

Last Updated on Thursday, 18 July 2019, 18:28 by Writer

The Guyana Police Force (GPF) on Thursday launched a digital information system aimed at modernising the way it collects and uses crime information.

Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan said the new system represents more than a move away from paper-based recording.

“This is going to make it easier to identify persons of interest and allow the user to easily pull up a list of persons who are known to be child molesters, sex offenders, deportees, murderers, witnesses and also to know where they are,” he said.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Representative, Luca Renda, whose agency implemented the Police Reporting Management Information System (PRMIS), says it is time to upgrade in order to counter crime.

“The current use of mostly paper system to capture information at the crime scene is not optimum from the simple challenge such as penmanship to more critical concerns with accuracy and completeness of information, everyone agrees that crime fighting in Guyana and other countries can benefit from a more robust and efficient system for collecting, storing, managing and analyzing statistics,” he said.

The programme is a collaboration between the police force, UNDP and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will see the new system piloted for six months at police headquarters and the Alberttown, Georgetown, and Fort Wellington, West Berbice, police stations.

The PRMIS will assist the police force to improve citizen security data management, analysis, and monitoring for crime reduction in Guyana. The project supports the collection and use of standardised crime and violence data to inform evidence-based decisions affecting policy and programs in nine eastern and southern Caribbean countries, including Guyana.

PRMIS will assist countries to transition from a paper-based data collection process to a digitised system.

CariSECURE (Strengthening Evidence Based Decision Making for Citizen Security in the Caribbean) represents a partnership between USAID and UNDP, made possible through the support of Americans. The project improves youth crime and violence policy-making and program development in the eastern and southern Caribbean through the use of quality, comparable and reliable national citizen security data.