THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Taking policing to next level, the state police department has prepared a digital ‘criminal gallery’— housing details of 1.5 lakh people involved in criminal activities — using artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
The gallery contains dossiers of habitual offenders, including their photographs and identification document details, which the police feel can be used for better policing. This is the first time the state police have set up a centralised data depository, which can be managed with AI tools.
Inspector General P Prakash, nodal officer of Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS), said the details of the habitual offenders involved in narcotic business, robbery, murder, other organised crimes, cyber offences and sexual violence have been included in the gallery. “Our AI team prepared the criminal gallery within four months,” said Prakash.
‘AI tools will help retrieve vital data in very short time’
“Entrusting the task with outside players would cost more than Rs 35 lakh. So we decided to use in-house resources. The criminal gallery will be useful for preventive policing as well as detection. In the repository, we even have details of the people against whom cases were registered way back in 1998,” Prakash said.
From the digital repository, the police can easily track photos using Face Recognition technology, which is available with criminal gallery. An available photo can be crosschecked with all the photos in the gallery, and a list of photos with percentage of similarity will be shown.
The system has got an enhanced search facility to find finer details of a criminal using various parameters such as the person’s identity, modus operandi, crime classification, area of operation, personal informat ion and physical characteristics.
The details of organised crime syndicates and gangs, including their whereabouts, current status, etc are included in the gallery. According to a source, the complete digitisation and use of AI tools will help retrieve vital data in a short time.
Also, manual updating of data has been done away with as the police software iCoPS allows automatic flow of information to the gallery from each police stations. The police had earlier dispatched 15 of its officers for training in AI at the Kerala Digital University. The criminal gallery was developed with the active involvement of these personnel.