Chairperson, the House, the Deputy Minister and the committee sat and studied the Bill. The Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill originally contained provisions dealing with the storing of fingerprints and DNA samples, the creation of a national DNA database, and the expansion of the SAPS Automated Fingerprint Identification System to include fingerprints stored by the Department of Transport and the Department of Home Affairs.
In order to allow the Department of Police to address the concerns in respect of capacity for the effective implementation of the provisions of the Bill in respect of DNA evidence, the Portfolio Committee on Police decided to split the Bill into two phases. Phase 1 of the Bill deals only with the fingerprint evidence, while DNA evidence will be dealt with in phase 2. The Bill that was considered by the Select Committee on Security and Constitutional Development, although still called the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill, dealt only with the collection and storage of fingerprints, body prints and images. The Bill is hereinafter referred to as the fingerprint Bill.
An interdepartmental task team for the implementation of phase 1 of the Bill consists of the Departments of Police, Home Affairs, Transport, Correctional Services and the State Information Technology Agency. This task team is facilitated by the Office for Criminal Justice System Reform. The Portfolio Committee on Police was informed on 11 November 2009 that Cabinet had approved that the implementation of the Bill would take place incrementally over a period of time in order to allow time for detectives, the development of systems and the IT infrastructure.
The Fingerprint Bill aims to give the police access to the Home Affairs National Identification System, Hanis, the Department of Home Affairs, and the electronic National Traffic Information System of the Department of Transport. Currently, the police have only a limited number of fingerprints of convicted persons on their database.
The Department of Home Affairs reportedly has over 31 million fingerprints of South African citizens and over 2,5 million fingerprints of foreigners on its database. The Department of Transport database is reported to contain over 6 million thumbprints. The Bill will also amend the Criminal Procedure Act and the South African Police Service Act. This will necessitate consequential amendments to the Firearms Control Act and the Explosives Act.
The select committee was informed that some challenges remain with regard to the retaking of fingerprints and the electronic scanning of fingerprints, as in the alignment of fingerprints between especially the Department of Transport's electronic National Traffic Information System, eNatis, and the system of the police for facilitating effective searching.
Currently, the Department of Transport does not store fingerprints of all 10 fingers of drivers and learner drivers, which will limit the scope of a search as required by the police. These challenges must be addressed in order for the Bill to be effectively implemented, only and for the availability of an effective and complete fingerprint database for comparative searching.
Some amendments in the Bill came as a result of issues raised in submissions and presentations to the portfolio committee, and one of the most important issues was the alignment of the Bill with the Children's Act. The fingerprints of children must be taken with due regard for the privacy, dignity and bodily integrity of the child, and an adult must be present when fingerprints are taken. The child must be treated and addressed in a manner that takes into account the child's gender and age. When a child perpetrator reaches adulthood, application can be made for the removal of his or her fingerprints from the criminal database.
The Bill provides for 15 years' imprisonment if a person is convicted of abusing or manipulating the fingerprint database. Although no sanctions are provided for the misplacement of fingerprints by mistake, the Bill provides for the retaking of fingerprints and it is hoped that this will be limited through intensive training. The retaking of fingerprints is also allowed where the fingerprints cannot be read.
The select committee adopted the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill without amendments. The Bill is commended to the House as an important step in the review of the criminal justice system as a whole. It enhances the crime fighting and intelligence capabilities of the police, in particular by expanding the number of fingerprints in their database, and allows for certain circumstances when the police are obliged to take fingerprints.
Debate concluded.