Issuing police with PDAs has cut through bureaucracy and saved
police between six to 25 minutes for each stop, according to the
Home Office.
Police have been able to issue a receipt from a hand-held
computer rather than writing up long written records after a stop
and search incident.
The Home Office says the technology could benefit the force
considerably given that around 800,000 stop and searches take place
each year.
The technology means people stopped in a stop and search
incident will not be for detained for as long, and community groups
will have a record of relevant information in order to scrutinise
police activity, it says.
Police have recently been investing in biometric technology to
speed up identification and stop and search incidents. Last week
the government outlined Project Midas, a £40m plan to provide
police with mobile fingerprinting devices for identifying people at
the scene of an incident. This follows on from an earlier scheme,
Project Lantern, which was particularly successful at identifying
disqualified drivers presenting false identification.
