Councillor wants electoral offices to collect fingerprints for police record applications

With hundreds of Jamaicans travelling from across the country weekly to join long lines at the Criminal Records Office on Duke Street in downtown Kingston, Waterford Councillor Fenley Douglas is recommending that legislation be crafted to allow electoral offices islandwide to roll fingerprints for use in applications for obtaining a police record.

Douglas, who was speaking during a ribbon -utting ceremony for a newly constructed taxi layby in Waterford on Wednesday, said people in Portmore, St Catherine, as well as individuals he has met through his travels to other parishes, have outlined to him the difficulties they face in applying for police records.

“While there is a part that can be done online, the most inhumane aspect is for someone in the far end of the island to wake up and reach the police records office on Duke Street in Kingston and then stand in the broiling sun to have their fingerprints taken to commence the process of obtaining their police record. Our lawmakers pass by every day on their way to Parliament, and I wonder if they don’t see the plight of Jamaican citizens,” Douglas said.

He continued: “Our legislators can look back at the laws that govern the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) to make it easier for citizens to go to the nearest electoral office in their area to have their fingerprints taken and sent to the Duke Street records office for processing.”

The Waterford municipal councillor said that with the trust and confidence placed in the EOJ to safeguard democracy, he could not see any reason its constituency offices could not take the prints or use the same prints taken to ensure the legitimacy of a voter, as long as they are not compromised, for purposes of obtaining a police record.

“Government has a responsibility to make the lives of citizens easier by ensuring that important services that are needed by citizens are easily accessible,” Douglas argued.

In the meantime, Director of Elections Glasspole Brown, who is responsible for the day-to-day activities of the EOJ, without commenting on the practicality of Douglas’ recommendation, told The Gleaner that the present laws governing the EOJ do not support the sharing of registered electors’ personal data with the police.

“If we are required to do so by an amendment to the act, I would imagine that a number of those persons over 18 years who are inconvenienced by the present system of applying for their police record could be facilitated because we already have a database of close to two million Jamaicans,” Brown stated.

He said that based on the surface of the recommendation, the issue of concern would be how to address the inconvenience suffered by Jamaicans in obtaining their police record, given the fact that the EOJ’s database only contains persons over 18 years of age.

“There could be an expansion of the number of offices that offer the services across the island, in addition to Duke Street, as a means of addressing the issue of inconvenience,” Brown argued, adding that the matter would best be addressed by lawmakers.