Police digital records sy
The Police Records Management Information System (PRMIS), which is expected to move the Guyana Police Force away from paper-based crime recording, was yesterday officially launched at the Guyana Police Force Training Centre, in Georgetown.
The Alberttown Police Station in the capital and the Fort Wellington Police Station on the West Berbice were selected to pilot the programme over a six-month period, after which the programme will be spread to more stations across the country.
A number of computers, printers and different software applications were handed over at the launch to the Guyana Police Force by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through their CariSECURE partnership, with full funding from the United States government.
CariSECURE is aimed at strengthening evidence-based decision making for citizen security in the Caribbean.
At the launch, Mark Cullinane, the Deputy Chief of Mission for the US Embassy, told the gathering that the US government was pleased to partner with the Government of Guyana on the CariSECURE project, which he said is just a part of their wider Youth Empowerment Services project that is aimed at reducing the involvement of youth in crimes.
“Criminals become savvier every day and their crimes more sophisticated, thanks to the evergrowing use of information technology. It is, therefore, imperative that law enforcement officials also make clever use of technology to optimise their work in stopping the illegal activities that cost this country and its people so much,” Cullinane said.
He added that for the Guyana Police Force to achieve such a feat, there must be access to realtime data to give officers a better scope of gathering information on frequent crime hot-spots and better intelligence gathering. “Such data will equip police officials with the ability to conduct crime hotspot mapping; victim and offender profiling and intelligence gathering,” he added as he said that those components would empower officers in the fight against crime.
Cullinane noted that with the installation of the new systems, the maintenance is equally important. He told the gathering that the Government of Guyana, the Regional Security System and CARICOM IMPACS will jointly share the responsibility of maintenance for the systems.
Delivering the feature address at the launch was Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan, who expressed gratitude on behalf of the Government of Guyana to the Unit government for fully funding the projec
Ramjattan stated that law enforceme must adopt an aggressive posture to det crimes and criminals. “The most effectiv focussed deterrence. A laser-like focus directed on those neighbourhoods and identified by data gathered in real-time,”
He added that real-time evidence can gathered when systems like PRMIS are Ramjattan also said that it is important where certain crimes often occur a through evidence gathering can that data mation be collected in order to preven rence. He stated that since 2017, Guya have formed a national CariSECURE t to implement the data-driven process. force comprised the Guyana Police F Prison Service, the Bureau of Stati Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry Health and the chambers of the Director Prosecutions. The task force was forme laborate with CariSECURE to identify approaches for the implementation of th and identify risks and challenges that co arisen during the development and imp tion.
He added that the Guyana Police For have already had in place a programm Integrated Crime Information System (I the implementation of the PRMIS proje be developing the ICIS project. “Wh doing is, of course, advancing to a far hig