FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. – Less than a week after a wrongly-released convicted murderer was picked up in Central Florida, News 6 has learned a local jail is using eyeball scanning to ensure it never happens there.
Flagler County jail Operations Commander Lou Miceli said iris scanning is more accurate, detailed and reliable than fingerprint identification and even facial recognition.
Already, incoming inmates are registered, scanned and identified using photography, fingerprinting, Rapid ID fingerprint technology, and, for suspected felons, DNA testing.
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“But the iris is unique,” Miceli said.
Miceli explained the eyeball-scanning goggles that an inmate looks through at the booking counter analyze 265 characteristics in the iris.
“Identical twins don’t even have the same iris,” Miceli said. “The odds of it happening are one in ten to the 78th power. So whatever that big number is.”
Miceli said once the scanner captures the image of the iris, a computer on the other side of the booking counter records and stores the image. It is then uploaded to a database maintained by the company that provided the iris-scanning software and hardware to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office free of charge.
Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said the company is providing the same technology to law enforcement agencies across the country in the interest of building out its iris database.
“Even the FBI now is building a database with this technology,” Staly said. “So you’re trying to take the human error out of a booking or release because, you know, people can exchange their bands or the IDs. But you cannot exchange your eyeballs.”
When an inmate is booked into the jail, his or her iris image is also stored locally for comparison for when the inmate is ready to be released.
Every inmate’s iris is scanned again before he or she is released and compared with the original image for verification.
Currently, Flagler County’s database contains around 200 iris images but that number continues to grow on a daily basis.
Staly believes iris scanning will eventually replace fingerprint verification.