Federal Bureau of Investigation

Article Outline

Introduction; Structure; Jurisdiction and Investigative Responsibilities; FBI Agents; Law Enforcement Services; History

Law Enforcement Services

As the largest law enforcement agency in the United States, the FBI plays a central and indispensable role in assisting local, state, federal, and international law enforcement agencies. This assistance includes fingerprint identification, laboratory analysis of criminal evidence, criminal profiling, police training, maintenance of a central crime information database, and publication of crime statistics.

Fingerprint Identification

Every person has a unique set of fingerprints, a fact that allows police officers to identify suspected criminals from fingerprints found at a crime scene. The FBI serves as the central repository for fingerprint records in the United States. It has on file about 250 million sets of fingerprints representing about 74 million people (both criminal and civilian), the largest collection in the world. These fingerprints are stored in digital form in the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). Using this system, law enforcement agencies submit fingerprint images electronically; IAFIS searches its huge database for a match and responds with an identification if one exists. The identification process takes less than two hours, instead of the weeks required under the previous semiautomated system.

In addition to conducting fingerprint identification for law enforcement, the FBI processes requests from other organizations when required by law. For example, FBI fingerprint checks may be required of people applying for employment as a teacher, child-care provider, or government worker. About half of all fingerprint checks are noncriminal.

The FBI’s fingerprint collection began in 1924 with about 810,000 sets of arrest fingerprints. These were consolidated from the Justice Department’s fingerprint collection, maintained at a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, and from the collection of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. In the following years, as local and state law enforcement agencies forwarded fingerprint records to the FBI, its criminal identification data increased greatly. In 1932 the FBI began exchanging identification data with the law enforcement agencies of more than 80 foreign countries and with agencies in U.S. territories.

FBI Laboratory

The FBI Laboratory, founded in 1932, analyzes physical evidence submitted by FBI agents and by other law enforcement agencies to help solve crimes. It uses the most sophisticated investigative tools and methods known to law enforcement, many of which it pioneered. The laboratory employs specialists trained in many branches of science and in methods of scientific crime detection. They examine bullets, weapons, bloodstains, human and animal hair and skin, textile fibers, soils, rocks, metals, and many other forms of evidence. These specialists often serve as expert witnesses in trials, explaining the methodology and results of their analysis.

FBI Laboratory technicians use chemicals, powders, lasers, and special light sources to find and enhance fingerprints, tire impressions, shoeprints, and other characteristic marks that can link suspects to crime scenes. Other specialists identify forged letters and documents by analyzing handwriting, identifying impressions in the surface of paper, and determining the origins of a document’s ink and paper. The FBI Laboratory also analyzes photographs, financial records, firearms, and explosives and their residues.

Another important laboratory function is the analysis of dioxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in bodily fluids and tissues, a procedure called DNA fingerprinting. By identifying the DNA profile of blood, semen, saliva, or hair found at the crime scene and comparing it to the DNA profile of the suspect, laboratory scientists can determine with a high degree of likelihood whether the suspect was at the crime scene. The FBI Laboratory’s National DNA Index System allows U.S. crime laboratories to electronically compare DNA profiles with those from convicted criminals and from biological evidence in unsolved cases.

Criminal Profiling

The FBI’s profiling unit, part of its National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, advises law enforcement officers, most often local police investigators, in cases of unsolved serial and violent crimes. These crimes may include serial murders and rapes, individual homicides, child abductions, arsons, bombings, product tamperings, and vicious or unusual crimes. By using behavioral science research and computer models, profilers can often predict the characteristics and behavior of an unknown criminal suspect. For example, a profiler may infer that the person who committed a murder is probably between the ages of 25 and 35, lives within a few blocks of the victim, likes to hunt and fish, and drives a sport utility vehicle. This technique, portrayed in the movie The Silence of the Lambs (1991), has led to the apprehension of hundreds of serial killers and rapists. Profilers at the center also conduct research on criminal thought processes, motivations, and behaviors.

Police Training

The FBI National Academy, founded in 1935 and located at the same facility as the FBI Academy, offers advanced training to selected mid- and executive-level officers from local, state, and foreign police departments. An 11-week course covers leadership and management skills, law, communications, forensic science, and health and fitness. At the FBI Academy and at police schools across the country, the FBI offers hundreds of specialized courses on hostage negotiation, firearms, fingerprints, criminal psychology, computer crime, arson, and other topics.

The FBI serves as the lead agency in directing activities at the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest, Hungary, opened in 1995. Instructors from a wide range of U.S. and international law enforcement agencies train police officers from emerging democracies in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and other parts of Eastern Europe. Courses focus on police professionalism, ethics, criminal investigation, and the rule of law. FBI instructors also participate in the International Law Enforcement Academy in Bangkok, Thailand, launched in 1999 for police officers from Southeast Asia and China. Training focuses on illicit drug trafficking, financial crimes, smuggling of illegal aliens, and transnational investigations.