Criminal Justice Information Services is a department of the Scottish Police Services Authority. Previously called the Scottish Criminal Record Office (SCRO), it established in 1960 with a mission statement "To manage information for the Scottish Police Service, wider Criminal Justice Community and the public to assist in the prevention and detection of crime and enhance public safety." The organisation is based at

Pacific Quay Pacific Quay is an area south of the River Clyde in Glasgow, Scotland. It is located at the former Plantation Quay and Princes' Dock Basin. The Princes' Dock Basin was the largest on the River Clyde when it was opened by the Clyde Navigation Tr ...

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

, under current Director John McLean. The high-profile Shirley McKie case has embroiled the SCRO in controversy surrounding its provision of

fingerprint A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfa ...

identification and verification services. This controversy lead to the separation in 2001 of these services from local control by each of the eight Scottish police forces ( Central Scotland Police; Dumfries & Galloway Constabulary;

Fife Constabulary Fife Constabulary was the territorial police force responsible for the Scottish council area of Fife. The area policed by Fife Constabulary had a resident population of just over 350,000, almost a third of whom lived in one of the three princ ...

;

Grampian Police Grampian Police was, between 1975 and 2013 (replaced by Police Scotland), the territorial police force of the northeast region of Scotland, covering, from 1996, the council areas of Aberdeenshire, the Aberdeen City, and Moray (the former Gramp ...

; Lothian & Borders Police;

Northern Constabulary The Northern Constabulary () was the territorial police force responsible for Northern Scotland, covering the Highland council area along with the Western Isles, the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands, which make up most of the Highlands a ...

;

Strathclyde Police Strathclyde Police was the territorial police force responsible for the Scottish council areas of Argyll and Bute, Glasgow City, East Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Inverclyde, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, ...

; and,

Tayside Police Tayside Police was a territorial police force covering the Scottish council areas of Angus, Dundee City and Perth and Kinross (the former Tayside region) until 1 April 2013, at which point it was subsumed into Police Scotland. The total area co ...

) and to the establishment of the Scottish Fingerprint Service.

Fingerprint controversy

In January 1997 an expert from the SCRO identified the left thumb print of DC Shirley McKie, a murder squad detective with

, as coming from the bathroom door frame inside the house in

Kilmarnock Kilmarnock ( ; ; , ), meaning "the church of Mernóc", is a town and former burgh in East Ayrshire situated in southwest Scotland. The town has served as the administrative centre of East Ayrshire Council since 1996 and is the region's main ...

of murder victim, Marion Ross. Three other SCRO experts confirmed this thumb print identification but another five SCRO experts, who were asked to do so, refused. Nonetheless DC McKie, who denied ever having been inside the house, was charged with

perjury Perjury (also known as forswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding."Perjury The act or an insta ...

. In May 1999 the Scottish

High Court of Justiciary The High Court of Justiciary () is the supreme criminal court in Scotland. The High Court is both a trial court and a court of appeal. As a trial court, the High Court sits on circuit at Parliament House or in the adjacent former Sheriff C ...

rejected the SCRO fingerprint evidence, and Shirley McKie was unanimously found not guilty of perjury. HM Inspectors of Constabulary investigated and reported that – despite SCRO's claims – McKie's prints were never at the scene of the murder. In June 2000 the then Justice Minister,

Jim Wallace James Robert Wallace, Baron Wallace of Tankerness, (born 25 August 1954) is a Scottish politician serving as a Liberal Democrat life peer in the House of Lords, British House of Lords since 2007. He served as the Deputy First Minister of Scotl ...

, and Lord Advocate, Lord Boyd, apologised in the Scottish parliament to Shirley McKie. A former Deputy Chief Constable of

, James Mackay QPM, and Tayside's head of

CID Cid may refer to: * Cid (soil) * Cubic inch (c.i.d., cid), a displacement unit for internal combustion engines * Cid, a slang term for lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) * Content-ID, a URI scheme (cid:) that allows the use of MIME within email Peop ...

, Detective Chief Superintendent Scott Robertson, were then appointed by the

Crown Office Crown Office may refer to: * Crown Office in Chancery, a department under the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom * Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service () is the independent public ...

to conduct a further investigation into the issues relating to fingerprint evidence and to report back with their findings. Mackay's interim report on 3 August 2000 suggested that SCRO fingerprint personnel had given evidence in court that was: :"so significantly distorted that without further explanation, the SCRO identification likely amounts to collective manipulation and collective collusion." According to a Scottish Executive Justice Department internal email written by senior official, Sheena Maclaren: :"Mr W Rae, then president of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) and chairman of SCRO's executive committee, decided that given all the circumstances, all Chief Constables concluded that there was no alternative but to 'precautionary suspend' the four SCRO personnel. This was done on August 3 by the Director of SCRO." Government ministers were informed of the decision to suspend the four fingerprint experts who had wrongly identified a thumb print as PC Shirley McKie's. Marked 'confidential', the final Mackay and Robertson report was submitted to the Crown Office in October 2000. It took more than five years for details of this report to emerge, but ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact (newspaper), compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until ...

'' newspaper published extracts from it in February 2006. The report concluded that there was criminal conduct by SCRO employees and that there was sufficient evidence to justify criminal charges. However, the Crown Office told Mackay in September 2001 that no action was to be taken against the SCRO experts. As a result, they were reinstated and employed in the newly created Scottish Fingerprint Service. During a civil action in February 2003, brought by Shirley McKie against Stathclyde Police for

malicious prosecution Malicious prosecution is a common law intentional tort. Like the tort of abuse of process, its elements include (1) intentionally (and maliciously) instituting and pursuing (or causing to be instituted or pursued) a legal action ( civil or crim ...

, the Lord Advocate Lord Boyd argued that expert witnesses should always be immune from prosecution – even if they gave false evidence.

References

Shirley McKie fingerprint caseFresh allegations in McKie case£50,000 is pledged to Shirley McKie fighting fundFingerprint team asks justice group for helpBlair to look at Scotsman revelations

External links

Official website
{{Authority control 1960 establishments in Scotland 1960 in British law Criminal records databases Organisations based in Glasgow

Criminal Records Office In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Cane ...

Scottish criminal law Archives in Scotland Government agencies established in 1960 Criminology organizations Criminal investigation Forensics organizations Databases in Scotland