"Computer problems have left police forces in England and Wales unable to run national fingerprint checks for more than a week.

All 43 forces in England and Wales, including London's Metropolitan Police, were affected by a software bug, which disrupted connections to the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (Nafis) since the early hours of Wednesday, 24 November.

The exact cause of the problem remains unclear and will become the subject of an audit once services are fully restored.

Nafis is run for the Police IT Organisation (PITO) by Northrop Grumman. A spokesman for PITO said that service was restored to 30 forces by the end of last week. "All forces - bar one - are now up and running."

Fingerprint experts were still able to compare prints against local databases, but national checks on suspects or evidence from crime scenes were hindered. A leaked memo - written by Bruce Grant, head of the Met's Fingerprint Bureau - said that the networking problem meant "that no offender's identity can be verified", the London Evening Standard reports."

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