A growing number of sheriff's departments are using iris scans to identify sex offenders, runaways, abducted children and wandering Alzheimer's patients.
More than 2,100 departments in 27 states are taking digital pictures of eyes and storing the information in databases that can be searched later to identify a missing person or someone who uses a fake name, says Sean Mullin, president of BI{+2} Technologies, which sells the devices.
"It's evolving quickly," he says. Most of the sheriffs are doing voluntary iris scans of senior citizens and children.
At least 10 metro areas are doing scans of criminals to identify them should another crime occur or to be sure the right inmate is released.
"This is the wave of the future. This will become as common as fingerprinting," says Sheriff Greg Solano of Santa Fe County, N.M. Last month, his department began scanning the irises of convicted sex offenders. He says the level of detail and central database can make matches within seconds, compared with weeks for fingerprints and months for DNA.