Thousands of times each day across the United States a police officer books a suspect, stops a suspicious character near a crime, or pulls over a speeder, and takes his fingerprints. Or he pulls "latent" prints from an object at a crime scene. He zips the prints to a central fingerprint database, and gets an answer back immediately. The prints reveal what the suspect's false name and identification concealed: He has outstanding warrants, or a rap sheet as long as the arm of the law. Or worse: He's an escaped felon, armed and dangerous. That information will enable the police and courts to hold him-or save the life of that lone cop, who might otherwise be ambushed.

That's the fantasy, anyway. Now, the reality: When police pull prints, they may indeed be able to make a speedy identification-if they can match the prints in their own city's or state's databases. Every state except West Virginia, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation's own identification operations are located, has a computerized "automated fingerprint identification system," a.k.a. AFIS. Police in one of the West Coast states connected to the Western Identification Network may be able to find a match among neighboring states' databases. But as law enforcers never tire of observing, crime doesn't honor borders. If it can't match a print in its own or its neighbors' files, a state must mail it to the mother of all fingerprint repositories-the FBI's 227-million-card (that's right, card) collection-and wait a month for a response.