Police National Computer

The Police National Computer (PNC) is a crime information center and database used by members of the United Kingdom law enforcement and other non-law enforcement agencies, maintained by the Criminal Records Office (ACRO) under the governance of the National Police Chiefs' Council. Originally developed in the early 1970s, PNC1 went 'live' in 1974, providing UK police forces with online access to the lost/stolen vehicle database. The vehicle owners application quickly followed, giving the police online access to the names/addresses of every vehicle owner in the UK.

The PNC started holding nominal information based on the computerisation of criminal records held by the Metropolitan Police and other police forces in the late 1970s. These records could be accessed online in real-time by all UK police forces via the "Names" applications. It now consists of several databases available 24 hours a day, giving access to information of national and local matters. As of 18 January 2021, Kit Malthouse said that there are 13 million person records, 58.5 million driver records, and 62.6 million vehicle records stored on the PNC. The PNC is currently the responsibility of the Home Office. Between 2007 and 2012, it was maintained by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) which inherited the activities of the now disbanded Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO). It is to be decommissioned upon the expiry of its current support contract in March 2026, being replaced by the Law Enforcement Data Service (LEDS) system.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.