Police give Holmes a sleuthing upgrade

Police forces across the UK can make better searches of each other's databases after an upgrade of a key computer system.

The Home Office Large Major Enquiry System 2 - or Holmes 2 - is used by all the UK's police forces to co-ordinate their efforts when investigating major crimes such as complex murder investigations.

As part of the Version 11 upgrade, Holmes 2 has a search tool which is able to understand the context of the information asked for and lets the police hunt for information across different force's databases.

For example, if an investigating officer types in a search term the system will search other forces' major crime databases for those keys words and pull out all the records associated with the words.

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John Neil, director of operational service for the Police Information technology Organisation, said Holmes 2 helps police forces and incident rooms across the country to manage the large amounts of data generated by major crime investigations.

Holmes 2 can organise evidence, identify cross-references and help to make those critical links between different pieces of information that can lead to a breakthrough in a case, Neil added.

A service-orientated architecture (SOA) modularised framework has also been developed to improve the reusability and flexibility of the system for future updates.

One possible feature for the next version of Holmes 2 is the ability to search other national database systems - such as the Police National Computer and the criminal justice systems databases - that hold data which could be of interest in a police enquiry, according to Unisys, which was commissioned to deliver the Holmes 2 upgrade.