By Associated Press
Scott County, IL – A rural southeast Missouri sheriff's department is the first in the state to install iris recognition software in an effort to help identify missing people.
The Scott County Sheriff's Department is one of about 300 police agencies around the country turning to the iris recognition software, which they say could eventually replace child fingerprinting as the main resource for identify missing or abducted children.
The equipment cost about $5,000 and was developed by Massachusetts-based Biometric Intelligence & Identification Technologies. The system works by taking a photo of an individual's irises, which, like fingerprints, don't change in the course of development. The image is stored for use in a national database.
