The database may be updated with the histories of non-criminals, including inclination to suicidal tendencies, past registration on a missing persons database, or charges without convictions.

McDevitt said the information would be supplied to "decision makers" to help characterize an individual's "propensity to commit crime".

CrimTrac will also overhaul the CrimTrac Police Reference System (CPRS) which is a top -yer network that links disparate and legacy national law enforcement databases into a unified system to give police faster access to more comprehensive data relevant to investigations.

The state-owned system is used to access citizen records from state and federal databases, such as the NCIDD, the Australian National Child Offender Register (ANCOR), and the Minimum Nationwide Person Profile (MNPP).

Information such as date of birth, licence numbers, addresses, photographs, DNA samples, fingerprints, clothing and additional comments will be fed from the system into a GUI to be accessed by regional police stations and in vehicle computers.

Police previously used the National Name Index, which displayed rudimentary data such as names of missing person title and a small amount of personal information.

Upgrades to ANCOR may include links to the Australian Customs Passenger Analysis Clearance and Evaluation (PACE) system, and McDevitt expressed interest in creating ties with social networking sites like MySpace.

The National Automated Fingerprint Identification System will continue to operate alongside the use of deep palm reading technology. The system has more than 3.9 million entries in the database housed in the Department of Defence which is accessed through a Federal Police encrypted network.

McDevitt was a Federal Police assistant commissioner for 22 years during which he led operations in the 2002 Bali bombings and in the Solomon Islands peacekeeping effort and has held various roles in criminal investigations and counter-terrorism activities.

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