The screening of identity documents at borders for forensic drug intelligence purpose

Abstract The need for law enforcement agencies to obtain results more rapidly has driven the increased use of field-deployable technology in the field. Currently used in a case-by-case approach, the potential of these new technologies, could go beyond the traditional objective of forensic science (i.e. characterisation and identification) and provide timely information about criminal phenomena (i.e. multi-case approach). The use of portable instrumentation could for instance provide rapid information to law enforcement agencies about drug prevalence and drug smuggling if used in a systematic manner. This paper outlines the potential of using portable instrumentation to gather information related to illicit drugs rapidly. An innovative concept is proposed to screen surfaces of passports for the detection of remnants of illicit substances using rapid equipment already deployed at border controls. An experimental procedure was built to determine if powdered drugs could be detected on the surface of contaminated passports. Various scenarios were tested, including transfer, activity and persistence parameters. Experiments were conducted employing two different instruments, i.e. Ion Mobility spectroscopy (IMS) and Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Ionisation coupled to an Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer (APCI-ITMS). Promising results were obtained with the proposed method notably with the APCI-ITMS instrument as drugs were detected in minute amounts even after one hour of activity. High rates of false positives were obtained with the IMS contrary to APCI-ITMS. As a result, APCI-ITMS allows for the detection of remnants of illicit substances on passports’ surfaces and the approach employed in this proof of concept can be deployed in a real environment such as in airports.