Next Generation Identification (NGI) Missing Persons Services and the Deceased Persons Identification Services

The Deceased Persons Identification (DPI) Services was designed to address the unique needs and challenges of law enforcement, medical examiner, and coroner communities by providing fingerprint-based deceased identification for active and cold cases.  Each year in the United States, more than 4,400 individuals die without an identification and more than 11,000 sets of unidentified human remains are held at medical examiners and coroners’ offices.[1] Identification is critical to resolving investigations and staff can make an identification using fingerprints approximately 70 percent of the time. Deceased identification helps preserve the individual’s dignity, offers an opportunity for them to be buried and memorialized with their name, provides resolution for family and friends, and helps to resolve law enforcement cases.  

The Next Generation Identification (NGI) Missing Persons Services was designed to address the remaining 30 percent of unidentified decedents, with the thought being, they may have been reported as missing by a law enforcement agency but did not have fingerprints in the NGI System.  Each year more than 100,000 individuals go missing.[2] A missing person might be across town or across the nation and may be endangered, homeless, affected by a medical condition or mental illness, or even deceased.  The FBI offers the NGI Missing Persons Services to provide an opportunity to bring the missing person home.  The NGI Missing Persons Services resolves active and cold missing person cases when the missing person’s fingerprints are reported to the NGI System and a fingerprint match occurs to a civil, criminal, or deceased fingerprint.

For assistance with submitting deceased identification request and missing person enrollments, please contact our staff at SPC_ Team@fbi.gov.  Remember to mark your request as either "deceased identification" or "missing person update."  For general deceased identification questions, please contact our staff at DPIServices@fbi.gov.

[1] NamUs.gov
[2] NamUs.gov