An exposé by a Pittsburgh-based news source found criminal suspects are often slipping through the court system without ever being fingerprinted — and pointed out that McKean County had a big problem.

“Basically we’re the second worst in the state as far as our fingerprinting rate,” McKean County District Attorney Ray Learn said on Monday. “It’s not something we’re happy with.”

PublicSource, an independent news agency, reviewed fingerprint data across the state. The worst problem was in Luzerne County, and the second worst was in McKean, the agency indicated. Data showed 40.3 percent of fingerprints for criminal defendants from the McKean County Court System were missing from the Pennsylvania State Police criminal database, according to PublicSource’s data.

Learn said on Monday that he’s been working on improving the fingerprinting system since he took office. “We’re constantly battling to try to get better,” he said. “It’s going to take awhile to turn the ship.”

Changes are already under way.

“We met with police chiefs from around the county two weeks ago to make this better,” Learn explained. Now, suspects are given a form to take with them when they are fingerprinted. The officer who takes the fingerprints must sign and date the form, Learn explained. Should a defendant proceed through the court system without being fingerprinted, it becomes a condition of the sentence — and a violation could mean jail time.

“The ones who are arrested immediately and put in jail almost always get fingerprinted,” he said. “It’s highly unlikely those are the ones slipping through the cracks.”

While the data isn’t broken down by department, the top prosecutor said he’s become aware that fingerprinting is falling through the cracks in some departments far more than others.

“We have some departments now who are not fingerprinting at all,” Learn said. “That’s an internal problem that needs addressed.”

How the snafu happens is when a police officer investigates an incident, the suspect is not always arrested on the spot. In many cases with lesser charges, suspects are mailed a summons to appear before a magisterial district judge to answer to the charges.

Often, a suspect will waive an appearance in district court, and a police officer will not see the suspect again as the court case proceeds.

However, Learn explained, magistrates do issue orders to suspects to report to a police station to be fingerprinted. Yet suspects often do not comply.

“We don’t have a Central Booking Station like Philadelphia does,” Learn said. Further complicating the issue, the only police station in the entire county where someone is in the building around the clock is the Kane barracks of state police. While the Bradford City Police and Kane Borough Police are both 24/7 departments, there are no dispatchers in the stations while the officers are on patrol.

“Other than the state police, there are no police stations in the county that employ civilians for office work,” Learn said. “The officers do everything themselves.”

The Kane barracks is the only place in the county which offers Live Scan inkless fingerprinting — “everywhere else still uses the ink and cards,” Learn said.

While grants may be available to obtain the Live Scan machines, the departments do not have the funds available for ongoing costs — like maintenance, software upgrades and the manpower to run the system. “You have to have an Internet connection,” Learn said, “there’s yearly updates for software, and maintenance contracts. Somebody has to be able to use it.”

Other departments in the county are able to use the state police’s Live Scan, but frequently, it isn’t feasible for an officer to take the time away from patrols to transport a suspect to the barracks at Lantz Corners, and then to the McKean County Jail in Smethport.