Fingerprint Classification - Fingerprinting.com Fingerprinting Products Fingerprint Classification The fingerprinting movement was launched in earnest in the latter part of the second half of the 19th Century. There is evidence of hand printing and fingerprinting dating all the way back to the building of the pyramids, and there is reason to believe that the Chinese culture used fingerprints as signatures on official documents back in 3 B.C. However, it was not until 1858 when Sir William J. Hershel, an English administrator in a province just outside of Calcutta, India, in an attempt to halt the rampant forgery in governmental dealings, obtained a print on Mr. Rajyadhar Konai, a local contractor. The fingerprinting worked out so well that Hershel continued the practice and, after a decade, had accumulated a file of fingerprints. Soon thereafter, simultaneous studies on fingerprinting were conducted. As the practice of fingerprinting acquired more credence, the files of fingerprints collected by Hershel, Dr. Henry Faulds (who took fingerprints of Japanese hospital patients), and others proved too unwieldy.

Sir Francis Galton, an English anthropologist, established the first classification of fingerprints in 1888, so that retrieval could be possible in a reasonable period of time. He established the classification of fingerprints on the patterns of the fingerprints independent of an individual's personal information. The grouping of patterns into arches, loops and whorls was revolutionary and was the basis of the work furthered revised by Sir Edward Richard Henry. In 1896, Henry, the Inspector-General of Police, Lower Province for the Government of India, under English domain, revised Galton's methodology of classification of fingerprints and their retrieval, and presented his system to the Government of India for use in the criminal system in order to keep track of offenders. At that time, a type of personal identification was utilized by Alphonse Bertillon, a police clerk in France, who devised a method based on body measurements specific to each individual. Henry concluded that this methodology, the anthropometrical method, was successful in determining personal identification only 40% of the time.

By taking the classification patterns of Galton and adding a fourth one, composites, the fingerprints could be filed in bins according to groupings for easy retrieval, thus eliminating the necessity of matching the fingerprints against those in the entire database. The Henry System of Fingerprint Classification was put into use by the Government of India, and it proved so successful as a means of establishing criminal identification records that Scotland Yard adopted the methodology in 1901. Henry was appointed Chief Commissioner of the London Police Department, and the Henry Classification of Fingerprinting was accepted as common practice throughout England and its territorial holdings and in the United States. Within the same decade as Sir Henry's advances in the use of fingerprinting in the tracking and identification of criminals, similar programs were launched in South America by Juan Vucetich, an Argentine Police Official, and Henry Roscher, a disciple of Dr. Henry Faulds, in Germany. Vucetich is credited with the first positive criminal identification as, in 1892, he was able to extract a set of prints off a door and thus identify a woman as the culprit in a double homicide.

Vucetich, Roscher, and Henry all developed systems of fingerprint classification based on the different shapes and patterns in the ridges of fingers, as well as on the finger positions of these pattern types and by the number of ridges in each finger configuration. Henry's Classification of Fingerprinting system was adopted by the English speaking countries, while Vucetich's system was utilized in the Spanish speaking countries. Roscher's system was used in his homeland of Germany, and also in Japan. These manual filing systems paved the way for the computerized classification systems that exist today, and these three gentlemen were the chief fingerprint frontiersmen who explored the heretofore virgin territory of fingerprint classification, and then refined it into the classifications that are basically still in use today. The Fingerprint System - NY DCJS Statistics The Fingerprint System Increased experience with anthropometric identification quickly revealed to New York's Bertillon Indexers what other users of the system had already discovered: Bertillon's method of identification contained significant room for improvement.

Although 243 basic categories were plenty for an agency handling 5,000 to 10,000 records, when the 50,000 mark was reached and passed, New York's Bertillon Indexers found themselves searching through categories containing 200 or more cards. The time required to check for duplicate records increased from a few minutes to several hours. Another problem was the inaccuracy of the measurements themselves. This was due to the inexperience or incompetence of the examiners, as well as the criminals' refusal to wait until they attained full adulthood, and thus their most stable measurements, before they began committing crimes. By the turn of the century, supplementing Bertillon's original system with additional anthropometric subclassifications was common practice, and it was for the purpose of studying these enhancements that Chief Clerk Charles K. Baker was once again called upon to travel to Europe. Baker made this trip in the summer of 1902 with Dr. R. B. Lamb, Superintendent of Dannemora State Hospital. For three days, they studied under Bertillon at his "School for Detectives" in Paris.

Then, upon hearing that fingerprints had superseded the Bertillon method in Great Britain, they set out for England. The English had begun using fingerprints in July of 1858, when Sir William Herschel, Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly District in Jungipoor, India, reached his limit of frustration with the dishonesty of the natives. On a whim, and with no thought toward personal identification, Herschel had Rajyadhar Konai, a local businessman, impress his hand print on the back of a contract. The idea was merely ". . . to frighten [him] out of all thought of repudiating his signature." The native was suitably impressed, and Herschel made a habit of requiring palm prints -- and later, simply the prints of the right index and middle fingers -- on every contract made with the locals. Personal contact with the document, they believed, made the contract more binding than if they simply signed it. Thus, the first wide-scale, modern-day use of fingerprints was predicated, not upon scientific evidence, but upon superstitious beliefs. However, as his fingerprint collection grew, Herschel began to note that the inked impressions could prove or disprove identity.

While his experience with fingerprinting was admittedly limited, Sir Herschel's private conviction that each fingerprint was unique to the individual, as well as permanent throughout that individual's life, inspired him to expand their use. During the 1870's, Dr. Henry Faulds, the British Surgeon-Superintendent of Tsukiji Hospital in Tokyo, Japan, took up the study of "skin-furrows" after noticing finger marks on specimens of "prehistoric" pottery. A learned and industrious man, Dr. Faulds not only recognized the importance of fingerprints as a means of identification, but devised a method of classification as well. In 1880, Faulds forwarded an explanation of his classification system and a sample of the forms he had designed for recording inked impressions to Sir Charles Darwin. Darwin, in advanced age and ill health, informed Dr. Faulds that he could be of no assistance to him, but promised to pass the materials on to his cousin, Francis Galton. Sir Galton was occupied by other scientific projects at the time and displayed little interest in the study of fingerprints until 1888, when he was asked to present a lecture on personal identification to the Royal Institute.

As the anthropometric system was the only known means of identification, Bertillonage was to be the principal object of the lecture. However, "wishing to treat the subject generally, and having a vague knowledge of the value sometimes assigned to finger marks," Galton began to make inquiries concerning the use of fingerprints. A letter to the scientific journal Nature requesting information on the subject was forwarded to Sir Herschel, who placed his collection of fingerprint data at the scientist's disposal. Galton's primary interest in fingerprints was as an aid in determining heredity and racial background. While he soon discovered that fingerprints offered no firm clues to an individual's intelligence or genetic history, he was able to prove scientifically what Herschel and Faulds already suspected: that fingerprints do not change over the course of an individual's lifetime, and no two fingerprints are exactly the same. According to his calculations, the odds of two individual fingerprints being the same were 1 in 64 billion. Galton designed a form for recording inked fingerprint impressions and defined three main pattern types: loops, those patterns tend to curve back upon themselves; whorls, those patterns tend to be circular; and arches, those patterns which form no loops or circles.

Each of the ten fingers, depending on its pattern type, was labeled with an L, W, or A. The letters representing the patterns in the right hand's index, middle and ring fingers were grouped together, followed by the letters representing the patterns in the corresponding fingers of the left hand. These letters were then followed by the letters representing the patterns in the right thumb and little finger and the left thumb and little finger. A person with the fingerprint patterns Loop, Loop, Arch, Whorl, Loop in the right hand and Whorl, Loop, Whorl, Loop, Loop in the left hand would, under this system, have a classification of LAWLWLLLWL. This series of letters was recorded on the fingerprint form and the forms were filed alphabetically by classification. Galton's abecedarian filing system was remarkably similar to the one Dr. Faulds had devised and, if Faulds is to be believed, the form Galton designed to record impressions on was a blatant copy of Faulds' form forwarded to Galton from Darwin in 1880. In 1894, after rejecting Dr.

Faulds' suggestion to use fingerprints, Scotland Yard adopted Galton's rudimentary fingerprint system as an auxiliary to their Bertillon files. At this time, in British India, Edward Henry, the new administrator of the Bengal District, was experiencing the same problems with the local population as Sir Herschel had. Henry was convinced that a system of identification based solely on fingerprints was possible. A correspondence, and subsequent friendship, began between Henry and Galton; and in 1894, when he returned to England on leave, Henry visited Galton at his laboratory. After returning to India, Henry had fingerprints and Bertillon measurements taken of all prisoners under his jurisdiction. In a report dated June 24, 1896, Henry outlined the advantages of a fingerprint-based system over Bertillonage, but admitted that such a system had not yet been fully developed. A major obstacle was the formulation of a simple and logical method of dividing fingerprint records into a large number of primary groupings. The solution, according to Henry, came to him in a flash of inspiration during a train journey across India. Lacking paper and fearing the vision might fade from his mind and become lost forever, he scribbled notes on the cuffs of his shirt sleeves.

A less dramatic but more plausible version of this breakthrough maintains that Sir Henry's Indian assistant, Khan Bahadur Azizul Haque, devised the mathematical formula, then found himself frustrated by Henry's lack of comprehension when he attempted to explain it to him. Henry's classification system assigned a value to each individual finger. Fingers number 1 and 2, being the right thumb and right index, held a value of 16. Fingers number 3 and 4, the right middle and ring, held a value of 8, and so on. Whenever a whorl pattern appeared in a finger, the corresponding value was added to the base value of 1. Henry used a fraction-type primary classification which took the accrued values of the even numbered fingers as the numerator and the accrued value of the odd numbered fingers as the denominator. Therefore, a person with the fingerprint patterns Loop, Loop, Arch, Whorl, Loop in the right hand and Whorl, Loop, Whorl, Loop, Loop in the left hand would have a primary fingerprint classification of 15 over 1. A person with no whorl patterns would have a primary classification of 1 over 1.

This classification system, allowing for 1,024 primary groupings, was instituted in Bengal, India, in early 1897. The success of Henry's experiment encouraged him to make a formal request to the Government of India for the appointment of an independent committee to review his new system and compare it with Bertillonage. The committee met in March of 1897 and submitted a report to the Government of India which concluded that the fingerprint method was far superior to the Bertillon System. On June 12, 1897, the Governor General signed a resolution directing that identification of criminals by fingerprint impressions be adopted in British India. Henry's Fingerprint Classification System was so successful in India that a second committee was assembled to review Scotland Yard's identification practices. This committee, in 1900, recommended the total abandonment of Bertillon's anthropometric system in favor of the new Henry System. In May of 1901, Henry was appointed Assistant Commissioner of the Criminal Investigation Department. He was transferred to England and began setting up Scotland Yard's Central Fingerprint Bureau and instructing selected officers in the art of fingerprint classification. By the time Mr. Baker and Dr.

Lamb visited London in 1902, Henry's fingerprint file was in full operation. They were impressed by this new system and, prior to returning to America, purchased a copy of Henry's book, Classification and Uses of Fingerprints, as well as Finger Prints by Sir Francis Galton. Shortly after his return, Mr. Baker was interviewed by Harry Beardsley for an article which appeared in the April 16, 1903 edition of Leslie's Weekly. In the article, Mr. Baker extolled the wonders of the Bertillon Method and made little mention of fingerprints. Superintendent Collins, in his annual report for 1903, noted the introduction of a Fingerprint Department "for the purpose of experiment and test," but predicted that the Bertillon System would continue to be the approved method of identification in the United States. The History of Fingerprints QUESTION & ANSWER FORUM - HELP WITH HOMEWORK The History of Fingerprints Click the arrow to the right of a language to translate Why Fingerprint Identification? Fingerprints offer a reliable means of personal identification. That is the essential explanation for fingerprints having replaced other methods of establishing the identities of persons reluctant to admit previous arrests.

1 The science of fingerprint identification stands out among all other forensic sciences for many reasons, including the following: Has served governments worldwide for over 100 years to provide accurate identification of criminals. No two fingerprints have ever been found alike in many billions of human and automated computer comparisons. Fingerprints are the basis for criminal history foundation at every police agency on earth. Established the first forensic professional organization, the International Association for Identification (IAI), in 1915. Established the first professional certification program for forensic scientists, the IAI's Certified Latent Print Examiner (CLPE) program (in 1977), issuing certification to those meeting stringent criteria and revoking certification for serious errors such as erroneous identifications. Continues to expand as the premier method for identifying persons, with hundreds of thousands of persons daily added to fingerprint repositories worldwide. For more than a century, has remained the most commonly used forensic evidence worldwide - in most jurisdictions fingerprint examination cases match or outnumber all other forensic examination casework combined. Fingerprints harvested from crime "scenes lead to more suspects and generate more evidence in court than all other forensic laboratory techniques combined. 2 " Is relatively inexpensive for solving crime.

Expense is an important factor because all agencies must balance cost, timeliness and thoroughness for various types of investigations. For example, DNA is as ubiquitous as fingerprints at most crime scenes, but costs typically 100 to 400 times more than fingerprint analysis for each specimen, and can require additional months or years before analysis is complete. Thus, fingerprints and DNA are harvested from serious crimes such as murder, but often fingerprints are the primary evidence harvested from burglaries, vehicle break-ins, etc. Other visible human characteristics, such as facial features, tend to change with age, but fingerprints are relatively persistent. Barring injuries or surgery causing deep scarring, or diseases such as leprosy damaging the formative layers of friction ridge skin, finger and palm print features have never been shown to move about or change their unit relationship throughout the life of a person (and injuries, scarring and diseases tend to exhibit telltale indicators of unnatural change). In earlier civilizations, branding or maiming were used to mark persons as criminals. The thief was deprived of the hand which committed the thievery. Ancient Romans employed the tattoo needle to identify and prevent desertion of mercenary soldiers from their ranks.

Before the mid-1800s, law enforcement officers with extraordinary visual memories, so-called "camera eyes," identified previously arrested offenders by sight alone. Photography lessened the burden on memory, but was not the answer to the criminal identification problem. Personal appearances change. Around 1870, French anthropologist Alphonse Bertillon devised a system to measure and record the dimensions of certain bony parts of the body. These measurements were reduced to a formula which, theoretically, would apply only to one person and would not change during his/her adult life. The Bertillon System was generally accepted for thirty years. But the anthropometric measurement system never recovered from the events of 1903, when a man named Will West was sentenced to the US Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. It was discovered there was already a prisoner at the penitentiary, whose Bertillon measurements were nearly the same, and his name was William West. Upon investigation, there were indeed two men who looked very similar. Their names were William and Will West. Their Bertillon measurements were close enough to identify them as the same person. However, fingerprint comparisons quickly and correctly determined they were two different people.

(According to prison records publicized years later, the West men were apparently identical twin brothers and each had a record of correspondence with the same immediate family relatives.) Prehistoric Ancient artifacts including carvings similar to friction ridge skin have been discovered in many places throughout the world. Picture writing of a hand with ridge patterns was discovered in Nova Scotia. In ancient Babylon, fingerprints were used on clay tablets for business transactions. BC 200s - China Chinese records from the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) include details about using handprints as evidence during burglary investigations. Clay seals bearing friction ridge impressions were used during both the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 BC - 220 AD). AD 1400s - Persia The 14th century Persian book "Jaamehol-Tawarikh" (Universal History), attributed to Khajeh Rashiduddin Fazlollah Hamadani (1247-1318), includes comments about the practice of identifying persons from their fingerprints. 1600s In a "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London" paper in 1684, Dr.

Nehemiah Grew was the first European to publish friction ridge skin observations. Dutch anatomist Govard Bidloo's 1685 book, "Anatomy of the Human Body" also described friction ridge skin (papillary ridge) details. In 1686, Marcello Malpighi, an anatomy professor at the University of Bologna, noted fingerprint ridges, spirals and loops in his treatise. A layer of skin was named after him; "Malpighi" layer, which is approximately 1.8 mm thick. No mention of friction ridge skin uniqueness or permanence was made by Grew, Bidloo or Malpighi. 1788 - Mayer German anatomist and doctor J. C. A. Mayer wrote the book Anatomical Copper-plates with Appropriate Explanations containing drawings of friction ridge skin patterns. Mayer wrote, “Although the arrangement of skin ridges is never duplicated in two persons, nevertheless the similarities are closer among some individuals. In others the differences are marked, yet in spite of their peculiarities of arrangement all have a certain likeness” (Cummins and Midlo, 1943, pp 12–13).

Mayer was the first to declare that friction ridge skin is unique. 1823 - Purkinje In 1823, Jan Evangelista Purkinje, anatomy professor at the University of Breslau, published his thesis discussing nine fingerprint patterns. Purkinje also made no mention of the value of fingerprints for personal identification. Purkinje is referred to in most English language publications as John Evangelist Purkinje. 1858 - Herschel The English first began using fingerprints in July of 1858, when Sir William James Herschel, Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India, first used fingerprints on native contracts. On a whim, and without thought toward personal identification, Herschel had Rajyadhar Konai, a local businessman, impress his hand print on a contract. The purpose was was to "... to frighten [him] out of all thought of repudiating his signature." The native was suitably impressed, and Herschel made a habit of requiring palm prints--and later, simply the prints of the right Index and Middle fingers--on every contract made with the locals.

Personal contact with the document, they believed, made the contract more binding than if they simply signed it. Thus, the first wide-scale, modern-day use of fingerprints was predicated, not upon scientific evidence, but upon superstitious beliefs. Herschel's fingerprints recorded over a period of 57 years As his fingerprint collection grew, however, Herschel began to note that the inked impressions could, indeed, prove or disprove identity. While his experience with fingerprinting was admittedly limited, Sir William Herschel's private conviction that all fingerprints were unique to the individual, as well as permanent throughout that individual's life, inspired him to expand their use. 1863 - Coulier Professor Paul-Jean Coulier, of Val-de-Grâce in Paris, published his observations that (latent) fingerprints can be developed on paper by iodine fuming, explaining how to preserve (fix) such developed impressions and mentioning the potential for identifying suspects' fingerprints by use of a magnifying glass. 3 , 4 1877 - Taylor American microscopist Thomas Taylor proposed that finger and palm prints left on any object might be used to solve crimes.

The July 1877 issue of The American Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science included the following description of a lecture by Taylor: Hand Marks Under the Microscope. - In a recent lecture, Mr. Thomas Taylor, microscopist to the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., exhibited on a screen & view of the markings on the palms of the hands and the tips of the fingers, and called attention to the possibility of identifying criminals, especially murderers, by comparing the marks of the hands left upon any object with impressions in wax taken from the hands of suspected persons. In the case of murderers, the marks of bloody bands would present a very favorable opportunity. This is a new system of palmistry. 1870s- 1880 - Faulds During the 1870s, Dr. Henry Faulds, the British Surgeon-Superintendent of Tsukiji Hospital in Tokyo, Japan, took up the study of "skin-furrows" after noticing finger marks on specimens of "prehistoric" pottery. A learned and industrious man, Dr. Faulds not only recognized the importance of fingerprints as a means of identification, but devised a method of classification as well.

In 1880, Faulds forwarded an explanation of his classification system and a sample of the forms he had designed for recording inked impressions, to Sir Charles Darwin. Darwin, in advanced age and ill health, informed Dr. Faulds that he could be of no assistance to him, but promised to pass the materials on to his cousin, Francis Galton. Also in 1880, Dr. Henry Faulds published an article in the Scientific Journal, "Nature" (nature). He discussed fingerprints as a means of personal identification, and the use of printers ink as a method for obtaining such fingerprints. He is also credited with the first fingerprint identification of a greasy fingerprint left on an alcohol bottle. 1882 - Thompson In 1882, Gilbert Thompson of the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico, used his own thumb print on a document to help prevent forgery. This is the first known use of fingerprints in the United States. Click the image below to see a larger image of an 1882 receipt issued by Gilbert Thompson to "Lying Bob" in the amount of 75 dollars.

1882 - Bertillon Alphonse Bertillon, a clerk in the Prefecture of Police of at Paris, France, devised a system of classification, known as anthropometry or the Bertillon System, using measurements of parts of the body. Bertillon's system included measurements such as head length, head width, length of the middle finger, length of the left foot; and length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. In 1888 Bertillon was made Chief of the newly created Department of Judicial Identity where he used anthropometry as the primary means of identification. He later introduced Fingerprints, but relegated them to a secondary role in the category of special marks. 1883 - Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) In Mark Twain's book, "Life on the Mississippi", a murderer was identified by the use of fingerprint identification. In a later book, "Pudd'n Head Wilson", there was a dramatic court trial including fingerprint identification. A movie was made from this book in 1916 and a made-for-TV movie in 1984.

1888 - Galton Sir Francis Galton, British anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin, began his observations of fingerprints as a means of identification in the 1880's. 1891 - Vucetich Juan Vucetich, an Argentine Police Official, began the first fingerprint files based on Galton pattern types. At first, Vucetich included the Bertillon System with the files. Right Thumb Impression and Signature of Juan Vucetich 1892 - Alvarez & Galton At Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1892, Inspector Eduardo Alvarez made the first criminal fingerprint identification. He was able to identify Francisca Rojas, a woman who murdered her two sons and cut her own throat in an attempt to place blame on another. Her bloody print was left on a door post, proving her identity as the murderer. Alvarez was trained by Juan Vucetich. Francisca Rojas' Inked Fingerprints Sir Francis Galton published his book, "Finger Prints" in 1892, establishing the individuality and permanence of fingerprints. The book included the first published classification system for fingerprints.

In 1893, Galton published the book "Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints," and 1895 the book "Fingerprint Directories." Galton's primary interest in fingerprints was as an aid in determining heredity and racial background. While he soon discovered that fingerprints offered no firm clues to an individual's intelligence or genetic history, he was able to scientifically prove what Herschel and Faulds already suspected: that fingerprints do not change over the course of an individual's lifetime, and that no two fingerprints are exactly the same. According to his calculations, the odds of two individual fingerprints being the same were 1 in 64 billion. Galton identified the characteristics by which fingerprints can be identified. A few of these same characteristics (minutia) are basically still in use today, and are sometimes referred to as Galton Details. 1897 - Haque & Bose On 12 June 1897, the Council of the Governor General of India approved a committee report that fingerprints should be used for classification of criminal records. Later that year, the Calcutta (now Kolkata) Anthropometric Bureau became the world's first Fingerprint Bureau.

Working in the Calcutta Anthropometric Bureau (before it became the Fingerprint Bureau) were Azizul Haque (shown above) and Hem Chandra Bose. Haque and Bose are the two Indian fingerprint experts credited with primary development of the Henry System of fingerprint classification (named for their supervisor, Edward Richard Henry). The Henry classification system is still used in English-speaking countries (primarily as the manual filing system for accessing paper archive files that have not been scanned and computerized). 1900 - E.R. Henry The United Kingdom Home Secretary Office conducted an inquiry into "Identification of Criminals by Measurement and Fingerprints." Mr. Edward Richard Henry (later Sir ER Henry) appeared before the inquiry committee to explain the system published in his recent book "The Classification and Use of Fingerprints." The committee recommended adoption of fingerprinting as a replacement for the relatively inaccurate Bertillon system of anthropometric measurement, which only partially relied on fingerprints for identification. 1901 The Fingerprint Branch at New Scotland Yard ( Metropolitan Police ) was created in July 1901 using the Henry System of Fingerprint Classification. 1902 First systematic use of fingerprints in the U.S. by the New York Civil Service Commission for testing. Dr. Henry P.

DeForrest pioneers U.S. fingerprinting. 1903 In 1903, the New York City Civil Service Commission, the New York State Prison System and the Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas began using fingerprinting. In 1903, Will and William West's fingerprints were compared at Leavenworth Penitentiary after there were found to have the same Anthropometric measurements. 1904 The use of fingerprints began at the St. Louis Police Department. They were assisted by a Sergeant from Scotland Yard who had been on duty at the St. Louis World's Fair Exposition guarding the British Display. Sometime after the St. Louis World's Fair, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) created America's first national fingerprint repository, called the National Bureau of Criminal Identification. 1905 U.S. Army begins using fingerprints. U.S. Department of Justice forms the Bureau of Criminal Identification in Washington, DC to provide a centralized reference collection of fingerprint cards. Two years later the U.S. Navy started, and was joined the next year by the Marine Corp.

During the next 25 years more and more law enforcement agencies join in the use of fingerprints as a means of personal identification. Many of these agencies began sending copies of their fingerprint cards to the National Bureau of Criminal Identification, which was established by the International Association of Police Chiefs. 1907 U.S. Navy begins using fingerprints. U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Criminal Identification moves to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary where it is staffed at least partially by inmates. 1908 U.S. Marine Corps begins using fingerprints. 1910 In 1910, Frederick Brayley published the first American textbook on fingerprints, "Arrangement of Finger Prints, Identification, and Their Uses." 1915 Inspector Harry H. Caldwell of the Oakland, California Police Department's Bureau of Identification wrote numerous letters to "Criminal Identification Operators" in August 1915, requesting them to meet in Oakland for the purpose of forming an organization to further the aims of the identification profession.

In October 1915, a group of twenty-two identification personnel met and initiated the "International Association for Criminal Identification" In 1918, the organization was renamed the International Association for Identification (IAI) due to the volume of non-criminal identification work performed by members. Sir Francis Galton's right index finger appears in the IAI logo. The IAI's official publication is the Journal of Forensic Identification. The IAI's 100th annual educational conference was held in Sacramento, California, near the IAI's original roots. 1918 Edmond Locard wrote that if 12 points (Galton's Details) were the same between two fingerprints, it would suffice as a positive identification5. Locard's 12 points seems to have been based on an unscientific "improvement" over the eleven anthropometric measurements (arm length, height, etc.) used to "identify" criminals before the adoption of fingerprints. 1924 In 1924, an act of congress established the Identification Division of the FBI. The IACP's National Bureau of Criminal Identification and the US Justice Department's Bureau of Criminal Identification consolidated to form the nucleus of the FBI fingerprint files.

During the decades since, the FBI's fingerprint national fingerprint support (both through Criminal Justice Information Services and the FBI Laboratory) has been indispensable in supporting American law enforcement. 1940s By the end of World War II, most American fingerprints experts agreed there was no scientific basis for a minimum number of corresponding minutiae to determine an "identification" and the twelve point rule was dropped from the FBI publication, "The Science of Fingerprints." 1946 By 1946, the FBI had processed 100 million fingerprint cards in manually maintained files; and by 1971, 200 million cards. With the introduction of automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) technology, the files were later split into computerized criminal files and manually maintained civil files. Many of the manual files were duplicates though, the records actually represented somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 million criminals, and an unknown number (tens of millions) of individuals represented in the civil files. 1973 The International Association for Identification Standardization Committee authored a resolution stating that each identification is unique and no valid basis exists to require a minimum number of matching points in two friction ridge impressions to establish a positive identification.

The resolution was approved by members at the 1973 annual conference. 1974 The Fingerprint Society In 1974, four employees of the Hertfordshire (United Kingdom) Fingerprint Bureau contacted fingerprint experts throughout the UK and began organization of that country's first professional fingerprint organization, the National Society of Fingerprint Officers. The organization initially consisted of only UK experts, but quickly expanded to international scope and was renamed The Fingerprint Society in 1977. The initials F.F.S. behind a fingerprint expert's name indicates they are recognized as a Fellow of the Fingerprint Society. The Society hosts annual educational conferences with speakers and delegates attending from many countries. 1977 At New Orleans, Louisiana on 1 August 1977, delegates to the 62nd Annual Conference of the International Association for Identification (IAI) voted to establish the world's first certification program for fingerprint experts. Since 1977, the IAI's Latent Print Certification Board has proficiency tested thousands of applicants, and periodically proficiency tests all IAI Certified Latent Print Examiners (CLPEs).

Contrary to claims (since the 1990s) that fingerprint experts profess their body of practitioners never make erroneous identifications, the Latent Print Certification program proposed, adopted, and in-force since 1977, specifically recognizes such mistakes sometimes occur, and must be addressed by the Latent Print Certification Board. During the past three decades, CLPE status has become a prerequisite for journeyman fingerprint expert positions in many US state and federal government forensic laboratories. IAI CLPE status is considered by many identification professionals to be a measurement of excellence. 1995 At the International Symposium on Latent Fingerprint Detection and Identification, conducted by the Israeli National Police Agency, at Neurim, Israel, June, 1995, the Neurim Declaration was issued.

The declaration, (authored by Pierre Margot and an American fingerprint expert from the Army Crime Lab), states "No scientific basis exists for requiring that a pre-determined minimum number of friction ridge features must be resent in two impression in order to establish a positive identification." The declaration was unanimously approved by all present, and later, signed by 28 persons from the following 11 countries: Australia, Canada, France, Holland, Hungary, Isreal, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States. 2012 INTERPOL's Automated Fingerprint Identification System repository exceeds 150,000 sets of fingerprints for important international criminal records from 190 member countries. Over 170 countries have 24 x 7 interface ability with INTERPOL expert fingerprint services . 2015 - The International Association for Identification celebrated it's 100th Anniversary 2016 - America's Largest Databases The largest AFIS repository in America is operated by the Department of Homeland Security's US Visit Program, containing over 120 million persons' fingerprints, many in the form of two-finger records.

The US Visit Program has been migrating from two flat (not rolled) fingerprints to ten flat fingerprints since 2007. "Fast capture" technology currently enables recording of ten simultaneous fingerprint impressions in as little as 15 seconds per person. The largest criminal fingerprint AFIS repository in America is the FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) in Clarksburg, WV. NGI has more than 60 million individual computerized fingerprint records (both criminal and civil applicant records). NGI is the FBI's most valuable service to American law enforcement, providing accurate and rapid fingerprint identification services. Recently, FBI civil fingerprint files in NGI (mainly federal employees post-May 2000) have become searchable by US law enforcement agencies. Many enlisted military service member fingerprint cards received after 1990, and most military-related fingerprint cards received after 19 May 2000, have been computerized and will be searchable. The FBI is continuing to expand their automated identification activities to include other biometrics such as palm, face, and iris. Face search capabilities in NGI are a reality for many US law enforcement agencies accessing NGI, and several are participating in iris pilot projects.

All US states and many large cities have their own AFIS databases, each with a subset of fingerprint records that is not stored in any other database. Many also store and search palmprints. Law enforcement fingerprint interface standards are important to enable sharing records and reciprocal searches to identify criminals. Interpol , the European Union's Prüm Treaty, the FBI's Next Generation Identification and other initiatives seek to improve cross-jurisdiction sharing (probing and sharing/pushing) of important finger and palm print data to identify criminals. 2016 - World's Largest Database The Unique Identification Authority of India is the world's largest fingerprint (and largest multi-modal biometric) system using fingerprint, face and iris biometric records. India's Unique Identification project is also known as Aadhaar, a word meaning "the foundation" in several Indian languages. Aadhaar is a voluntary program, with the goal of eventually providing reliable national ID documents to most of India's 1.2 billion residents.

With a biometric database many times larger than any other in the world, Aadhaar's ability to leverage automated fingerprint and iris modalities (and potentially automated face recognition) enables rapid and reliable automated searching and identification impossible to accomplish with fingerprint technology alone, especially when searching children and elderly residents' fingerprints. Since 2010, the Authority has issued more than 1.07 billion (more than 107 crore) Aadhaar numbers. _______________________________________________________________________________ 1 Some of the above wording is credited to the writing of Greg Moore, from his previous fingerprint history page at (no longer there). Also, David L. von Minden, Ph.D. helped correct typos his students kept cutting and pasting into their homework. 2 Interpol, " General Position on Fingerprint Evidence ," by the Interpol European Expert Group on Fingerprint Identification, at #val 3 Coulier, P.-J. Les vapeurs d'iode employees comme moyen de reconnaitre l'alteration des ecritures. In L'Annee scientiJique et industrielle; Figuier, L.

Ed.; Hachette, 1863; 8, pp 157-160 at (as of March 2010). 4 Margot, Pierre and Quinche, Nicolas, "Coulier, Paul-Jean (1824-1890): A Precursor in the History of Fingermark Detection and Their Potential Use for Identifying Their Source (1863)", Journal of forensic identification, 60 (2), March-April 2010, pp. 129-134, (published by the International Association for Identification). 5 As of 2016, the term positive identification (meaning absolute certainty) has been replaced in reports and testimony by most agencies/experts with more accurate terminology, including variations of wording such as the following: Examination and comparison of similarities and differences between the impressions resulted in the opinion there is a much greater support for the impressions originating from the same source than there is for them originating from different sources. There are sufficient features in agreement to conclude the two areas of friction ridge impressions originated from the same source.

Identification of an impression to one source is the decision that the likelihood the impression was made by another (different) source is so remote it is considered as a practical impossibility. A related 2014 paper titled "Individualization is dead, long live individualization! Reforms of reporting practices for fingerprint analysis in the United States" by Simon Cole, Professor at University of California, Irvine is linked here . 6 Herschel information from a Fingerprint Identification presentation by T. Dickerson Cook at the annual meeting of the Texas Division, International Association for Identification, at Midland, Texas on 9 August 1954 (documented in Identification News, April 1964, pages 5-10). History of Fingerprinting - How Fingerprinting Works | HowStuffWorks History of Fingerprinting George Skadding/Time Life Pictures/ Getty Images There are records of fingerprints being taken many centuries ago, although they weren't nearly as sophisticated as they are today. The ancient Babylonians pressed the tips of their fingertips into clay to record business transactions. The Chinese used ink-on-paper finger impressions for business and to help identify their children. However, fingerprints weren't used as a method for identifying criminals until the 19th century.

In 1858, an Englishman named Sir William Herschel was working as the Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India . In order to reduce fraud, he had the residents record their fingerprints when signing business documents. Up Next How DNA Profiling Works A few years later, Scottish doctor Henry Faulds was working in Japan when he discovered fingerprints left by artists on ancient pieces of clay. This finding inspired him to begin investigating fingerprints. In 1880, Faulds wrote to his cousin, the famed naturalist Charles Darwin, and asked for help with developing a fingerprint classification system. Darwin declined, but forwarded the letter to his cousin, Sir Francis Galton. Galton was a eugenicist who collected measurements on people around the world to determine how traits were inherited from one generation to the next. He began collecting fingerprints and eventually gathered some 8,000 different samples to analyze. In 1892, he published a book called "Fingerprints," in which he outlined a fingerprint classification system -- the first in existence. The system was based on patterns of arches, loops and whorls.

Meanwhile, a French law enforcement official named Alphonse Bertillon was developing his own system for identifying criminals. Bertillonage (or anthropometry) was a method of measuring heads, feet and other distinguishing body parts. These "spoken portraits" enabled police in different locations to apprehend suspects based on specific physical characteristics. The British Indian police adopted this system in the 1890s. Around the same time, Juan Vucetich, a police officer in Buenos Aires, Argentina , was developing his own variation of a fingerprinting system. In 1892, Vucetich was called in to assist with the investigation of two boys murdered in Necochea, a village near Buenos Aires. Suspicion had fallen initially on a man named Velasquez, a love interest of the boys' mother, Francisca Rojas. But when Vucetich compared fingerprints found at the murder scene to those of both Velasquez and Rojas, they matched Rojas' exactly. She confessed to the crime. This was the first time fingerprints had been used in a criminal investigation. Vucetich called his system comparative dactyloscopy. It's still used in many Spanish-speaking countries.

Sir Edward Henry, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police of London, soon became interested in using fingerprints to nab criminals. In 1896, he added to Galton's technique, creating his own classification system based on the direction, flow, pattern and other characteristics of the friction ridges in fingerprints. Examiners would turn these characteristics into equations and classifications that could distinguish one person's print from another's. The Henry Classification System replaced the Bertillonage system as the primary method of fingerprint classification throughout most of the world. In 1901, Scotland Yard established its first Fingerprint Bureau. The following year, fingerprints were presented as evidence for the first time in English courts. In 1903, the New York state prisons adopted the use of fingerprints, followed later by the FBI . But how has fingerprinting changed since the 19th century? In the next section, we'll find out about modern fingerprinting techniques. U.S. Marshals Service for Students, Fingerprint History U.S. Marshals Service for Students Accidental What Type of Fingerprints do you have? Fingerprint History: Prehistoric picture writing of a hand with ridge patterns was discovered in Nova Scotia.

In ancient Babylon, fingerprints were used on clay tablets for business transactions. In ancient China, thumb prints were found on clay seals. In 14th century Persia, various official government papers had fingerprints (impressions), and one government official, a doctor, observed that no two fingerprints were exactly alike. Marcello Malpighi - 1686 In 1686, Marcello Malpighi, a professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, noted in his treatise; ridges, spirals and loops in fingerprints. He made no mention of their value as a tool for individual identification. A layer of skin was named after him; "Malpighi" layer, which is approximately 1.8mm thick. John Evangelist Purkinji - 1823 In 1823, John Evangelist Purkinji, a professor of anatomy at the University of Breslau, published his thesis discussing 9 fingerprint patterns, but he too made no mention of the value of fingerprints for personal identification.

Sir William Hershel - 1856 The English first began using fingerprints in July of 1858, when Sir William Herschel, Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India, first used fingerprints on native contracts. On a whim, and with no thought toward personal identification, Herschel had Rajyadhar Konai, a local businessman, impress his hand print on the back of a contract. The idea was merely ". . . to frighten [him] out of all thought of repudiating his signature." The native was suitably impressed, and Herschel made a habit of requiring palm prints--and later, simply the prints of the right Index and Middle fingers--on every contract made with the locals. Personal contact with the document, they believed, made the contract more binding than if they simply signed it. Thus, the first wide-scale, modern-day use of fingerprints was predicated, not upon scientific evidence, but upon superstitious beliefs. As his fingerprint collection grew, however, Herschel began to note that the inked impressions could, indeed, prove or disprove identity.

While his experience with fingerprinting was admittedly limited, Sir Herschel's private conviction that all fingerprints were unique to the individual, as well as permanent throughout that individual's life, inspired him to expand their use. Dr. Henry Faulds - 1880 During the 1870's, Dr. Henry Faulds, the British Surgeon-Superintendent of Tsukiji Hospital in Tokyo, Japan, took up the study of "skin-furrows" after noticing finger marks on specimens of "prehistoric" pottery. A learned and industrious man, Dr. Faulds not only recognized the importance of fingerprints as a means of identification, but devised a method of classification as well. In 1880, Faulds forwarded an explanation of his classification system and a sample of the forms he had designed for recording inked impressions, to Sir Charles Darwin. Darwin, in advanced age and ill health, informed Dr. Faulds that he could be of no assistance to him, but promised to pass the materials on to his cousin, Francis Galton. Also in 1880, Dr. Faulds published an article in the Scientific Journal, "Nautre" (nature).

He discussed fingerprints as a means of personal identification, and the use of printers ink as a method for obtaining such fingerprints. He is also credited with the first fingerprint identification of a greasy fingerprint left on an alcohol bottle. Gilbert Thompson - 1882 In 1882, Gilbert Thompson of the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico, used his own fingerprints on a document to prevent forgery. This is the first known use of fingerprints in the United States. Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) - 1883 In Mark Twain's book, "Life on the Mississippi", a murderer was identified by the use of fingerprint identification. In a later book by Mark Twain, "Pudd'n Head Wilson", there was a dramatic court trial on fingerprint identification. A more recent movie was made from this book. Sir Francis Galton - 1888 Sir Francis Galton, a British anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin, began his observations of fingerprints as a means of identification in the 1880's. In 1892, he published his book, "Fingerprints", establishing the individuality and permanence of fingerprints.

The book included the first classification system for fingerprints. Galton's primary interest in fingerprints was as an aid in determining heredity and racial background. While he soon discovered that fingerprints offered no firm clues to an individual's intelligence or genetic history, he was able to scientifically prove what Herschel and Faulds already suspected: that fingerprints do not change over the course of an individual's lifetime, and that no two fingerprints are exactly the same. According to his calculations, the odds of two individual fingerprints being the same were 1 in 64 billion. Galton identified the characteristics by which fingerprints can be identified. These same characteristics (minutia) are basically still in use today, and are often referred to as Galton's Details. Juan Vucetich In 1891, Juan Vucetich, an Argentine Police Official, began the first fingerprint files based on Galton pattern types. At first, Vucetich included the Bertillon System with the files. (see Bertillon below) In 1892, Juan Vucetich made the first criminal fingerprint identification.

He was able to identify a woman by the name of Rojas, who had murdered her two sons, and cut her own throat in an attempt to place blame on another. Her bloody print was left on a door post, proving her identity as the murderer. 1901 Introduction of fingerprints for criminal identification in England and Wales, using Galton's observations and revised by Sir Edward Richard Henry. Thus began the Henry Classification System, used even today in all English speaking countries. 1902 First systematic use of fingerprints in the U.S. by the New York Civil Service Commission for testing. Dr. Henry P. DeForrest pioneers U.S. fingerprinting. 1903 The New York State Prison system began the first systematic use of fingerprints in U.S. for criminals. 1904 The use of fingerprints began in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas, and the St. Louis Police Department. They were assisted by a Sergeant from Scotland Yard who had been on duty at the St. Louis Exposition guarding the British Display. 1905 1905 saw the use of fingerprints for the U.S. Army. Two years later the U.S.

Navy started, and was joined the next year by the Marine Corp. During the next 25 years more and more law enforcement agencies join in the use of fingerprints as a means of personal identification. Many of these agencies began sending copies of their fingerprint cards to the National Bureau of Criminal Identification, which was established by the International Association of Police Chiefs. 1918 It was in 1918 when Edmond Locard wrote that if 12 points (Galton's Details) were the same between two fingerprints, it would suffice as a positive identification. This is where the often quoted (12 points) originated. Be aware though, there is "NO" required number of points necessary for an identification. Some countries have set their own standards which do include a minimum number of points, but not in the United States. 1924 In 1924, an act of congress established the Identification Division of the F.B.I.. The National Bureau and Leavenworth consolidated to form the nucleus of the F.B.I. fingerprint files. 1946 By 1946, the F.B.I.

had processed 100 million fingerprint cards in manually maintained files; and by 1971, 200 million cards. With the introduction of AFIS technology, the files were split into computerized criminal files and manually maintained civil files. Many of the manual files were duplicates though, the records actually represented somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 million criminals, and an unknown number of individuals in the civil files. 1999 By 1999, the FBI had planned to stop using paper fingerprint cards (at least for the newly arriving civil fingerprints) inside their new Integrated AFIS (IAFIS) site at Clarksburg, WV. IAFIS will initially have individual computerized fingerprint records for approximately 33 million criminals. Old paper fingerprint cards for the civil files are still manually maintained in a warehouse facility (rented shopping center space) in Fairmont, WV. Since the Gulf War, most military fingerprint enlistment cards received have been filed only alphabetically by name. The FBI hopes to someday classify and file these cards so they can be of value for unknown casualty (or amnesiac) identification (when no passenger/victim list from a flight, etc., is known).

2002 Currently now in 2002, paper fingerprint cards are still in use and being processed for all identification purposes. Why Fingerprint Identification? Fingerprints offer an infallible means of personal identification. That is the essential explanation for their having supplanted other methods of establishing the identities of criminals reluctant to admit previous arrests. Other personal characteristics change - fingerprints do not. In earlier civilizations, branding and even maiming were used to mark the criminal for what he was. The thief was deprived of the hand which committed the thievery. The Romans employed the tattoo needle to identify and prevent desertion of mercenary soldiers. More recently, law enforcement officers with extraordinary visual memories, so-called "camera eyes," identified old offenders by sight. Photography lessened the burden on memory but was not the answer to the criminal identification problem. Personal appearances change. Around 1870 a French anthropologist devised a system to measure and record the dimensions of certain bony parts of the body. These measurements were reduced to a formula which, theoretically, would apply only to one person and would not change during his/her adult life. This Bertillon System, named after its inventor, Alphonse Bertillon, was generally accepted for thirty years.

But it never recovered from the events of 1903, when a man named Will West was sentenced to the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. You see, there was already a prisoner at the penitentiary at the time, whose Bertillon measurements were nearly exact, and his name was William West. Upon an investigation, there were indeed two men. They looked exactly alike, but were allegedly not related. Their names were Will and William West, respectively. Their Bertillon measurements were close enough to identify them as the same person. However, a fingerprint comparison quickly and correctly identified them as two different people. The West men were apparently identical twin brothers per indications in later discovered prison records citing correspondence from the same immediate family relatives. Internet Scientific Publications Depending on the enhancing source of impression, fingerprints could be regarded as: Latent, Patent or Plastic prints, a lthough the word latent means hidden or invisible, in modern usage for forensic science the term latent prints means any chance or accidental impression left by friction ridge skin on a surface, regardless of whether it is visible or invisible at the time of deposition.

Electronic, chemical and physical processing techniques permit visualization of invisible latent print residue whether they are from natural secretions of the eccrine glands present on friction ridge skin - which produce palmar sweat, sebum, and various kinds of lipids, or whether the impression is in a contaminant such as motor oil, blood, paint, ink, etc. Latent prints may exhibit only a small portion of the surface of the finger and may be smudged, distorted, or both, depending on how they were deposited. For these reasons, latent prints are an inevitable source of error in making comparisons as they generally contain less clarity, less content, and less undistorted information than a fingerprint taken under controlled conditions, and much less details compared to the actual patterns of ridges and grooves of a finger. Patent prints - these are friction ridge impressions of unknown origin which are obvious to the human eye and are caused by a transfer of foreign material on the finger, onto a surface. Because they are already visible they need no enhancement, and are generally photographed instead of being lifted in the same manner as latent prints. Finger deposits can include materials such as ink, dirt, or blood onto a surface.

Plastic prints - a plastic print is a friction ridge impression from a finger, palm, toe or foot deposited in a material that retains the shape of the ridge details. Commonly encountered examples are melted candle wax, putty removed from the perimeter of window panes and thick grease deposits on car parts. Such prints are already visible and need no enhancement, but investigators must not overlook the potential that invisible latent prints deposited by accomplices may also be on such surfaces. After photographically recording such prints, attempts should be made to develop other non-plastic impressions deposited at natural finger/palm secretions (eccrine gland secretions) or contaminates. 10,11,12 Classification of fingerprints Before computerization replaced manual filing systems in large fingerprint operations, manual fingerprint classification systems were used to categorize fingerprints based on general ridge formations such as the presence or absence of circular patterns in various fingers, thus permitting filing and retrieval of paper records in large collections based on friction ridge patterns independent of name, birth date and other biographic data that persons may misrepresent. The most popular ten-print classification systems include the Roscher system, the Vucetich system, and the Henry classification system.

Of these systems, the Roscher system was developed in Germany and implemented in both Germany and Japan, the Vucetich system was developed in Argentina and implemented throughout South America, and the Henry system was developed in India and implemented in most English-speaking countries. In the Henry system of classification, there are three basic fingerprint patterns: Arch, Loop and Whorl. There are also more complex classification systems that further break down patterns to plain arches or tented arches. Loops may be radial or ulnar, depending on the side of the hand the tail points towards. Whorls also have sub-group classifications including plain whorls, accidental whorls, double loop whorls, and central pocket loop whorls. 13 The use of fingerprints in identification / individualization Fingerprint or palmprint identification is the process of comparing questioned and known friction skin ridge impressions from fingers or palms to determine if the impressions are from the same finger or palm. The flexibility of friction ridge skin means that no two finger or palm prints are ever exactly alike, that is, never identical in every detail.

Identification otherwise referred to as individualization occurs when an expert or an expert computer system operating under threshold scoring rules determines that two friction ridge impressions originated from the same finger, palm, toe or sole to the exclusion of all others 14 The English first began using fingerprints in July of 1858, when Sir William Herschel, Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India, first used fingerprints on native contracts. On a whim, and with no thought toward personal identification, Herschel made Rajyadhar Konai, a local businessman, to impress his hand print on a contract. The idea was merely to frighten him out of all thought of repudiating his signature, and Herschel made a habit of requiring palm prints, and later, simply the prints of the right Index and Middle fingers on every contract made with the locals. Personal contact with the document was believed to make the contract more binding than if they simply signed it. Thus, the first wide-scale, modern-day use of fingerprints was predicated, not upon scientific evidence, but upon superstitious beliefs.

15 As his fingerprint collection grew, however, Herschel began to note that the inked impressions could, indeed, prove or disprove identity. While his experience with fingerprinting was admittedly limited, Herschel's private conviction that all fingerprints were unique to the individual, as well as permanent throughout that individual's life, inspired him to expand their use 15 Juan Vucetich made the first criminal fingerprint identification in 1892. He was able to identify Francis Rojas, a woman who murdered her two sons and cut her own throat in an attempt to place blame on another. Her bloody print was left on a door post, proving her identity as the murderer. More so, a landmark 'science of fingerprints' case in the courts occurred in 1911 in Chicago, U.S.A. It resulted in the conviction of a man named Thomas Jennings for murder. Very little evidence against Jennings existed, the most significant being fingerprints. To ensure that fingerprint evidence would be admitted, the prosecution called several recognized fingerprint experts as witnesses. Edward Foster - the man responsible for the establishment of Canada's national fingerprint bureau - was one of these witnesses.

With the help of his testimony, Jennings was convicted and sentenced to hang on December 22, 1911 15 . The defense lawyers for Jennings's appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court of Illinois, arguing that fingerprint evidence should not be accepted. In this first test of the legality of fingerprints in an American high court, the landmark ruling stated that, there is a scientific basis for the system of fingerprint identification, and the courts are justified in admitting this class of evidence 15 One could ask, what was the scientific basis for allowing fingerprint evidence for this case? As at that time, it was the research and comprehensive book: Finger Prints by Sir Francis Galton, a well-known scientist that made a significant contribution to the science of fingerprint identification, particularly with his method of distinguishing fingerprints that contained similar patterns. The general fingerprint patterns of twins, for example, often appeared the same; but Galton had noticed that fingerprint ridges did not proceed across the fingertips in unbroken lines. They often stopped abruptly, split, contained enclosures, or connected with other ridges. The arrangement of these ridge details were never repeated in a print from two different fingers, not even in twins.

Identification of one fingerprint with another, Galton realized, should always be made by comparing their ridge details or fingerprint minutia - known as points of comparison or identification. He used this comparison of ridge detail to confirm Herschel's observations of fingerprint permanence. As a result of his research Galton confirmed that a person's fingerprints would identify him for life and he became sufficiently confident in the method to say that it would indeed form the basis for a reliable system of identification. 16 Justification for the use of fingerprints: Presently, the science of fingerprint identification stands out among all other forensic sciences for many reasons, including the followings: The patterns of ridges on our finger pads are unique: no two individuals—even identical twins—have fingerprints that are exactly alike. We leave impressions—or prints—of these patterns on everything we touch with any pressure. The prints can be visible, as when our fingers are dirty or oily, or they can be latent, as when they are made only by the sweat that is always present on our finger ridges. Injuries such as burns or scrapes will not change the ridge structure, that is, when new skin grows in, the same pattern will come back.

16 Has served all governments worldwide during the past 100 years to provide accurate identification of criminals. No two fingerprints have ever been found alike in many billions of human and automated computer comparisons. Fingerprints are the very basis for criminal history foundation at every police agency. Established the first forensic professional organization, the International Association for Identification (IAI), in 1915. Established the first professional certification program for forensic scientists, the IAI's Certified Latent Print Examiner program, in 1977, issuing certification to those meeting stringent criteria and revoking certification for serious errors such as erroneous identifications. Remains the most commonly used forensic evidence worldwide - in most jurisdictions fingerprint examination cases match or outnumber all other forensic examination casework combined. Continues to expand as the premier method for identifying persons, with tens of thousands of persons added to fingerprint repositories daily in America alone - far outdistancing similar databases in growth. Outperforms DNA and all other human identification systems to identify more murderers, rapists and other serious offenders - fingerprints solve ten times more unknown suspect cases than DNA in most jurisdictions.

Fingerprint identification was the first forensic discipline, in 1977, to formally institute a professional certification program for individual experts, including a procedure for decertifying those making errors. Other forensic disciplines later followed suit in establishing certification programs whereby certification could be revoked for error. 10,15 Fingerprint identification effects far more positive identifications of persons worldwide daily than any other human identification procedure. Some of the discontent over fingerprint evidence may be due to the desire to push the conclusiveness of fingerprint examinations to the same level of certitude as that of DNA analysis. DNA is probability-based inasmuch as an individual is genetically half from the mother's contribution and half from the father's contribution. These genetic contributions are passed down from generation to generation. While pattern type - arch, loops, and whorls - may be inherited, the details of the friction ridges are not. For example, it cannot be concluded that a person inherited a certain bifurcation from their mother and an ending ridge from their father as the development of these features are completely random. Further, fingerprints as an analogy of uniqueness has been widely scientifically accepted.

For example, chemists often use the term ‘fingerprint region' to describe an area of a chemical that can be used to identify it. Other criticism sometimes leveled at fingerprint practice is that it is a ‘closed discipline'. However, practitioners in the scientific community are generally specialized and may not extend to other areas of science; in this respect, fingerprint scientists are no different from the rest of the scientific community. The fingerprint community asserts that it maintains the need for objectivity and continued research in the area of friction ridge analysis. 15,16 Errors in the use of fingerprints However, while forensic scientists have long claimed fingerprint evidence is infallible, the widely publicized error that landed an innocent American behind bars as a suspect in the Madrid train bombing alerted the nation to the potential flaws in the system. Now, the Irvine criminologist, Simon Cole has shown that not only do errors occur, but as many as a thousand incorrect fingerprints matches could be made each year in the U.S. Cole's study is the first to analyze all publicly known mistaken fingerprint matches.

In analyzing these cases of faulty matches dating from 1920, Cole suggests that the 22 exposed incidents, including eight since 1999, are merely the tip of the iceberg. Despite the publicly acknowledged cases of error, fingerprint examiners have long held that fingerprint identification is ‘infallible', and testified in court that their error rate for matching fingerprints is zero. But rather than blindly insisting there is zero error in fingerprint matching, we should acknowledge the obvious, study the errors openly and find constructive ways to prevent faulty evidence from being used to convict innocent people. Cole's data set represents a small portion of actual fingerprint errors because it includes only those publicly exposed cases of mistaken matches. The majority of the cases discussed in this study were discovered only through extremely fortuitous circumstances, such as a post-conviction DNA test, the intervention of foreign police and even a deadly laboratory accident that led to the re-evaluation of evidence 17 . One highly publicized example is that of Brandon Mayfield, the Portland lawyer who was arrested and held for two weeks as a suspect in the Madrid train bombings in 2004. FBI investigators matched prints at the scene to Mayfield, and an independent examiner verified the match.

But Spanish National Police examiners insisted the prints did not match Mayfield and eventually identified another man who matched the prints. The FBI acknowledged the error and Mayfield was released. Wrongful convictions on the basis of faulty evidence are supposed to be prevented by four safeguards: having print identifications verified by additional examiners; ensuring the examiners are competent; requiring a high number of matching points in the ridges before declaring the print a match; and having independent experts examine the prints on behalf of the defendant. However, each of these safeguards failed in cases Cole studied. In fact, in four of the cases, independent experts verified the faulty matches. Despite print examiners' zero-mistake claim, Cole points out that proficiency tests conducted since 1983 show an aggregate error rate of 0.8 percent. Though that may seem small, when multiplied by the large number of cases U.S. crime laboratories processed in 2002, it suggests there could be as many as 1,900 mistaken fingerprint matches made that year alone.

While we don't know how many fingerprint errors are caught in the lab and then swept under the rug – or, worse, how many have still not been caught and may have resulted in a wrongful conviction – there's clearly a need for full evaluation of the errors, according to Cole, ‘the argument that fingerprints are infallible evidence is simply unacceptable' 18 Moreover, in spite of the absence of objective standards, scientific validation, and adequate statistical studies, a natural question to ask is how well fingerprint examiners actually perform. Proficiency tests do not validate a procedure per se, but they can provide some insight into error rates. In 1995, the Collaborative Testing Service (CTS) administered a proficiency test that, for the first time, was designed, assembled, and reviewed by the International Association for Identification (IAI). The results were disappointing. Four suspect cards with prints of all ten fingers were provided together with seven latent. Of 156 people taking the test, only 68 (44%) correctly classified all seven latent. Overall, the tests contained a total of 48 incorrect identifications.

David Grieve, the editor of the Journal of Forensic Identification, describes the reaction of the forensic community to the results of the CTS test as ranging from ‘shock to disbelief,’ and added: ‘errors of this magnitude within a discipline singularly admired and respected for its touted absolute certainty as an identification process have produced chilling and mind-numbing realities. Thirty-four participants, an incredible 22% of those involved, substituted presumed but false certainty for truth. By any measure, this represents a profile of practice that is unacceptable and thus demands positive action by the entire community. What is striking about these comments is that they do not come from a critic of the fingerprint community, but from the editor of one of its premier publications 16 . However, the reliability of the use of fingerprint in human individualization is not 100% error-free. For instance, Shirley McKie was a police detective in 1997 when she was accused of leaving her thumb print inside a house in Kilmarnock Henry's Method of Fingerprinting Henry's Method of Fingerprinting fingerprint image by dip from <a href=' The Henry fingerprint classification system is a method of grouping sets of fingerprints that was devised by Dr.

Henry Faulds in 1880. The Henry system uses an arbitrary formula to classify fingerprints into one of 1,024 groupings based on the presence or absence of a whorl ridge pattern on each finger. When a set of fingerprints needs to be matched to recorded fingerprints, the Henry value is calculated and the fingerprints are compared to recorded fingerprints with the same Henry value. Identify and record the type of fingerprint pattern for each of the individual's 10 fingerprints. There are three major fingerprint pattern types: arches, loops, and whorls. Arch fingerprints feature a single U-shaped rise and fall in the ridge pattern, loop fingerprints feature an incomplete oblong ridge pattern, and whorl fingerprints feature a complete circular loop. See Resources for a depiction of the three fingerprint types. Determine the Henry value for each odd-numbered finger, when the fingerprints are arranged from right thumb to left thumb. The odd-numbered fingers are the right thumb, right middle, right pinky, left ring and left index fingers. The value for each of these fingers that feature an arch or loop pattern is zero.

For each finger that exhibits a whorl pattern, the finger's Henry value is as follows: right thumb 16; right middle 8; right pinky 4; left ring 1; left index 2. Add together the value of all odd-numbered fingers. Add one to this sum. The resulting total is the odd group value. Determine the Henry value for each even-numbered finger. The even-numbered fingers are the right index, right ring, left pinky, left middle and left thumb. The value of each arched or looped finger is zero. The Henry value of each whorled finger is as follows: right index 16; right ring 8; left pinky 1; left middle 2; left thumb 4. Add together the value of all even-numbered fingers. Add one to this sum. The resulting total is the even group value. Calculate the primary group ratio. This ratio is the even group value over the odd group value. For instance, if the even group value is 31 and the odd group value is 16, then the primary group ratio is 31:16.

There are exactly 1,024 possible primary groupings into which a set of fingerprints may be classified. References

Question: The Roscher System and the Henry Classification System are used by the police for what?
Answer: Fingerprinting