Mackenzie Glaser

Fingerprinting

In today’s world of forensic science, one of the most classic examples of forensic

evidence involves the fingerprint. It is hard to imagine the world of forensics being where it is

today without the help of latent fingerprinting. This has been around for a long time, and it does

not look like it is going anywhere anytime soon. With its increasing advancements, increasing

usage, and standardization, the scope that fingerprints can help out with is ever growing. In this

essay, I will look into the history, future, effectiveness of fingerprinting, a case study and look at

how fingerprinting is done.

Modern fingerprinting has been around for a long time. The first American record of

finger printing took place in 1856 when Sir William James Hershel used fingerprints to ensure

that the locals he did business with could not deny that they had agreed to the terms of his

contract. (Bell 2017, 68) He realized that fingerprints were unique to the individual person. Even

though this was the first time that fingerprinting was recognized in the states, fingerprinting has

been around for a long time in other parts of the world. In 1666, a man named Marcello Malpighi

noted that different fingerprints had different ridges and configurations. This was later elaborated

on by John Evangelist Purkinji when he published a thesis elaborating on the nine different

fingerprint patterns (Miller 2012, 628). Next, Henry Faulds studied skin furrows in 1880 and

looked at fingerprints in prehistoric pottery where he founded a method for fingerprint

classification and found out how useful they were for identification purposes (Miller 2012, 624).

This then led Sir Francis Galton to write his classic book “Fingerprints, showing ways to identify

and classify them” in 1892 (Bell 2017, 68). With all this attention being put on the science of

fingerprinting, in the US army collected fingerprints for identification and by the end of World
War I, 5 million sets of fingerprints were collected (Bell 2017, 68). By the time World War II

came around, the people were encouraged to get fingerprinted to avoid getting their identities

tampered with (Bell 2017, 68). Now fingerprinting has evolved a lot and continues to grow in

today’s world. First we will take a look at how fingerprinting is currently done.

In this current day and age, fingerprinting still shares some of its procedural roots from

the beginning of fingerprinting. Fingerprints are collected by spinning a fingerprinting brush

with fingerprinting powder over an area in question where the powder would connect to sweat,

oils, and grease, (Miller 2012, 629) left behind by fingers, palms, and even feet (FBI 2012).

Next, when a fingerprint is detected, the technician uses a special tape to lift the print. They put

the print on a specific paper for identification at the lab. While power and a brush is a classic

way to collect fingerprints, there are also a few other ways in which we can collect fingerprints

form a crime scene. Recently fingerprinting has evolved to also use chemical agents. More

specifically using a ninhydrin or cyanoacrylate mixture. They use this mixture by putting it on

the area in question, usually porous materials such as money or paper, and the ninhydrin reacts

with amino acids secreted from pores in the fingertips to create a sort of light purple/ pink color

(Miller 2012, 624). Cyanoacrylate mixtures are used to fume the area in question and superglue

it to the object where a technician uses power to use the traditional method on the fingerprint.

This method is typically used for finding latent fingerprints (Miller 2012, 625). When the prints

are collected from the crime scene and brought to the lab, the prints in questioned are usually

evaluated by people who go through extensive training as well as career-long maintenance

training (Miller 2012, 624). These fingerprints can be looked at in a lab by a latent examiner.

This person focuses on comparing “chance” fingerprints left accidently at crime scenes or

elsewhere, to possible source prints (Kellman 2014). Otherwise, the fingerprints could be looked
at by a ten print examiner who compares purposefully collected fingerprints to ones found in a

database (Kellman 2014). Whoever is looking at the prints will start by putting their collected

fingerprint in a database called AFIS (automated fingerprint identification system) (Bell 2017,

68) and NPPS (national palm print system) for palm prints (FBI 2012). These systems would

give a select number of possible matches for these prints for the examiner to look at. Given that

systems such as AFIS houses records for 73 million criminal subjects, (FBI 2012) the chance of

finding a possible match is very likely. Next, the examiner would start by comparing the core of

the fingerprint (Miller 2012, 628) and eventually branching out to find their minutia points

(Miller 2012, 626). Minutia points are points in which fingerprints can be distinguishable such as

a branching off or an ending of a ridge. These points are compared and depending on your

preference you can choose as many points as you want. While the Federal Bureau of

Investigation uses 10 points of comparison, (Miller 2012, 625) and Edmond Locard suggested 12

points (Miller 2012, 624). Legally, the court system has not yet established a definitive number

of points needed for positive identification in court (Miller 2012, 624). The examiner would also

look at the kind of pattern the fingerprint is, examples being a loop or whorl (Miller 2012, 625).

These procedures in modern day fingerprinting have come a long way but recently these

practices have been called into question as to how accurate these procedures actually are.

In the beginning of fingerprinting identification, people claimed that it was “infallible”,

and that it has a “zero error rate” (Kellman 2014).Since then, it has been found to be a false

statement. Despite this, there are still benefits to today’s system. Due to the fact that

fingerprinting is brought up more and more, (on average 700 latent search requests per day to

the FBI alone (FBI 2012) ) it is no wonder that people want to know just how accurate this

system actually is. According to recent studies, it was found that there was a 7.5% false negative
rate while there was only a 0.1% false positive rate (Kellman 2014). As the number of potential

matches in databases have increased, so have the rates of error due to the increasing options

(Kellman 2014). There was also an increasing demand for concrete evidence in court. On the

other hand, it is also argued that with the increased amount of prints to look at as well as the

increasing amount of demand for these; the amount of experience and efficiency is increasing.

One thing that is also increasing the accuracy of fingerprint analysis is the ACE-V approach to

evaluating fingerprints used by the most credible. ACE-V is the procedure analysis, comparison,

evaluation and then validation by another examiner (Kellman 2014). Another common drawback

to fingerprinting is the quality of fingerprints that are collected. In some circumstances, the angle

in which the latent fingerprint is transferred can cause some disruption as well as if the core is

missing. Another thing that can disrupt fingerprinting is smudging or if part of it is missing. This

can disrupt the perceived size of the fingerprint and by association the size of the finger that

made that print (Sears et al 2012). While evaluating the pros and cons of fingerprinting many of

these shed light as to how fingerprinting can grow and how far fingerprinting has come.

Fingerprinting as a science has definitely come a long way, and it continues to grow. For

example, we use fingerprints for a multitude of things such as our phones and recently, airplane

boarding passes. Recently a major airline announced it was testing biometric identification which

allows people to use fingerprints as boarding passes. They also use it to identify employees at

work (Bell 2017, 68). This modern-day fingerprinting technology has given some insight into

old cold cases. For example, in 2012 a murder case from 30 years ago was solved using new

fingerprinting technologies. In this case a man was murdered in his apartment, and fingerprints

were discovered in the victim’s bathroom. During the previous investigation, the department

tried tracking down the victims stolen car as well as sent out the fingerprints found at the crime
scene to neighboring departments to see if there were any possible matches. These leads resulted

in a cold case. 30 years later this case was brought up again due to request. This caused the

department to input the prints into the fingerprint database and it came back with some potential

matches. These potential matches led them to one man and, with DNA testing, it was confirmed

that the killer was caught (FBI 2012). With all of these advancements and new potential usages

for fingerprinting it is exciting to see where the usages of fingerprinting will go next.

Fingerprinting throughout time has evolved and improved so much. The science of

fingerprinting has changed from using powder to chemicals. Fingerprinting has also been

elaborated on and studied by a large amount of people. This is due to the fact that fingerprinting

and the systems used now have helped solve old cases and identify individuals. While

fingerprinting has some cons, the pros of this system greatly outweighs them. This procedural

process has helped many different people and has helped push the criminal justice system

forward.

Mackenzie Glaser

Forensic Science

Paper Sources

April 16th 2018

- FBI. 2012. “30-year-old murder solved.” https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/30-year-

old-murder-solved.
- Miller, Wilbur R., 2012. “Fingerprinting.” in “The Social History of Crime and
Punishment in America: an Encyclopedia”, 624- 629, Sage
- Bell, Danna. 2017. “the History of Fingerprinting”, the Science Teacher (National
Teachers Association), 68
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?
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d1cfea9bb274%40sessionmgr101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d
%3d#AN=125936630&db=sch
- Kellman, P. J., Mnookin, J. L., Erlikhman, G., Garrigan, P., Ghose, T., Mettler, E.,
Dror, I. E. (2014). Forensic comparison and matching of fingerprints: Using
 quantitative image measures for estimating error rates through understanding and
predicting difficulty. PLoS One, 9(5)
doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0094617
- Sears V.G., Bleay S.M., Bandey H.L., and Bowman V.J., 2012,‘A Methodology for
Finger Mark Research, (Science Direct),