Fingerprints are unique to each person, no two sets are the same. Even identical twins do not have the same fingerprints. Investigators and forensic scientists use fingerprints to identify potential suspects, victims and witnesses to aid a criminal investigation.
ANALYSIS AND HISTORY
FINGERPRINTING
FORENSIC
Fingerprints are unique to each person, no two sets are the same. Even identical twins do not have the same fingerprints. Investigators and forensic scientists use fingerprints to identify potential suspects, victims and witnesses to aid a criminal investigation.
FINGERPRINT ANALYSIS
A fingerprint can be left on many types of surface such as a window, a door, or a murder weapon. It can be made visible by brushing it with a powder, by viewing it under a special light, or treating it with chemicals in a lab. After analysis, unknown prints are compared alongside known prints on a database, and attempts are made to find a match by looking at each individual characteristic point by point.
Experts work on the basis of there being nine basic types of fingerprint, with the arch, loop and whorl the most common. Try and take a good, close look at your own fingertips. Can you identify your fingerprint type from the patterns shown here?
HISTORY OF FORENSIC FINGERPRINTING
No two fingerprints have ever been found alike in billions of human and computer comparisons and because of this, fingerprints have been used as a way to identify people for thousands of years. The ancient Babylonians pressed the tips of their fingers into clay to record business transactions and in ancient China, officials authenticated government documents with their fingerprints. However, fingerprints weren’t used as a method of identifying criminals until the 19th century.
HISTORY OF FORENSIC FINGERPRINTING
No two fingerprints have ever been found alike in billions of human and computer comparisons and because of this, fingerprints have been used as a way to identify people for thousands of years. The ancient Babylonians pressed the tips of their fingers into clay to record business transactions and in ancient China, officials authenticated government documents with their fingerprints. However, fingerprints weren’t used as a method of identifying criminals until the 19th century.
HERSCHEL, FAULDS & GALTON
The English first began using fingerprints in 1858, when British magistrate William Herschel observed the Indian custom of inking hands or fingers alongside signatures on contracts. He experimented with hand-prints, but soon realised that only fingers were needed after concluding that a person’s fingerprints do not change over time. Herschel developed the technique further and began the practice of fingerprinting criminals as an administrative tool, without realising that it could be used to catch criminals.
Unlike William Herschel, British doctor and missionary Henry Faulds saw the potential of fingerprints for forensic use. He became convinced that the pattern of ridges on fingers were unique to each individual.
For years Herschel and Faulds conducted a bitter feud over who had been the first to spot the forensic potential of fingerprints.
In a twist to the story, Faulds had attempted to promote his idea of fingerprint identification by seeking the help of his friend, the naturalist Charles Darwin. Darwin declined to work on the idea, but passed it on to his cousin, the noted polymath Sir Francis Galton.
Galton would go on to write extensively about fingerprint theory and techniques and published a book in 1892 in which he outlined a classification system – the first in existence. It was was based on the patterns of arches, loops and whorls and it divided them into categories. It is a system that survives to this day.
Image: The first fingerprints taken by William Herschel in 1859/60
FIRST CRIMINAL CASE
In 1892 Juan Vucetich, a police officer in Argentina, was developing his own variation of a fingerprinting system based on the work of Sir Francis Galton.
He was asked to assist with the investigation of two boys who had been found murdered. The mother, Francisca Rojas, had a love interest, a man named Velasquez, who was thought to be guilty of the crime.
However when the police officer compared bloody fingerprints found at the murder scene to those of both Velasquez and Rojas, they matched the mother exactly and she confessed to the crime.
This is believed to be the first time in the world that a criminal was found guilty through fingerprint evidence used in a criminal investigation.
FIRST CRIMINAL CASE
In 1892 Juan Vucetich, a police officer in Argentina, was developing his own variation of a fingerprinting system based on the work of Sir Francis Galton.
He was asked to assist with the investigation of two boys who had been found murdered. The mother, Francisca Rojas, had a love interest, a man named Velasquez, who was thought to be guilty of the crime.
However when the police officer compared bloody fingerprints found at the murder scene to those of both Velasquez and Rojas, they matched the mother exactly and she confessed to the crime.
This is believed to be the first time in the world that a criminal was found guilty through fingerprint evidence used in a criminal investigation.
Image: The fingerprints of Francisca Rojas
CLASSIFICATION
In 1897, Sir Edward Henry, then the Inspector General of Police in Bengal, India, developed a fingerprint classification system after exchanging letters with Sir Francis Galton regarding their use in identifying criminals.
The Henry Classification System, as it was named, began to be used in England in 1901 when the Scotland Yard Fingerprint Bureau was founded. It was only two years later that the first British murderers were caught and convicted as a result of fingerprint evidence.
Henry’s system was the basis of modern-day classification methods right up until the 1990s.
Up until the early 1980s, police officers had the laborious task of checking a suspect’s fingerprints manually against paper records which was extremely time consuming and didn’t always produce a match. However, the invention of computers changed things dramatically.
Image: Sir Edward Henry, who established the Metropolitan Police Fingerprint Bureau in 1901
MODERN TECHNOLOGY
The first computer databases of fingerprints were developed in the early 1980s and these systems came to be known as National Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (NAFIS). Helping with speed and efficiency, this allowed police officers to cross-check a print with millions of fingerprint records almost instantaneously.
In the UK today, a system called IDENT1 has replaced NAFIS as the national database for holding biometric information, including fingerprints, of all those taken in to custody. As of March 2020, the system held on record the fingerprints of over 8 million individuals.
Image: Screenshot of an Automated Fingerprint Identification System
