Fingerprinting Analysis

How fingerprint analysis began and where it is now:

It began in the 14th century, it was discovered by a doctor in Persia, that no two fingerprints are alike. The remarkable discovery was the beginning of forensics.

In 1686, Marcello Malpighi(right), a professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, found ridges, spirals, and loops in fingerprints. He made no mention of their value as a tool for individual identification.

In 1823, John Evangelist Purkinje, an anatomy professor at the University of Breslau, published his thesis discussing nine fingerprint patterns, but he too made no value of fingerprints for personal identification.

In 1863, Professor Paul-Jean Coulier , of Val-de-Grâce in Paris, prints his observations that latent fingerprints can be developed on paper by iodine fuming, explains how to preserve such developed impressions and mentions the potential for identifying suspects' fingerprints with the use of a magnifying glass. 

In the 1870s, Dr. Henry Faulds(left), a 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. By 1880, Faulds had furthered an explanation of his classification system and a sample of the forms he had designed for recording inked impressions, to Sir Charles Darwin.

 In 1882, Gilbert Thompson of the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico used his own thumb print on a document to prevent forgery. This is the first known use of fingerprints in the United States. 

In 1882, 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, 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. Later, in 1892, 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.

In 1897, June 12^th, 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. Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra 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). 

In 1900, The United Kingdom Home Secretary Office conducted an inquiry into "Identification of Criminals by Measurement and Fingerprints."  Mr. Edward Richard 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. 

In 1902, there was the 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.

In 1903 the New York State Prison system began the first systematic use of fingerprints in the U.S. for criminals.

In 1904, the use of fingerprints began in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas, and the St. Louis Police Department. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) created America's first national fingerprint repository, called the National Bureau of Criminal Identification. 

 In 1905, U.S. Army begin using fingerprints. The 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. Later in 1907, the Navy started using fingerprints, joined in 1908 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.

 

In 1915, Inspector Harry H. Caldwell of the Oakland, California Police Department's Bureau  of  Identification wrote numerous letters to "Criminal Identification Operators" 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. 

In 1918, Edmond Locard wrote that if 12 points (Galton's Details) were the same between two fingerprints, it would suffice as a positive identification.  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.  


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.  

In 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):(left) 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.

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 indicate they are recognized as a Fellow of the Fingerprint Society.  The Society hosts annual educational conferences with speakers and delegates attending from many countries. 

In 1977, in New Orleans, Louisiana on 1 August, delegates to the 62^nd 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). 

In 2005, INTERPOL's Automated Fingerprint Identification System repository exceeds 50,000 sets fingerprints for important international criminal records from 184 member countries.  Over 170 countries have 24 x 7 interface ability with INTERPOL expert fingerprint services. 

Today, the largest AFIS repository in America is operated by the Department of Homeland Security's US Visit Program, containing over 100 million persons' fingerprints, many in the form of two-finger records.  The two-finger records are non-compliant with FBI and Interpol standards, but sufficient for positive identification and valuable for forensics because index fingers and thumbs are the most commonly identified crime scene fingerprints.  The US Visit Program has been migrating from two flat (not rolled) fingerprints to ten flat fingerprints since 2007.  "Fast capture" research funded by the US government will enable implementation of ten "rolled print equivalent" fingerprint recording (within 15 seconds per person fingerprinted) in future years.

Types of prints, techniques and chemicals used to lift them:

                      There are 3 main types of fingerprints, direct, latent, and plastic.

1. Direct prints are fingerprints that are clearly visible to the naked eye.
-This means that the print has to be pressed in substances such as blood, ink, or dirt.

2. The term latent prints (left) mean any chance or accidental impression left by friction ridge skin on a surface formed from by the body’s natural oils and can be seen by dusting or fuming.
-Talcum powder can be used for dark surfaces and carbon powder for glass surfaces.

3. A plastic print or impressed prints are indention's left in soft surfaces such as  clay, wax, or paint              -They are recorded, rather than lifted, by the use of photography.  

Procedures for lifting prints:

When you want to make latent prints visible, or lift plastic and direct prints, you could use fingerprinting powder.  This works with only smooth, hard, or nonabsorbent prints, otherwise you would use chemicals.

1.  Dip the brush into the powder, on a light surface you would use a dark powder and on a dark surface you would use a light powder

2.  Tap the brush to get excess powder on the area of the print

3.  Delicately blow off the powder but do not touch it

4.  Continue to apply the powder until the print is visible.

The powder will stick to substances such as sweat and oil from the body

5.  Use a magnifying glass to observe the fingerprint

6.  Carefully lift the print with a piece of tape.

7.  Put it on a sheet to preserve the fingerprint, the dark powder would go on a  light sheet and light powder on a dark sheet.

Print Types: 

There are three types of patterns arches, loops, and whorls.

There are two types’ arches:

-Plain arch (Right), plain arches have an even flow of ridges from one side to the other of the pattern; no “significant up thrusts” and the ridges enter on one side of the impression, and flow out the other with a rise or wave in the center.
-Tented arch, tented arches have an angle, an up thrust. They don’t have the same easy flow that plain arches do and particularly have significant up thrusts in the ridges near the middle that arrange themselves on both sides of a spine or axis towards which the adjoining ridges converge and appear to form tents.

There are three types of loops:

-Radial Loops, radial loops are named after the radius, a bone in the forearm that joins the hand on the same side as the thumb. The flow of the pattern in radial loops runs in the direction of the radius (toward the thumb). Radial loops are not very common and most of the time radial loops will be found on the index fingers

-Ulnar Loops (Left), ulnar loops are named after the ulna, a bone in the forearm. The ulna is on the same side as the little finger and the flow of the pattern in a ulnar loop runs in the direction of the ulna (toward the little finger).

-Double Loops, double loops consist of  two separate and distinct loop formations with two separate and distinct shoulders for each core, two deltas and one or more ridges which make, a complete circuit

There are three types of whorls:

-Accidental whorls, accidental whorls consist of two different types of patterns with the exception of the plain arch; have two or more deltas or a pattern which possess some of the requirements for two or more different types or a pattern which conforms to none of the definitions.

-Central pocket loop whorls (Right), central pocket loop whorls consist of at least one re-curving ridge or an obstruction at right angles to the line of flow, with two deltas, no re-curving ridge within the pattern area is cut or touched. Central pocket loop whorl ridges make one complete circuit which may be spiral, oval, circular or any variant of a circle.

-Plain whorls, plain whorls consist of one or more ridges which tend to make a complete circuit with two deltas

 

http://onin.com/fp/fphistory.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint

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