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Comparative Review of Likelihood Ratio (LR) and Probability of Random Correspondence (PRC) as Statistical Tools for Fingerprint Evidence Evaluation

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Introduction
The first time fingerprint comparison evidence was used in court against a defendant was in 1892 in Argentina [1]
For purposes of forensic identification in cases of law enforcement and other areas where human identification is needed, fingerprints have been widely acclaimed to be of an invaluable importance and has therefore seen a close to unanimous acceptance as the gold standard of forensic evidence where biometric identity is concerned. Recently however, as was rarely done in times past, the scientific foundations of fingerprint expert testimonies in court are beginning to be challenged [2]. There are some commentators who now query the scientific validity of forensic fingerprint identification. Reference has been made to…show more content…
These methods hopefully can be used to introduce some quantitative statistical measures to the fingerprint evidence.
Before going into comparing both proposed statistical approaches, it would seem appropriate to take a brief look at the ACE-V method of fingerprint evidence analysis in the next section, to highlight areas where these proposed methods have advantages over it.
2. A brief description of the ACE-V Method
In ACE-V, ‘A’ stands for Analysis, ‘C’ stands for Comparison, ‘E’ represents Evaluation and ‘V’ is for Verification. These are the various stages involved in the examination of fingerprint evidence by experts in the field before arriving at a conclusion on a set of prints which can be in any of these three conclusions viz: Exclusion, Individuation, or Inconclusive.
2.1 The Analysis stage
This stage begins when the fingerprint expert examines a latent print and first makes a decision as to whether it contains details that are sufficient quantitatively and qualitatively to exceed the ‘Value’ threshold standard. If in his estimation the print does exceed the quality and quantity Value standard, then he continues with the analysis.[1] According to [4], most of the prints recovered from crime scenes are considered of no value.
2.2 The Comparison stage.
The fingerprint expert for the first time looks at the suspect’s 10 fingerprints (the exemplar
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