The Purpose Of Collecting Fingerprints

In our current state, there are many classifications of fingerprints. A fingerprint is an individual characteristic because each finger has its own pattern. You will not find any fingers with the same pattern on them. During

Latent fingerprints found at crime sights or else developed in the laboratory are categorized by examiners as patent, latent, or plastic impressions1. The word latent means hidden or unseen. Latent prints are undetectable until brought out with a physical, chemical and fuming process. The physical developer is a means to detect fingerprints on dry and wet, including paper articles, clay-based products and adhesive tapes. Ninhydrin is one of the most widely used chemical reagents for enhancement of latent finger print impressions on porous substrates. Nonporous surfaces do not absorb. These surfaces repel moisture and often appear polished. They include glass, metal, plastics, lacquered or painted wood, and rubber. Superglue (cyanoacrylate) fuming is the best example for such non-porous substrate analysis.

Forensic dactyloscopy is the study of fingerprints. Visible prints may be left behind by substances that stick to the fingers such as dirt or blood. Latent fingerprints are traces of sweat, oil or other natural secretions on the skin and are not ordinarily visible. These can be made visible by dusting techniques when the surface is hard and by chemical techniques when the surface is porous. Fingerprints provide police with extremely strong physical evidence tying suspects to evidence or crime scenes. Today police in most countries use systems for matching prints found at crime scenes to suspects, called automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS), to search rapidly through millions of digitised fingerprint records. Fingerprints recognised

In quadrants 1 and 2 how the amount and constituents of the fingerprint residue on the substrate affects the fingerprint image, is determined. In quadrant 1, excess sebum and moisture is first removed from the finger tips with the help of a clean cloth. In quadrant 2, fingertip is first wiped around the nose or forehead to create excess sebum. Quadrant 3 and 4 were used to compare the details between untreated and dusted fingerprint residues.

In conclusion the relationship between the properties of skin and friction skin impressions is that without these characteristics or capabilities fingerprints wouldn’t exist. The

Explain the principles and processes used in the analysis, comparison, evaluation, and verification of latent fingerprints. Latent prints are formed when the body’s natural oils and sweat on the skin are deposited onto another surface. Latent prints can be found on a variety of surface they are not readily visible and detection often requires the use of fingerprint powders, chemical reagents or alternate light sources. Generally speaking, the smoother and less porous a surface is, the greater the potential that any latent prints present can be found and developed. Investigators often perform cyanoacrylate processing, or fuming, of a surface before applying powders or dye stains. This process, typically performed on non-porous surfaces, involves exposing the object to cyanoacrylate vapors. The vapors will adhere to any prints present on the object allowing them to be viewed with oblique ambient light or a white light source. (Latent, n.d)

After Galton’s discovery, the use of fingerprinting by law enforcement was inevitable. In 1892, an Argentine police official, Juan Vucetich, became the first person to identify a criminal through fingerprints (The History of Fingerprints). The last major step necessary for the widespread use of fingerprint identification was to create a classification system that simplified the process of matching fingerprints. That came in 1901, when Edward Henry devised a system that separated fingerprints into four different categories - loops, whorls, arches, and composites (Skopitz). Shortly after its development, most European nations implemented this system of

1. Which of the three types of fingerprints was the fingerprint that you examined (loop, arch, or whorl)? Within that print, what minutiae did you see?

Though Hershel, Faulds, Galton and others set the stage in methods to indicate fingerprints should have been used for identification there was still controversy around the science. With the advances of technology, we now have a better understanding of why fingerprints have only been identified to a single individual. They are unique and permanent. Embryology finds six weeks in utero formations of early notching for what will become fingers starts. By week seven, webbing of the finger is almost gone and volar pads start to form. During week ten through twelve, initial formation of epidermal ridges begin. Primary ridges begin at the apex of the volar pads, tip of the finger and just above the first joint. Secondary ridges start to form by week sixteen and stop the formation of primary ridges. By twenty-four weeks ridge formation has completely finished. For over one hundred years friction ridge impressions have been only known to relate back to only one source thus resulting its broad usage in law enforcement, banking, government buildings for identification purposes and etc.

FINGERPRINT EXPERIMENT2AbstractLatent print residue is a combination of many substances excreted from the body. Latent print residues may be left from natural sweat on the skin or from a contaminant such as motor oil, blood, ink, paint or some other form of dirt. They may exhibit only a small portion of the surface of a finger and may be smudged, distorted, overlapped by other prints from the same, or from different individuals, or all of these in combination. The factors that affect the quality or presenceof latent prints include the conditions involved between friction skin contact and the objects that are touched. Pre-transfer conditions describe the condition of the friction skin and the amount and type of residue on the skin; and are affected

“Fingerprint recognition is one of the divorce inference using the impressions made by the minute ridge formations or patterns found on the fingertips. No two people have exactly the same arrangement of the ridge patterns, and the remaining patterns of any one individual unchanged. Fingerprints infallible provide a means of personal identification. Other personal characteristics may change, but not fingerprints”. (1)

Fingerprints are formed during the first, third to fourth months of fetal development. While growing (in the womb) the fingerprint and the ridges will expand. A fingerprint stays the same from when

The variety of foreign materials that might be found in a latent fingerprint deposit is virtually unlimited. The actual composition evidently depends on what the person has handled prior to the deposit of the impression. While it would be impossible to list them all, a few of the more likely materials include:

Fingerprints, known for each person to have unique ones, are made of a series of ridges and furrows on the

Every time somebody touches something, they leave behind a unique signature that forever links them to that object. This link is their fingerprints, which are unique to every person, for no two people have the same set, not even family members or identical twins. Palms and toes also leave prints behind, but these are far less commonly found during crime scene investigations. Therefore, fingerprints provide an identification process that is applicable to background checks, biometric security, mass disaster identification, and most importantly, crime scene investigations. Fingerprints are so differentiated because they are made up of distinct patterns of ridges and furrows on the fingers. The ridges are the “raised” portions of the prints, and the furrows are the “recessed” portions. This perceived uniqueness has led some people to falsely accept fingerprint analysis as absolute scientific fact. Although overall fingerprints are reliable, there are definitely situations where their accuracy can come into question.