FINGERPRINTING

Fingerprinting

Fingerprinting

Introduction

As a mark of individuality, fingerprints have a long history. Ancient cultures such as the Babylonian and Chinese used them as a signature, although it is not known if the ancients recognized that fingerprints were unique to each individual. Modern interest in fingerprints as an aid to law enforcement (also called dactyloscopy) dates back to the middle of the 19th century. In 1923, the International Association of Chiefs of Police established the National Bureau of Criminal Identification (NBCI) at Leavenworth prison in Kansas. The next year, an Identification Division was established at the Bureau of Investigation, the precursor of the FBI. They merged the NBCI collection with theirs to create a national centralized repository for fingerprint information. This collection, now housed within the FBI, is the largest in the world. In the late 1960s, the FBI began research into the use of digital and computer technologies to assist in fingerprint classification and identification, with the first operable reader available in 1972. This technology continued (and continues) to evolve to the current system of automated fingerprint identification (AFIS) and the Integrated AFIS or IAFIS system.

History Of Fingerprints

Fingerprints have long been considered the mainstay of forensic identification, even into the DNA age. Fingerprints have been used as a form of identification for at least 4,000 years, the first known record dating from ancient Babylonia, where several captured army deserters were forced to leave marks of their fingers and thumbs as a permanent record. Two thousand years ago, the Chinese used thumbprints as seals for official documents, and the next millennium saw Chinese river pirates compelled to provide ink prints of their thumbs. Fingerprints made their first appearance in a criminal trial in pre-Christian Rome, after a senator was murdered and his killer left bloody handprints on the wall. Shape and size, rather than ridge detail, acquitted the prime suspect in that case and later convicted the senator's wife. (Cohen, 2006)

"Modern" fingerprint identification dates from 1788, when German analyst J. C. A. Mayer declared for the first time that each fingerprint is unique. Mark Twain and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made fictional references to fingerprint identification in the 19th century, but practical identification waited for the near-simultaneous work (in 1892) of William Herschel in India, Henry Faulds in Japan, and Francis Galton in England. It was Galton who first proposed a practical system of fingerprint classification and filing, improved and expanded by Sir Edward Henry in 1899-1900. Meanwhile, in Argentina during 1891, a competing classification system was developed by Juan Vucetich, still used in most Spanish-speaking countries. Official fingerprinting made its way to the United States in 1902, when New York state adopted the technique to eliminate fraud on civil service tests. By 1908 the U.S. armed forces had adopted universal fingerprinting of all personnel, and America witnessed its first criminal conviction based on fingerprints three years later. J. Edgar Hoover often boasted of the FBI's vast fingerprint collection, including not only convicted criminals and military personnel, but also persons printed for ...