PROJECT ON
FINGERPRINTING
Name:Abhishek Name:Abhishek chatterjee Reg No:11A006 atch :!011"16
#$bmitte% To: &r Jag%eesh Cha'%ra
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I'tro%$ctio': *hat Is Fi'ger+ri'ti'g A 5'ger+ri't in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human nger. In a wider use of the term, ngerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human or other primate hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges. A friction ridge is a raised portion of the epidermis on the digits (ngers and toes), the palm of the hand or the sole of the foot, consisting of one or more connected ridge units of friction ridge skin. Impressions of ngerprints may be left behind on a surface by the natural secretions of sweat from the eccrine glands that are present in friction ridge skin, or they may be made by ink or other substances transferred from the peaks of friction ridges on the skin to a relatively smooth surface such as a ngerprint card. Fingerprint records normally contain impressions from the pad on the last oint of ngers and thumbs, although ngerprint cards also typically record portions of lower oint areas of the ngers. Fingerprint identifcation, known as dactyloscopy , or hand print identication, is the process of comparing two instances of friction ridge skin impressions, from human ngers or toes, or even the palm of the hand or sole of the foot, to determine whether these impressions could have come from the same individual. !he "e#ibility of friction ridge skin means that no two nger or palm prints are ever e#actly alike in every detail$ even two impressions recorded immediately after each other from the same hand may be slightly di%erent.
,I#TOR7
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!he earliest dated prints of the ridges of the skin on human hands and feet were made about &,''' years ago during the pyramid building era in gypt. In addition, one small portion of palm print, not known to be human, has been found impressed in hardened mud at a ','''*years old site in gypt. It was common practice for the +hinese to use inked ngerprints on o%icial documents, land sales, contracts, loans and acknowledgments of debts. !he oldest e#isting documents so endorsed date from the rd century -+, and it was still an e%ective practice until recent times. ven though it is recorded that the +hinese used their ngerprints to establish identity in courts in litigation over disputed business dealings esearchers fail to agree as to whether the +hinese were fully aware of the uni/ueness of a ngerprint or whether the physical contact with documents had some spiritual signicance. !he rst documented interest in the skin0s ridges in the western world, a paper written in 12& by an nglishman, 3r. 4ehemiah 5rew, was mainly of an anatomical nature. A small number of other academics from various uropean countries also made anatomical studies of the skin. 6rofessor 7arcello 7alpighi, a plant morphologist at the 8niversity of -ologna, performed research similar to 5rew0s and published similar ndings in his 121 publication De Extemo Tactus Organo. !his anatomical treatise, though less detailed about the surface of the hand than that of 3r +rew, delves further beneath the surface. 7alpighi0s anatomical work was so outstanding that one of the layers of the skin was named 9stratum 7alpighi: after him. It was not until ;<2, however, that = + 7ayer of 5ermany theori>ed that the arrangements of friction ridges were uni/ue. In 2?, 6rofessor =ohannes vangelist 6urkine published the most detailed description of ngerprints to have appeared anywhere up to that time. 6rofessor 6urkine0s thesis entitled A Commentary on the Physiological Examination of the Organs of Vision and the Cutaneous System describes, with illustrations, nine ngerprint patterns classied in @atin.
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From his illustrations, it can be seen that the @atin classications refer to what enry would later name arches, tented arches, loops, whorls and twinned loops. 6urkine0s research was purely anatomical, and he made no mention of individuals being identied by the patterns that he described. owever, he recommended further research, and others soon took up his challenge. owever, it was not until 2B2 that the rst practical application of the science was made, when an nglish administrator in India, #ir *iiam ,ersche , commenced placing the inked palm impressions and, later, thumb impressions of some members of the local population on contracts. !hese prints were used as a form of signature on the documents because of the high level of illiteracy in India and fre/uent attempts at forgery. erschel also began ngerprinting all prisoners in ail. erschel0s main role as a ngerprint pioneer lies in the area of the immutability of ridged skin also mentioned by Faulds. !hroughout his life, erschel took his own ngerprints and noted that no change had occurred in them in over B' years. e also had a small collection of about ?' sets of ngerprints and used his techni/ue of hand printing to detect forgeries of legal documents. erschel did not make his feelings known and did not suggest that he had developed a method of registering and identifying criminals, nor did he foresee any crime scene application as Faulds had done. !he greatest advances in ngerprint science in the late
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In a letter written to Nature in Dctober 22', Faulds relates how he took many sets of ngerprints and palm prints and studied them. e further described the pattern formations on the ngers, referred to :loops: and :whorls: and stating how good sets of ngerprints may be obtained by the use of :a common slate or smooth board of any kind, or a sheet of tin, spread over very thinly with printer0s ink. !his techni/ue, still in use today, appears to be a botanical techni/ue called nature* printing.
Fauld's most important conclusion was that fngerprints do not change and that fnger marks (that is, latent prints le!t on o"#ects "$ "lood$ or greas$ fngers %ma$ lead to the scientifc identifcation o! criminals%& In 2
In =une 2. Eelas/ue> was arrested but refused to confess to the murder of the two children. 4ine days after the crime, a search of the crime scene was carried out and a number of ngerprints in blood were found on a door post of the woman0s hut.
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+he post was taken to the fngerprint "ureau !or comparison with the inked fngerprint impressions o! elas5ue6& +he$ were not identical, "ut the "lood impressions were !ound to "e identical with those o! 7o#as& hen con!ronted with this e*idence, 7o#as con!essed to the murder o! her children, and in 8ul$ 1-.2 she was !ound guilt$ o! their murder and sentenced to li!e imprisonment && $ the end o! that $ear, the Fingerprint 9ce at ew cotland :ard was !ull$ !unctional, the frst ritish court con*iction "$ fngerprints "eing o"tained in 1.02& ppro;imatel$ 10 $ears a!ter the pu"lication o! speaking world& Friction Ridge Skin Dnly the hairless parts of the body **** the inner surfaces of the hands and the soles of the feet **** are covered with patterns formed by raised ridges of skin known as friction or papillary ridges. !he study of ngerprints, or dactyloscopy, is the more widely used section in practice even though prints from the soles of the feet are as characteristic as ngerprints, they are less often used for identication purposes due to their low rate of occurrence.
!he patterns formed by the papillary ridges are important since they are already formed in the fetus by the fourth month of pregnancy and they do not change until death. !hese patterns cannot be altered, e#cept by accident, mutilation, or very serious skin disease, as they are formed in deep layers of the dermis.
A(OPTION OF FINGERPRINTING TO I(ENTIF7 CRI&INA8# In 22', 3r. enry Faulds, a Ccottish surgeon in a !okyo hospital, published his rst paper on the subect in the scientic ournal Nature, discussing the usefulness of ngerprints for identication and proposing a method to record them with printing ink. e also established their rst classication and ?|Page
was also the rst to identify ngerprints left on a vial. eturning to the 8 in 221, he o%ered the concept to the 7etropolitan 6olice in @ondon but it was dismissed at that time. Faulds wrote to +harles 3arwin with a description of his method but, too old and ill to work on it, 3arwin gave the information to his cousin, Francis 5alton, who was interested in anthropology. aving been thus inspired to study ngerprints for ten years, 5alton published a detailed statistical model of ngerprint analysis and identication and encouraged its use in forensic science in his book Finger Prints. e had calculated that the chance of a :false positive: (two di%erent individuals having the same ngerprints) was about in 1& billion. =uan Eucetich, an Argentine chief police o%icer, created the rst method of recording the ngerprints of individuals on le, associating these ngerprints to the anthropometric system of Alphonse -ertillon, who had created, in 2;<, a system to identify individuals by anthropometric photographs and associated /uantitative descriptions. In 2, a colleague of Eucetich, went to the scene and found a bloody thumb mark on a door. Ghen it was compared with oas0 prints, it was found to be identical with her right thumb. Che then confessed to the murder of her sons. A Fingerprint -ureau was established in +alcutta (olkata), India, in 2<;, after the +ouncil of the 5overnor 5eneral approved a committee report that ngerprints should be used for the classication of criminal records. Gorking in the +alcutta Anthropometric -ureau, before it became the Fingerprint -ureau, were A>i>ul a/ue and em +handra -ose. a/ue and -ose were Indian ngerprint e#perts who have been credited with the primary development of a ngerprint classication system eventually named after their supervisor, Cir dward ichard enry. !he enry +lassication Cystem, co* devised by a/ue and -ose, was accepted in ngland and Gales when the rst 8nited ingdom Fingerprint -ureau was founded inCcotland Hard, the 7etropolitan 6olice head/uarters, @ondon, in <'. Cir dward ichard enry subse/uently achieved improvements in dactyloscopy.
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In the 8nited Ctates, 3r. enry 6. 3eForrest used ngerprinting in the 4ew Hork +ivil Cervice in <'?, and by <'1, 4ew Hork +ity 6olice 3epartment3eputy +ommissioner =oseph A. Faurot, an e#pert in the -ertillon system and a nger print advocate at 6olice ead/uarters, introduced the ngerprinting of criminals to the 8nited Ctates. !he Cche%er case of <'? is the rst case of the identication, arrest and conviction of a murderer based upon ngerprint evidence. Alphonse -ertillonidentied the thief and murderer Cche%er, who had previously been arrested and his ngerprints led some months before, from the ngerprints found on a fractured glass showcase, after a theft in a dentist0s apartment where the dentist0s employee was found dead. It was able to be proved in court that the ngerprints had been made after the showcase was broken. A year later, Alphonse -ertillon created a method of getting ngerprints o% smooth surfaces and took a further step in the advance of dactyloscopy. Cince the advent of ngerprint detection, many criminals have resorted to the wearing of gloves in order to avoid leaving ngerprints, which thus makes the crime investigation more di%icult. owever, the gloves themselves can leave prints that are ust as uni/ue as human ngerprints. After collecting glove prints, law enforcement can then match them to gloves that they have collected as evidence. In many urisdictions the act of wearing gloves itself while committing a crime can be prosecuted as an inchoate o%ense. As many o%enses are crimes of opportunity, many assailants are not in the possession of gloves when they commit their illegal activities. !hus, assailants have been viewed using pulled*down sleeves and other pieces of clothing and fabric to handle obects and touch surfaces during the commission of their crimes.
John Edgar Hoover’s contribution Americans have had an eight*year fascination, love a%air is with ngerprints. 3uring the
thinkers of that era believed this, and the American public bought it too. It0s therefore not surprising that during this era, men such as Eollmer and oover began to think seriously about ngerprinting everyone J a concept called universal ngerprinting. 7ost citi>ens never get arrested, therefore the ngerprints of a vast maority of the population are not taken and led away for further use. owever, by ngerprinting everyone J housewives, babies, factory workers, and school children J America0s ngerprint collection would be complete. It is this idea that appeals to advocates of universal ngerprinting. Although today, the police and the public have a more realistic view of crime and criminals, the criminalistic science of ngerprints is still a symbol of police professionalism and successful crime ghting. In the mid*<2'0s, at the height of the missing children scare, programs promoting the voluntary ngerprinting of school children and babies sprang up all over the country. !he idea of ngerprinting everyone J either voluntarily or by law, has been around as long as ngerprinting itself. In <', August Eollmer began talking and writing about the advantages of universal ngerprinting. e gured that everybody would benet from such a program. For e#ample, the police would get an e%ective crime*ghting tool that would help catch criminals and eventually prevent crime. If ob applicants were ngerprinted, employers would know who they were hiring and could turn away those candidates with criminal records. 7oreover, victims of res, plane crashes, and other disasters could be identied, and so could missing children and people found dead on the street, in the woods, or in the water. !here were less obvious advantages as well J the government could deal more e%ectively with illegal aliens, merchants could protect themselves against bad checks, hotel beats, and other kinds of fraud, the IC could catch ta# cheats, and the census bureau could do a better ob.
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Eollmer0s advocacy of universal ngerprinting contradicted, to a certain degree, his leanings as a civil libertarian. !his is probably what kept him from pushing for laws to make the ngerprinting of noncriminals mandatory. Eollmer wanted to educate people J teach them the advantages of ngerprinting so they would ask to be o%icially printed. e hoped to do this by getting service clubs, lodges, maga>ines, and newspapers interested in his idea. !hese groups would in turn sponsor programs to educate and indoctrinate the public. ? August Eollmer wasn0t the rst to think about or to propose universal ngerprinting. In <1, =uan Eucetich, Argentina0s great criminalist and ngerprint pioneer, was the driving force behind a law passed in his country that re/uired the entire population, including foreign residents and visitors, to be ngerprinted. Following the passage of this statute, the reaction against it was so strong, the law was /uickly repealed. Eucetich died in en.1 10 | P a g e
-y <1 August Eollmer had retired from the -erkeley 6olice 3epartment and was teaching police administration at the 8niversity of +alifornia. !hat year he arranged a special town election to ask voters if they obected to a campaign to get people to volunteer their prints. Eollmer was well known and popular in -erkeley, and the people there voted three to one in favor of his program. 3uring the ne#t two years, si#teen thousand citi>ens, about half the town0s population, were ngerprinted.; (ventually, the -erkeley 6olice 3epartment would send fty*two thousand prints to the F-I.) Eollmer had launched his ngerprinting campaign by taking the prints of 3r. obert 5. Cproul, the president of the 8niversity of +alifornia. 3r. Cproul was ngerprinted at a booth set up for that purpose on the -erkeley campus. -ut even in -erkeley there was some resistance to universal ngerprinting. 7any factory workers who had been asked to submit by their employers were suspicious that it was a management scheme to gain control over labor. Dthers feared the program would someday become involuntary.
Aadhar And Its Potential Impact As of 7arch ?', the 8ni/ue Identication Authority of India operates the world0s largest ngerprint (multi*modal biometric) system, with over ?'' million ngerprint, face and iris biometric records. 8IAI plans to collect as many as 1'' million multi*modal record by the end of ?'&. India0s 8ni/ue Identication proect is also known as Aadhaar, a word meaning :the foundation: in several Indian languages. Aadhaar is a voluntary program, with the ambitious goal of eventually providing reliable national I3 documents for most of India0s .? billion residents. Gith a database many times larger than any other in the world, Aadhaar0s ability to leverage automated ngerprint and iris modalities (and potentially automated face recognition) enables rapid and reliable automated searching and identication 11 | P a g e
impossible to accomplish with ngerprint technology alone, especially when searching children and elderly residents0 ngerprints. It would also help in maintain an accurate data base of criminals and help identify and catch potential criminals who could leave their ngerprints in crime scence,this will kick start a new era of forensics and will make police work more e%ective and advanced. @esser criminals will be able to evade the law.
CRITICI#& OF FINGERPRINTING !he human element eliminates the infallibility of the ngerprint methodology as a personal identication mechanism. 7istakes can be made by the administrator in the process of printing, or by the e#pert who is responsible for making the nal determination upon review of the possible matches. !here is no data available that could /uantify the percentage of errors made in personal identication through the utili>ation of ngerprints.!here are also errors that can occur in the process of taking inked ngerprints. !he ngerprints can be rendered illegible in the inking process if9 • •
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!he nger has not been rolled fully from side to side. !he entire nger from its oint to its top has not been inked. !he nger is not held securely in place. If the technician holds the ngers too loosely (or too securely), there could be a smudging or blurring of the prints, thus rendering a false pattern of prints. !he usage of an inappropriate te#ture of ink can result in running of the ink and pattern distortion. -lack printer0s ink of a heavy te#ture is the advisable te#ture to use. !he usage of too much ink can distort the patterns. !he usage of too little ink will render the ridge patterns indistinguishable. 12 | P a g e
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!emporary disabilities to the ngerprint subect, such as cuts and blisters, can distort the pattern of the ridges. #cessive perspiration on the ngers of the subect may inhibit the ink from adhering to the ngers which would result in a blurred and inaccurate outcome. rrors made on the information card that accompanies the ngerprints, such as name, date of birth, se# and age can lead to complications as to the authenticity of the prints
Case #t$%ies &isi%e'ti5catio'
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Fi'ger+ri't
A. Commonealth !. Coans
Dn 7ay ', <<;, an African*American male shot and wounded D%icer 5regory 5allagher of the -oston 6olice 3epartment while that o%icer was on duty.!he assailantMs baseball hat fell o% during the initial struggle between the two men.Chortly after the shooting, an African*American male holding a gun gained entry into the nearby residence of 7s. -onnie @acy.!he individual removed his sweatshirt, wiped his gun o%, asked for and received a glass of water, and then left.D%icer 5allagher later identied 7r. Ctephan +owans as his assailant in a photographic lineup that included the pictures of eight individuals.!he o%icer also subse/uently identied +owans in a standard lineup that included the suspect.A witness who saw the presumed assailant shortly after the shooting conrmed the identication, although 7s. @acy did not.& In addition to the eyewitness evidence, investigators located a ngerprint on the glass used by the individual who had gained entry to 7s. @acyMs house.B !he print was matched to that of 7r. +owans by two ngerprint e#aminers working for the -oston 6olice 3epartment.1 A ngerprint e#aminer retained by the defense later conrmed the ngerprint match. Dn the basis of this evidence, 7r. +owans was convicted of shooting a police o%icer and sentenced to thirty to forty*ve years in state prison.In the pre*34A world, 7r. +owans would no doubt have spent much of his adult life behind bars. owever, in 7ay ?'' (si# years after +owansMs conviction), at the defendantMs re/uest, Drchid +ellmark @aboratories performed 34A testing on both the glass and the baseball hat found at the crime scene. !he 34A prole found on the glass did not match that of 7r. +owans, but it did match that of the primary contributor to the 34A on 13 | P a g e
the baseball cap.In =anuary ?''&, at the re/uest of the +ommonwealth of 7assachusetts, further testing was performed on the sweatshirt. !he resulting 34A prole matched the common prole found on the glass and the baseball hat.? Initially, Cu%olk Assistant 3istrict Attorney 3avid . 7eier stated that, given the KcompellingL evidence of the ngerprint on the glass, his o%ice would retry +owans if the conviction were overturned. !wo days later, after the ngerprint had been re*e#amined, however, 7eier changed his mind.In addressing Cuperior +ourt =udge 6eter @auriat, 7eier e#plained that the ngerprint evidence presented at trial did not match that of +owans9 KI can conclusively and une/uivocally state, your honor, that that purported match was a mistake.L 7r. +owans was then released, having spent si# years in ail for a crime he did not commit.
-. !he 7ayeld A%air Dn 7arch , ?''&, a terrorist bomb attack on a 7adrid train station resulted in < deaths and some ?,''' people inured. !he Cpanish authorities found a bag of detonators near the site of the e#plosion with a ngerprint on it that did not match any in their databank. !he authorities forwarded the print to several investigative organi>ations, including the Federal -ureau of Investigation (F-I). After searching its ngerprint database, the F-I located a possible match in the prints of 7r. -randon 7ayeld, an attorney in 6ortland, Dregon.From the start, there were troubling aspects about the match. 7r. 7ayeld had ties to 7uslim individuals and organi>ations thought to make him suspect, but there was no evidence that he had been out of the country for many years. 4evertheless, the F-I e#aminers concluded that the print was a K'' percent positive identication,L and so informed the Cpanish authorities on April ?, ?''&.!he Cpanish disagreed. Dn April , ?''&, the Cpanish authorities reported in a memorandum to the F-I that the match was Kconclusively negative.L Ghere the F-I found fteen points of agreement for the ngerprint, the Cpanish found only seven.4evertheless, the F-I continued to maintain that the latent print on the bag matched that of 7r. 7ayeld and arranged a meeting with Cpanish o%icials in 7adrid on April ?, ?''& to present their analysis. !he meeting did nothing to change the opinion of the F-I and, subse/uently, 7r. 7ayeld was arrested on 7ay 1, ?''& on a material witness warrant. 14 | P a g e
Fortunately for 7r. 7ayeld, the Cpanish authorities persisted with their investigation and, shortly after 7ayeldMs arrest, announced that they had matched the latent print to an Algerian named Duhnane 3aoud. !he nal blow came when the Cpanish authorities Kfound traces of 3aoudMs 34A in a rural cottage outside 7adrid where investigators believe the terrorist cell held planning sessions and assembled the backpack bombs used in the attack.L 7r. 7ayeld was nally released after spending two weeks in ail. Ghat went wrongN F-I o%icials initially gave con"icting accounts. In =une ?''&, !he 4ew Hork !imes reported on the agencyMs changing positions9 F.-.I. o%icials told +ongress members in the briengs last week that they had come up with the match after working o% a Osecond*generationM digital printPmeaning a copy of a copy. -ut they gave a somewhat di%erent e#planation in interviews this week, saying they were now uncertain what generation the digital print represented. -ut the F.-.I. o%icial who spoke to !he 4ew Hork !imes on condition of anonymity added that the real issue was the /uality of the latent print that the Cpaniards originally took from the blue bag.!he determination by an F.-.I. e#aminer that the print was useable was hasty and erroneous, F.-.I. o%icials said, and et the agency o% in the wrong direction and corrupted the rest of the process.
CONC89#ION egardless of these criticisms Fingerprints are the ultimate source in the establishment of both the verication and recognition of a person0s identity. !his statement is based on three factors9 ngerprints are distinct and uni/ue to each individual, and no two people have identical prints$ ngerprints are unchangeable over the course of a lifetime of a person$ and ngerprints can be e#tracted from any surface they come into contact with. !hey are ine#pensive,reliable,gurantee /uick results,have multiple uses apart from incriminating criminals and acting as deterrent to stop crime. 1 | P a g e
It is also permanent, it identies who a person is, as opposed to what a person has, such as a password, or other identication of that nature. It establishes identication through the identication of unchangeable personal characteristics. A person may change hair color, but cannot alter ngerprints. Dne cannot guess, fake or forget ngerprints as can occur in non*biometric identication methodologies. !he individual who is ngerprinted must be physically present in order to be processed.
Reere'ces . httpABBww$&"rooklaw&eduBstudentsB#ournalsB"#lpB#lp13iC6a"ell&pd! ?. httpABBwww&clpe;&comBDn!ormationBPioneersBhenr$> classifcation&pd! . httpABBwww&onin&comB!pB!phistor$&html 4& httpABBgalton&orgBfngerprintsB"ooksBherschelBherschel>1.1?> origins>1up&pd! 1? | P a g e
