The reliability of fingerprints for criminal identification is complicated by the need to use crime scene prints that may be partial or distorted and by the technical competency of the person identifying the print (computer identification is often used as an aid). The most common uses a brush and powder to mark the fingerprint, which is then photographed and lifted from the surface using tape. Methods have also been devised for developing fingerprint impressions left by criminals at the scene of a crime. Most countries now require that all criminals be fingerprinted. The system, based on the classification of skeletal and other body measurements and characteristics, was officially adopted in , first scientific method of criminal identification, developed by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914). Juan Vucetich in Argentina, also using Galton as a guide, developed (1904) an alternate system that gained wide acceptance in Spanish-speaking countries.įingerprinting for identification of criminals was first used in connection with the Bertillon system Bertillon system Henry, is still used in Great Britain and the United States. Fingerprints gained acceptance as a more objective form of identification than visual recognition. Traditionally, impressions have been taken from a person using ink and paper, but in live-scan fingerprinting electronic images produced by a video scanner are converted by computer into binary codes, which can be more readily compared.Īs an identification device, fingerprinting dates from antiquity, but modern systems began essentially with the work of Henry Faulds, William James Herschel, and Sir Francis Galton in the late 19th cent. Palm prints and footprints are also used, especially for identification of infants. Fingerprint, an impression of the underside of the end of a finger or thumb, used for identification because the arrangement of ridges in any fingerprint is thought to be unique and permanent with each person (no two persons having the same prints have ever been found).