In our everyday life activities, we get into contact with different things, a pen, a coffee mug, a doorknob, a car door or a computer keyboard. Every time we do these, it is highly probable that we leave behind our inimitable signature, that is, our fingerprints. Fingerprints are highly unique; not even two individuals can have precisely identical fingerprints. Not even monozygous twins with similar DNA composition have similar fingerprints. Hence, this distinctiveness enables fingerprints to be employed in numerous ways such as conducting background inspections, identification of people involved in mass disasters, biometric security, and in criminal investigations (Becker et al., 2018). Because of the numerous advantages of fingerprints in various fields, this paper is going to examine how fingerprints have revolutionized crime scene investigations.
Right from the womb to demise, one thing that remains constant throughout a person life is fingerprints. Identification of persons using fingerprints in the criminal justice structure has been in practice for more than 100 years. The first time it was used in America was in the year 1902. Since fingerprint features are unique to each individual, at no time would two individuals have the same fingerprints. Though, an individual's physical characteristics are prone to change over some time. Fingerprinting technique falls among the most accurate personal identification tools. Fingerprinting is a very formidable tool within the criminal justice system. Its implementation within the criminal justice structure has enabled it conceivable to charge individual's found guilty with a low probability of inaccuracy. The evidence generated by from fingerprints are sufficient to convict criminals indicted of a crime (Becker et al., 2018).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Fingerprints can be categorized into three types: Known, latent and plastic impressions. A fingerprint is described as latent when its 2D impression of the ridges of the finger on objects by way of oils, sweats and other impurities that smear the ridges when fingers touch an item. However, these prints are only visible by the use of a forensic technique like alternate sources of light, fingerprint powders, or chemical methods. In some scenarios, latent fingerprints can be observed exclusively of fingerprint analyzing techniques and are termed as patent prints. Latent prints are often left behind by chance and are often naturally fragmentary with changing standards of quality (Su, 2016). Meanwhile, a known fingerprint is the deliberate imitation of the fingers friction ridge onto fingerprint pads or suitable juxtaposing surface, while a plastic print is an imprint that is deserted in a supple substrate like putty or waxes which preserves a representation of the friction ridge layout.
The density of the fingerprint ridge also plays an important role in crime investigations. Due to the constant rise in the nature of crimes, fingerprinting has become a necessary tool for crime investigation police. The burden of investigation is always lifted when the sex of a person can be determined with certitude. Therefore, the differences in fingerprint arrangements due to the sex of an individual, the density of the ridges of the finger comes in handy. The differences in the density of finger ridges due to sex extremely individualistic and forms the foundation for personal forensic identification. Current studies have reported that females have substantially greater ridge density compared to males (Bose & Kabir, 2017) . Higher, ridge density in females has been credited to the degree of thickness of the ridge and it is harangued that females have smoother epidermal ridges. Therefore females possess a substantially greater density of ridges compared to males in any given locality. Fingerprint density also differs in races. The scale of ridge densities can be utilized as a presumptive pointer of the sex of unidentified print found at a scene of a crime (Su, 2016)
Whereas the retrieval of recognizable post-mortem prints from human relics remains a vital part of forensic identification procedure, it is essential for these human impressions to be contrasted by a known an ante-mortem so as to stand a chance of achieving the identity of the body. The speed of conducting post-mortem identification process relies on one of the most significant technological innovation in the antiquity of fingerprinting: The Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). AFIS has rapidly changed from its primary role as a method of probing criminal ten-print annals to its contemporary use in characterizing crime suspects via latent print hunts against a state, local, and federal fingerprinting sources (Hefetz ret al., 2016) .
AFIS was constituted from millions of biometric data sources of fingerprint cards together with criminal history records presented by police agencies all over the country. AFIS was first introduced by the FBI in 1991. AFIS enables the FBI and other law enforcement organizations to electronically gain entrée to the national fingerprint storehouses in Clarksburg, West Virginia, for latent print and ten-print pursuits. The implication of this is that crime perpetrators can be traced using their fingerprints all over the U.S. There are high chances of arrested individuals having their fingerprint details in the FBI criminal master file (CMF). In the military jobs people must have been fingerprinted as a way of conducting a background check and their details are kept within the FBI civil file (CVL) (Hefetz ret al., 2016) .
Mass disasters often eliminate quick manual assessment of ante-mortem file; this implies that post-mortem impressions must be electronically searched using AFIS. Post-mortem impressions are initially scanned into AFIS and encrypted, implying that the friction fold minutiae or features are digitalized. Measures like finger locus and pattern type are then chosen followed by the start of the fingerprint hunt. Pursuits of post-mortem prints can only last a few minutes, contingent on the presented criteria, and leads to a record of candidates with the nearest connection to the presented impression. Though AFIS epitomizes recognition, the evaluation of the candidates and any recognition ruling, as it corresponds to latent impression evaluation, is done by a licenced fingerprint inspector and not by a computer. The FBI possess mobile AFIS stations that can be sent to disaster scenes worldwide with the ability of searching retrieved post-mortem prints via remote entrée into the federal fingerprint store.
In the event of open-population disasters, that is, the personality of people who have lost their lives in the occurrence is not promptly recognized; retrieved post-mortem impressions should be examined using the automated fingerprint technique for recognition purpose. This can be best visualized practically by the deployment of AFIS and the application of fingerprints for mass death casualty identification after the South Asian Tsunami in Thailand in 2004. More than five thousand people lost their lives when the tsunami waves hit the coast of Thailand. Since Thailand is a well-known destination for vacation, the deceased not only comprised of natives but also numerous tourists, mainly from Scandinavian nations. The extent the disaster led to a worldwide request for ante-mortem recognition details for those killed in the disaster. Hence, AFIS was developed to aid in large identification techniques since none existed in Thailand. In addition, AFIS can be used to detect the identities of individuals found in mass graves (Hefetz ret al., 2016) .
Identification using fingerprints has far much positive effect worldwide every day compared to any human identification technique because every bit of anything in life revolves around fingerprints. Crime is not exempted. In contemporary society, crime keeps changing as criminals have adopted sophisticated and intellectual techniques in perpetrating crime. The evolution of the technological world through computers has brought technological improvements that even the criminal justice system has reaped from. One of the benefits to the criminal justice organization was fingerprint and palm print. The advancement in technology has its own share of advantages and disadvantages, with effects of the advances on the constitution can be astonishing. Such advances have effects on the proficiency of the criminal justice system from the point of crime management (Essays UK, 2015).
Law enforcement officers have been gathering fingerprints for several years. During this period, the fingerprints have remained the same, but the technologies used in collecting fingerprints and the methods employed by police to collect those prints have changed. Crime investigation officers use tape, powder, glue, ink, and several other methods to gather fingerprints from a scene of a crime. In addition, other departments employ the use of computers gathering and scanning of fingerprints. After which manual comparison of the scanned fingerprint and that found at the scene of the crime were compared for similarity. Often at times, this would take a long period of time before results could be generated. But with the introduction of computers, the time of investigation has been drastically reduced to a matter of hours (Su, 2016).
The technology used to collect fingerprints from a suspect has also changed. The traditional method of police officers puts a suspect’s fingers on an ink pad followed by placing the fingers on a fingerprint card. The fingerprints copied on a paper. However, there are new methods of fingerprint processing by placing the suspect's fingers on a computer pad. The fingerprints are copied by the computer pad and then transferred to a computer screen. The process is fast, clean and fingerprints obtained are clear. These advancements have made it simpler for police officers to conduct their duties and also have helped in actual determination and prosecution of crime doers. It has also helped in ruling out suspects' faster, thereby avoiding the following of wrong leads (Bose & Kabir, 2017) .
Fingerprinting remains the most popular forensic evidence tool worldwide and is the preferred method for identification worldwide as the database for palm and fingerprints continue to expand. They remain advantageous for several reasons: They are one distinctive feature that never changes, can only be owned by a single individual and can assure a definite match. Unlike faces or names that are subject to change. The biggest merit why they are still used in criminal investigation practices is that they are the most effective tools for identification. Although other means of identification exists, such as DNA identification tools, it has shortcomings in that its relatively expensive, time-consuming compared to fingerprinting. Besides, in the incidence of twins who have the same genetic composition, DNA identification becomes obsolete. Unlike fingerprints which are unique even to identical twins. If a fingerprint compares; you have effectively recognized the individual with no doubts.
According to our criminal justice structure, we operate by the rule that has made our country great, a person is always considered innocent until he/she is proven guilty by the courts of law. Therefore if a person’s fingerprint is retrieved from a murder weapon he/she is close to being rendered guilty of the crime. Therefore a fingerprint database helps to speed up crime investigations and ensure that innocent suspects are eliminated while guilty ones are convicted. Therefore delayed justice is averted, and through AFIS criminals can be traced to their hiding places (Becker et al., 2018).
Fingerprinting also has its disadvantages. The main disadvantage is that the majority of details on file belong to criminals. If a match is retrieved and the individual with the print has no access to the records, there is no way to identify such a person because he has never been caught as a criminal. Fingerprinting and palm printing databases only comprise of people who have engaged in criminal activities and have criminal records, which at times may not be true in all scenarios, specific jurisdictions may only allow fingerprints from certain categories of crime to be taken. Still if an individual’s fingerprint and palm print match to their criminal details, the recognized impression still has to undergo further analysis for validation by the prosecuting authority to guarantee the details found are precise and up to date. At times these types of databases maybe profoundly flawed. Another disadvantage is that the computerized fingerprint collection method is expensive and can only be afforded by some departments and thus some still rely on the manual method which is time-consuming and can be inaccurate (Essays UK, 2015).
The validity of forensic evidence print has been criticized by some people from various fields including scholars. They argue that the word “validity” and “reliability” have a certain understanding of the scientific society. Reliability implies that sequential tests yield identical results. While validity implies that the results obtained are deemed to precisely illuminate the external factor being investigated. Though some professionals are often contended with depending on their instincts, the dependence does not always transform into a powerful predictive capability. Taking an example of the common “Analysis, Comparison, Evaluation, and Verification” (ACE-V) model for identification, the point of verification, in which another examiner affirms the evaluation of the previous examiner, may escalate consistency of the evaluations. Although the verification point has insinuations for the dependency on latent print assessments, it does not guarantee their validity (Essays UK, 2015).
To conclude, identification using fingerprints is the primogenital field known to mankind. Fingerprints have demonstrated over time as one of the most rapid, consistent, and cost-considerate methods to correctly identify people, unknown dead persons, particularly in mass disaster scenarios. The pints obtained at scenes of crime or accident can then be checked against the ante-mortem details or searched using AFIS to identify or validate identity. Care should also be taken when handling fingerprints or objects likely to have fingerprint impression on them. Distorted fingerprint impressions are useless to crimes scene investigations and may lead to a crime perpetrator walking free due to lack of sufficient evidence.
Reference
Becker, R. F., Dutelle, A. W., & Roberts, B. W. (2018). Criminal investigation . Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Bose, P. K., & Kabir, M. J. (2017). Fingerprint: a unique and reliable method for identification. Journal of Enam Medical College , 7 (1), 29-34.
Essays, UK. (November 2015). The Use Of Fingerprints To Control Crime Information Technology Essay. Retrieved from https://www.uniassignment.com/essay-samples/information-technology/the-use-of-fingerprints-to-control-crime-information-technology-essay.php?vref=1
Hefetz, I., Liptz, Y., Vaturi, S., & Attias, D. (2016). Use of AFIS for linking scenes of crime. Forensic science international , 262 , e25-e27.
Su, B. (2016). Recent progress on fingerprint visualization and analysis by imaging ridge residue components. Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry , 408 (11), 2781-2791.
