PROJECT ON FINGERPRINTING

Name:Abhishek chatterjee Reg No:11A006 Batch :2011-16

Submitted To:Mr Jagdeesh Chandra INDEXIntroduction:What is Fingerprinting Pg 2

History Pg 3

Adoption of Fingerprinting To identify Criminals Pg 5

John Edgar Hoovers Contribution Pg 6

Aadhar and Its potential Impact Pg 9

Criticism of fingerprinting Pg9

Case studies of fingerprint misidentification Pg 10

Conclusion Pg 12

References Pg 14

Introduction: What Is FingerprintingA fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints 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 (fingers 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 fingerprints 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 fingerprint card. Fingerprint records normally contain impressions from the pad on the last joint of fingers and thumbs, although fingerprint cards also typically record portions of lower joint areas of the fingers.Fingerprint identification, known as dactyloscopy, or hand print identification, is the process of comparing two instances of friction ridge skin impressions, from human fingers 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. The flexibility of friction ridge skin means that no two finger or palm prints are ever exactly alike in every detail; even two impressions recorded immediately after each other from the same hand may be slightly different.HISTORYThe earliest dated prints of the ridges of the skin on human hands and feet were made about 4,000 years ago during the pyramid building era in Egypt. In addition, one small portion of palm print, not known to be human, has been found impressed in hardened mud at a 10,000-years old site in Egypt. It was common practice for the Chinese to use inked fingerprints on official documents, land sales, contracts, loans and acknowledgments of debts. The oldest existing documents so endorsed date from the 3rd century BC, and it was still an effective practice until recent times. Even though it is recorded that the Chinese used their fingerprints to establish identity in courts in litigation over disputed business dealings

Researchers fail to agree as to whether the Chinese were fully aware of the uniqueness of a fingerprint or whether the physical contact with documents had some spiritual significance. The first documented interest in the skin's ridges in the western world, a paper written in 1684 by an Englishman, Dr. Nehemiah Grew, was mainly of an anatomical nature. A small number of other academics from various European countries also made anatomical studies of the skin.

Professor Marcello Malpighi, a plant morphologist at the University of Bologna, performed research similar to Grew's and published similar findings in his 1686 publication De Extemo Tactus Organo. This anatomical treatise, though less detailed about the surface of the hand than that of Dr Crew, delves further beneath the surface. Malpighi's anatomical work was so outstanding that one of the layers of the skin was named :stratum Malpighi" after him.It was not until 1798, however, that J C Mayer of Germany theorized that the arrangements of friction ridges were unique. In 1823, Professor Johannes Evangelist Purkinje published the most detailed description of fingerprints to have appeared anywhere up to that time. Professor Purkinje's thesis entitled A Commentary on the Physiological Examination of the Organs of Vision and the Cutaneous System describes, with illustrations, nine fingerprint patterns classified in Latin.From his illustrations, it can be seen that the Latin classifications refer to what Henry would later name arches, tented arches, loops, whorls and twinned loops. Purkinje's research was purely anatomical, and he made no mention of individuals being identified by the patterns that he described. However, he recommended further research, and others soon took up his challenge.However, it was not until 1858 that the first practical application of the science was made, when an English administrator in India, Sir William Herschel, commenced placing the inked palm impressions and, later, thumb impressions of some members of the local population on contracts. These prints were used as a form of signature on the documents because of the high level of illiteracy in India and frequent attempts at forgery. Herschel also began fingerprinting all prisoners in jail.Herschel's main role as a fingerprint pioneer lies in the area of the immutability of ridged skin also mentioned by Faulds. Throughout his life, Herschel took his own fingerprints and noted that no change had occurred in them in over 50 years. He also had a small collection of about 20 sets of fingerprints and used his technique of hand printing to detect forgeries of legal documents.Herschel 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.The greatest advances in fingerprint science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were probably made by Dr Henry Faulds, a Scottish missionary doctor of the United Presbyterian Church. Faulds first became interested in fingerprints after 1874 while working at the hospital he established in Tsukiji, Tokyo, Japan. After careful experiment and observation, he became convinced that fingerprint patterns did not change, that the fingerprint patterns on the fingers where highly variable and that superficial injury did not alter them, they returned to their former design as the injury healed.In a letter written to Nature in October 1880, Faulds relates how he took many sets of fingerprints and palm prints and studied them. He further described the pattern formations on the fingers, referred to "loops" and "whorls" and stating how good sets of fingerprints 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 printer's ink. This technique, still in use today, appears to be a botanical technique called nature-printing.Fauld's most important conclusion was that fingerprints do not change and that finger marks (that is, latent prints) left on objects by bloody or greasy fingers "may lead to the scientific identification of criminals".In 1892, a noted English scientist of the time, Sir Francis Galton, published an accurate and in-depth study of the fingerprinting science that included an attempt at a system of fingerprint classification to facilitate the handling of large collections of fingerprints. Although Galton's work proved to be sound and became the foundation of modern fingerprint science and technology, his approach to classification was inadequate, and it was to be others who were to successfully apply his work.Juan Vucetich, an Argentinian police officer, research the science of fingerprints, corresponded with Galton, then devised his own system of fingerprint classification, which he called "icnofalagometrico". This system was put into practice in September 1891, and in March 1892, Vucetich opened the first fingerprint bureau at San Nicholas, Buenos Aires. Within a short time of the bureau being set up, the first conviction by means of fingerprint evidence in a murder trial was obtained.In June 1892 at Necochea, Francisca Rojas claimed that she had been brutally attacked and her two children murdered by a neighboring ranch worker named Velasquez. Velasquez was arrested but refused to confess to the murder of the two children. Nine days after the crime, a search of the crime scene was carried out and a number of fingerprints in blood were found on a door post of the woman's hut.The post was taken to the fingerprint bureau for comparison with the inked fingerprint impressions of Velasquez. They were not identical, but the blood impressions were found to be identical with those of Rojas. When confronted with this evidence, Rojas confessed to the murder of her children, and in July 1892 she was found guilty of their murder and sentenced to life imprisonment ..By the end of that year, the Fingerprint Office at New Scotland Yard was fully functional, the first British court conviction by fingerprints being obtained in 1902. Approximately 10 years after the publication of Henry's book, his classification system was being used by police forces and prison authorities throughout the English-speaking world.Friction Ridge Skin Only 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. The study of fingerprints, or dactyloscopy, is the more widely used section in practice even though prints from the soles of the feet are as characteristic as fingerprints, they are less often used for identification purposes due to their low rate of occurrence.The 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. These patterns cannot be altered, except by accident, mutilation, or very serious skin disease, as they are formed in deep layers of the dermis.

ADOPTION OF FINGERPRINTING TO IDENTIFY CRIMINALSIn 1880, Dr.Henry Faulds, a Scottish surgeon in a Tokyo hospital, published his first paper on the subject in the scientific journalNature, discussing the usefulness of fingerprints for identification and proposing a method to record them with printing ink. He also established their first classification and was also the first to identify fingerprints left on a vial.Returning to the UK in 1886, he offered the concept to theMetropolitan Policein London but it was dismissed at that time.Faulds wrote toCharles Darwinwith a description of his method but, too old and ill to work on it, Darwin gave the information to his cousin,Francis Galton, who was interested in anthropology. Having been thus inspired to study fingerprints for ten years, Galton published a detailed statistical model of fingerprint analysis and identification and encouraged its use in forensic science in his bookFinger Prints. He had calculated that the chance of a "false positive" (two different individuals having the same fingerprints) was about 1 in 64 billion.Juan Vucetich, an Argentine chief police officer, created the first method of recording the fingerprints of individuals on file, associating these fingerprints to the anthropometric system ofAlphonse Bertillon, who had created, in 1879, a system to identify individuals by anthropometric photographs and associated quantitative descriptions. In 1892, after studying Galton's pattern types, Vucetich set up the world's first fingerprint bureau. In that same year, Francisca Rojas ofNecochea, was found in a house with neck injuries, whilst her two sons were found dead with their throats cut. Rojas accused a neighbour, but despite brutal interrogation, this neighbour would not confess to the crimes. Inspector Alvarez, a colleague of Vucetich, went to the scene and found a bloody thumb mark on a door. When it was compared with Rojas' prints, it was found to be identical with her right thumb. She then confessed to the murder of her sons.A Fingerprint Bureau was established in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, in 1897, after the Council of the Governor General approved a committee report that fingerprints should be used for the classification of criminal records. Working in the Calcutta Anthropometric Bureau, before it became the Fingerprint Bureau, wereAzizul HaqueandHem Chandra Bose. Haque and Bose were Indian fingerprint experts who have been credited with the primary development of a fingerprint classification system eventually named after their supervisor,Sir Edward Richard Henry.TheHenry Classification System, co-devised by Haque and Bose, was accepted in England and Wales when the first United Kingdom Fingerprint Bureau was founded inScotland Yard, theMetropolitan Policeheadquarters, London, in 1901. Sir Edward Richard Henry subsequently achieved improvements in dactyloscopy.In the United States, Dr.Henry P. DeForrestused fingerprinting in theNew York Civil Servicein 1902, and by 1906,New York City Police DepartmentDeputy Commissioner Joseph A. Faurot, an expert in the Bertillon system and a finger print advocate at Police Headquarters, introduced the fingerprinting of criminals to the United States.The Scheffer case of 1902 is the first case of the identification, arrest and conviction of a murderer based upon fingerprint evidence.Alphonse Bertillonidentified the thief and murderer Scheffer, who had previously been arrested and his fingerprints filed some months before, from the fingerprints found on a fractured glass showcase, after a theft in a dentist's apartment where the dentist's employee was found dead. It was able to be proved in court that the fingerprints had been made after the showcase was broken.A year later,Alphonse Bertilloncreated a method of getting fingerprints off smooth surfaces and took a further step in the advance of dactyloscopy.Since the advent of fingerprint detection, many criminals have resorted to the wearing ofglovesin order to avoid leaving fingerprints, which thus makes the crime investigation more difficult. However, the gloves themselves can leave prints that are just as unique as human fingerprints. After collectingglove prints, law enforcement can then match them to gloves that they have collected as evidence.In manyjurisdictionsthe act of wearing gloves itself while committing a crime can be prosecuted as aninchoate offense.As many offenses are crimes of opportunity, many assailants are not in the possession of gloves when they commit their illegal activities. Thus, assailants have been viewed using pulled-down sleeves and other pieces of clothing and fabric to handle objects and touch surfaces during the commission of their crimes. John Edgar Hoovers contribution Americans have had an eight-year fascination, love affair is with fingerprints. During the 1920's and 30's, law enforcement leaders like Police Chief August Vollmer of Berkeley, California and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed that the widespread use of fingerprinting and the other crime-fighting sciences of firearms identification, questioned documents, and forensics chemistry, would someday bring America's massive crime problem to its knees. Although incredibly nave, most police thinkers of that era believed this, and the American public bought it too. It's therefore not surprising that during this era, men such as Vollmer and Hoover began to think seriously about fingerprinting everyone a concept called universal fingerprinting.Most citizens never get arrested, therefore the fingerprints of a vast majority of the population are not taken and filed away for further use. However, by fingerprinting everyone housewives, babies, factory workers, and school children America's fingerprint collection would be complete. It is this idea that appeals to advocates of universal fingerprinting.Although today, the police and the public have a more realistic view of crime and criminals, the criminalistic science of fingerprints is still a symbol of police professionalism and successful crime fighting. In the mid-1980's, at the height of the missing children scare, programs promoting the voluntary fingerprinting of school children and babies sprang up all over the country.The idea of fingerprinting everyone either voluntarily or by law, has been around as long as fingerprinting itself. In 1930, August Vollmer began talking and writing about the advantages of universal fingerprinting. He figured that everybody would benefit from such a program. For example, the police would get an effective crime-fighting tool that would help catch criminals and eventually prevent crime. If job applicants were fingerprinted, employers would know who they were hiring and could turn away those candidates with criminal records. Moreover, victims of fires, plane crashes, and other disasters could be identified, and so could missing children and people found dead on the street, in the woods, or in the water. There were less obvious advantages as well the government could deal more effectively with illegal aliens, merchants could protect themselves against bad checks, hotel beats, and other kinds of fraud, the IRS could catch tax cheats, and the census bureau could do a better job.1Vollmer's advocacy of universal fingerprinting contradicted, to a certain degree, his leanings as a civil libertarian. This is probably what kept him from pushing for laws to make the fingerprinting of noncriminals mandatory. Vollmer wanted to educate people teach them the advantages of fingerprinting so they would ask to be officially printed. He hoped to do this by getting service clubs, lodges, magazines, and newspapers interested in his idea. These groups would in turn sponsor programs to educate and indoctrinate the public.2August Vollmer wasn't the first to think about or to propose universal fingerprinting. In 1916, Juan Vucetich, Argentina's great criminalist and fingerprint pioneer, was the driving force behind a law passed in his country that required the entire population, including foreign residents and visitors, to be fingerprinted. Following the passage of this statute, the reaction against it was so strong, the law was quickly repealed. Vucetich died in 1925 and the idea of fingerprinting everyone has not been brought up again in Argentina.The movement to fingerprint noncriminals really got underway in America in the mid-1930's at the height of the great crime wave. During this period J Edgar Hoover used the media and exploited public fear of crime to make his case. He even got people like John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Walt Disney, and President Roosevelt to have themselves printed.3By 1934, police departments all over America routinely fingerprinted everyone they arrested. The fingerprint card of each arrestee was sent to the FBI's National Fingerprint Bureau in Washington, D.C.4That year, Hoover informed the House Appropriations Committee that his fingerprint bureau housed five million sets of prints, the largest collection of its kind in the world. It was also in 1934 that he added what he called the civilian fingerprints to the national bureau. This collection was made up of the noncriminal fingerprints of federal employees and those who had volunteered to be printed. (In 15 years this file would hold 20 million fingerprint sets.)5Hoover also advised the House Appropriations Committee that it was his dream to add to this file the fingerprints of every American citizen.6By 1936 August Vollmer had retired from the Berkeley Police Department and was teaching police administration at the University of California. That year he arranged a special town election to ask voters if they objected to a campaign to get people to volunteer their prints. Vollmer was well known and popular in Berkeley, and the people there voted three to one in favor of his program. During the next two years, sixteen thousand citizens, about half the town's population, were fingerprinted.7(Eventually, the Berkeley Police Department would send fifty-two thousand prints to the FBI.)Vollmer had launched his fingerprinting campaign by taking the prints of Dr. Robert G. Sproul, the president of the University of California. Dr. Sproul was fingerprinted at a booth set up for that purpose on the Berkeley campus. But even in Berkeley there was some resistance to universal fingerprinting. Many factory workers who had been asked to submit by their employers were suspicious that it was a management scheme to gain control over labor. Others feared the program would someday become involuntary.

Aadhar And Its Potential ImpactAs of March 2013, theUnique Identification Authority of Indiaoperates the world's largest fingerprint (multi-modal biometric) system, with over 200 millionfingerprint, face and iris biometric records. UIAIplans to collect as many as 600 million multi-modal record by the end of 2014. India's Unique Identification project 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 ID documents for most of India's 1.2 billion residents.

With a database many times larger than any other in the world, Aadhaar's ability to leverage automated fingerprint and iris modalities (and potentially automated face recognition) enables rapid and reliable automated searching and identification impossible to accomplish with fingerprint technology alone, especially when searching children and elderly residents' fingerprints.It would also help in maintain an accurate data base of criminals and help identify and catch potential criminals who could leave their fingerprints in crime scence,this will kick start a new era of forensics and will make police work more effective and advanced. Lesser criminals will be able to evade the law.

CRITICISM OF FINGERPRINTINGThe human element eliminates the infallibility of the fingerprint methodology as a personal identification mechanism. Mistakes can be made by the administrator in the process of printing, or by the expert who is responsible for making the final determination upon review of the possible matches.There is no data available that could quantify the percentage of errors made in personal identification through the utilization of fingerprints.There are also errors that can occur in the process of taking inked fingerprints. The fingerprints can be rendered illegible in the inking process if: The finger has not been rolled fully from side to side. The entire finger from its joint to its top has not been inked. The finger is not held securely in place. If the technician holds the fingers too loosely (or too securely), there could be a smudging or blurring of the prints, thus rendering a false pattern of prints. The usage of an inappropriate texture of ink can result in running of the ink and pattern distortion. Black printer's ink of a heavy texture is the advisable texture to use. The usage of too much ink can distort the patterns. The usage of too little ink will render the ridge patterns indistinguishable. Temporary disabilities to the fingerprint subject, such as cuts and blisters, can distort the pattern of the ridges. Excessive perspiration on the fingers of the subject may inhibit the ink from adhering to the fingers which would result in a blurred and inaccurate outcome. Errors made on the information card that accompanies the fingerprints, such as name, date of birth, sex and age can lead to complications as to the authenticity of the prints

Case Studies Of Fingerprint MisidentificationA. Commonwealth v. Cowans On May 30, 1997, an African-American male shot and wounded Officer Gregory Gallagher of the Boston Police Department while that officer was on duty.The assailants baseball hat fell off during the initial struggle between the two men.Shortly after the shooting, an African-American male holding a gun gained entry into the nearby residence of Ms. Bonnie Lacy.The individual removed his sweatshirt, wiped his gun off, asked for and received a glass of water, and then left.Officer Gallagher later identified Mr. Stephan Cowans as his assailant in a photographic lineup that included the pictures of eight individuals.The officer also subsequently identified Cowans in a standard lineup that included the suspect.A witness who saw the presumed assailant shortly after the shooting confirmed the identification, although Ms. Lacy did not.14 In addition to the eyewitness evidence, investigators located a fingerprint on the glass used by the individual who had gained entry to Ms. Lacys house.15 The print was matched to that of Mr. Cowans by two fingerprint examiners working for the Boston Police Department.16 A fingerprint examiner retained by the defense later confirmed the fingerprint match. On the basis of this evidence, Mr. Cowans was convicted of shooting a police officer and sentenced to thirty to forty-five years in state prison.In the pre-DNA world, Mr. Cowans would no doubt have spent much of his adult life behind bars. However, in May 2003 (six years after Cowanss conviction), at the defendants request, Orchid Cellmark Laboratories performed DNA testing on both the glass and the baseball hat found at the crime scene. The DNA profile found on the glass did not match that of Mr. Cowans, but it did match that of the primary contributor to the DNA on the baseball cap.In January 2004, at the request of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, further testing was performed on the sweatshirt. The resulting DNA profile matched the common profile found on the glass and the baseball hat.21 Initially, Suffolk Assistant District Attorney David E. Meier stated that, given the compelling evidence of the fingerprint on the glass, his office would retry Cowans if the conviction were overturned. Two days later, after the fingerprint had been re-examined, however, Meier changed his mind.In addressing Superior Court Judge Peter Lauriat, Meier explained that the fingerprint evidence presented at trial did not match that of Cowans: I can conclusively and unequivocally state, your honor, that that purported match was a mistake. Mr. Cowans was then released, having spent six years in jail for a crime he did not commit.

B. The Mayfield Affair On March 11, 2004, a terrorist bomb attack on a Madrid train station resulted in 191 deaths and some 2,000 people injured. The Spanish authorities found a bag of detonators near the site of the explosion with a fingerprint on it that did not match any in their databank. The authorities forwarded the print to several investigative organizations, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). After searching its fingerprint database, the FBI located a possible match in the prints of Mr. Brandon Mayfield, an attorney in Portland, Oregon.From the start, there were troubling aspects about the match. Mr. Mayfield had ties to Muslim individuals and organizations thought to make him suspect, but there was no evidence that he had been out of the country for many years. Nevertheless, the FBI examiners concluded that the print was a 100 percent positive identification, and so informed the Spanish authorities on April 2, 2004.The Spanish disagreed. On April 13, 2004, the Spanish authorities reported in a memorandum to the FBI that the match was conclusively negative. Where the FBI found fifteen points of agreement for the fingerprint, the Spanish found only seven.Nevertheless, the FBI continued to maintain that the latent print on the bag matched that of Mr. Mayfield and arranged a meeting with Spanish officials in Madrid on April 21, 2004 to present their analysis. The meeting did nothing to change the opinion of the FBI and, subsequently, Mr. Mayfield was arrested on May 6, 2004 on a material witness warrant. Fortunately for Mr. Mayfield, the Spanish authorities persisted with their investigation and, shortly after Mayfields arrest, announced that they had matched the latent print to an Algerian named Ouhnane Daoud. The final blow came when the Spanish authorities found traces of Daouds DNA in a rural cottage outside Madrid where investigators believe the terrorist cell held planning sessions and assembled the backpack bombs used in the attack. Mr. Mayfield was finally released after spending two weeks in jail. What went wrong? FBI officials initially gave conflicting accounts. In June 2004, The New York Times reported on the agencys changing positions: F.B.I. officials told Congress members in the briefings last week that they had come up with the match after working off a second-generation digital printmeaning a copy of a copy. But they gave a somewhat different explanation in interviews this week, saying they were now uncertain what generation the digital print represented. But the F.B.I. official who spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity added that the real issue was the quality of the latent print that the Spaniards originally took from the blue bag.The determination by an F.B.I. examiner that the print was useable was hasty and erroneous, F.B.I. officials said, and et the agency off in the wrong direction and corrupted the rest of the process.

CONCLUSIONRegardless of these criticisms Fingerprints are the ultimate source in the establishment of both the verification and recognition of a person's identity. This statement is based on three factors: fingerprints are distinct and unique to each individual, and no two people have identical prints; fingerprints are unchangeable over the course of a lifetime of a person; and fingerprints can be extracted from any surface they come into contact with. They are inexpensive,reliable,gurantee quick results,have multiple uses apart from incriminating criminals and acting as deterrent to stop crime.It is also permanent, it identifies who a person is, as opposed to what a person has, such as a password, or other identification of that nature. It establishes identification through the identification of unchangeable personal characteristics. A person may change hair color, but cannot alter fingerprints. One cannot guess, fake or forget fingerprints as can occur in non-biometric identification methodologies. The individual who is fingerprinted must be physically present in order to be processed.

Refferences1. http://wwy.brooklaw.edu/students/journals/bjlp/jlp13i_zabell.pdf2. http://www.clpex.com/Information/Pioneers/henry-classification.pdf3. http://www.onin.com/fp/fphistory.html4. http://galton.org/fingerprints/books/herschel/herschel-1916-origins-1up.pdf1 | Page