Unraveling Crimes with Automated Fingerprint Systems
Introduction
Dactyloscopic information obtained as a result of state fingerprint registration can be used not only for the prevention, detection, and investigation of crimes, prevention, and detection of administrative offenses but also for the search for missing persons, confirmation of the identity of corpses, identification of living persons who are not able to provide data about themselves due to health or age.
Main body
The implementation of such projects of full-scale fingerprint registration with the prospect of a possible transition to universal fingerprint registration, with the provision of rapid search through tens and hundreds of millions of fingerprint cards, is possible only with the use of automated fingerprint systems. This Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System involves the use of a computer system aimed at the identification by fingerprint of the person and all the data related to this person’s past. This method involves the storage of various forms of photos of fingerprint scans and the ability to quickly find them so employees can access them. In total, the program data maintained by structures in the FBI contains information on more than 70,000,000 people.
A famous case when the fingerprints helped to solve a high-profile crime is the story of a serial killer from Kansas, who operated in the 90s of the 20th century. The peculiarity of this crime is that every time after 10 murders the man left notes with different messages wishing to give publicity to his deed. The work with the content of these letters did not lead to the desired result (10 Famous Criminal Cases Cracked by Forensics, n.d.). However, with the expansion of the fingerprint evidence by the beginning of the noughties it was possible to identify the person and to change the subject to the respective measures of punishment.
Conclusion
Thus, the use of this computer database allows investigators to solve cases not only of recently committed crimes but also to find the criminals who acted decades ago when it was not possible to get timely and accurate information about biometrics.
Reference
10 famous criminal cases cracked by forensics. (n.d.). Summit Consulting Ltd. Web.