For details, please refer to Fingerprint Detection-The Rise of Modern Criminal Investigation Science.
Author: Colin Bevan Translator: Simple.
Press: Shanghai Century Publishing Group
ISBN: 7532730263
Publication date: 2003 10/edition.
Printing time: 2003- 1
Page number:
Price (RMB): 13.20
Introduce the full text:
Although the media's frequent attention to DNA identification of criminals makes people feel that fingerprints seem to have been abandoned in Sherlock Holmes' era, the success rate statistics of these two technologies tell a different story. Since March 2000, the new york Police Department has only identified 200 suspects through DNA. In the year of 1999 alone, the police conducted117 identification with the fingerprints of the crime scene, which is six times that of the DNA used by the new york police department in history.
At the federal level, the American DNA database receives only about 2,000 requests to identify crime scene evidence every year. However, the newly established "Automatic Fingerprint Identification Integrated System" of the FBI handles 85,000 consulting projects every year. These data show that the importance of fingerprints as a tool to detect crimes has never stopped increasing since Henry foulds first put forward the theory of fingerprints to 120 years.
Partly because of the rapid development of computer technology, fingerprints can be identified quickly and easily in a huge database-the "automatic fingerprint identification integrated system" can accommodate as many as 65 million fingerprint shapes. But also because of the new chemical technology, fingerprints can be extracted from plastic bags to human skin and other surfaces. Most importantly, fingerprints are as important as ever, because hands will still leave marks on objects they touch. Since the hand is almost the spokesman of any human behavior, the almost invisible imprint of fingerprints is like leaving an autograph for everything we do, including illegal activities.
It is a modern myth that criminals usually wipe off their fingerprints or wear gloves to avoid leaving traces. It's not as easy as in Hollywood movies to keep your fingerprints from the police. For example, how can the offender be sure that he has erased something that is not easy to see clearly? 1960, a rapist in London closed the shutters of a young mother's bedroom, raped her and wiped the fingerprints on the inside of the shutters on the floor with pajamas. He didn't see the mark left by his thumb outside the shutter. Facing his fingerprints at Old Bailey, the rapist confessed.
Wearing gloves is also a problem. Wearing gloves weakens the sense of touch and sensitivity of hands, but when criminals should wear gloves, gloves are often forgotten in their pockets. At the crime scene, fingerprint inspectors first run to the surfaces that criminals often touch with their bare hands, such as entrances and exits, outdoor pipes that robbers sometimes climb, or toilets that may flush after they take off their gloves.
Another place that the inspector will check is the ashtray. 1962, two art crystal thieves stole the paintings of Matisse, Renoir, Degas and Picasso in the London Art Museum. They are really smart and wear rubber gloves to commit crimes, but they never expected that the police would look at the ashtray, find the box selling gloves and take fingerprints on it. Although criminals don't leave any traces at the crime scene, they often don't think of wearing gloves in cars or hiding places that flee the scene. 1963 After the "mega-train robbery" in Britain, a group of professional criminals who successfully stole 120 parcels worth 2.5 million pounds left fingerprints everywhere in their hiding places, which provided sufficient evidence for the nine charges against them.
Thieves who are willing to make themselves comfortable make it easier for the police to solve crimes. If the robbers stay at the scene for too long, it will increase the possibility that they will unconsciously take off their gloves and leave their fingerprints. In the early history of the fingerprint department of Scotland Yard, a thief had a drink during his "visit". He even left a sarcastic note thanking the shopkeeper. The criminal kicked his feet back and forth, took off his gloves and relaxed. In order to be careful not to leave fingerprints, he left them on the glass.
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Later that day, when Inspector Collins received the sorting tray of the cash box, Thomas Farrow was still warm. Collins is the second director of the new fingerprint department, which is part of the Criminal Investigation Department of Macnaughton. Before the branch of 190 1 was established, Collins could only identify criminals by old methods such as measuring his body, taking facial photos and recording obvious features. These methods are very unreliable. Now, for the first time in his life, Collins stumbled upon a truly effective identification method and was fascinated by it. In the next 25 years, he has been focusing on perfecting and applying this fingerprint technology.
In his office, there stands a huge wooden cabinet with 1024 squares, which contain all the types that match the shape of a person's fingerprint. Several fingerprint experts ran back and forth between their workstations and fingertip prints classified by wooden cabinets. If you look closely, you will find that a fingertip print is like a parallel pattern of "ridges" and "grooves", like a miniature farmland. The "ditch" is like a sink, which allows water vapor to flow in, so that the water vapor will not leave traces on the smooth contact surface between the fingertips and the object to be grasped.
However, experts are not interested in the function of these "ridges". What attracted him was that each of these intricate "ridges" was different. It's much easier for a fingerprint expert to distinguish the impressions of two fingers than the faces of two people. For example, the facial features of a pair of very similar twins may be confused, but their fingerprints will never be mistaken by specially trained experts. Therefore, a person's fingerprint shape is a permanent and reliable record of his identity.
Record. Like a biological imprint, once engraved, it can never be denied. The biometric fingerprints of 80,000 such convicted prisoners are crowded in the pigeon coop of the fingerprint department of Scotland Yard.
However, collecting so many fingerprints has never been used to catch the murderer. Detection is not the main job of fingerprint experts. Instead, Collins and his colleagues spent their time sorting out and archiving the fingerprints of recent suspects, and reconfirming the identity of the newly arrested people with the previously archived fingerprints. Their main purpose is to find out those "recidivists" or "recidivists" who pretend to be first-time offenders. These criminals gave false names in an attempt to cover up their past crimes in order to get a lighter punishment.
The practice of linking punishment with criminal record began in the19th century, when single cells and jailers in detention centers replaced gallows and executioners for the first time. For those who are honest in nature, but forced to steal to support their families, the new prison system only imposes short-term imprisonment, and only enough punishment prevents them from committing further crimes. On the other hand, it is believed that punishment cannot easily eliminate the inherent criminal tendency of recidivists. Long-term isolation from society is considered to be the only way to prevent them from committing crimes. There is a problem with this punishment of killing two birds with one stone, that is, how to distinguish stubborn criminals from first-time offenders?
The earliest article suggesting the use of fingerprints as a means of criminal identification appeared in the authoritative scientific magazine Nature in June 1880.