Conclusion
The shift towards fingerprinting serves as a significant turning point in America's criminal justice system because it led to less biased identifications that was evident in Bertillon anthropometry. Although fingerprinting has flaws in its scientific credibility, such as its 20% error rate, fingerprinting continues to evolve as technology improves, showing fingerprinting's long-term benefits as an essential tool for criminal identification. Even with the introduction of modern DNA technology, investigators continue to use fingerprinting to identify repeat offenders and new criminals using each person's unique print.
“With DNA you are incapable of differentiating between identical twins, whereas fingerprints are specific and unique, even for identical twins.”
- Stephanie Kamakana, HPD Fingerprint Technician (2013)
Former Honolulu Police Detective Gary Dias on fingerprinting's superior nature over DNA (2013).
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Sheryl Sunia on the negative aspect of fingerprinting in identifying smarter criminals (2013).
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King County AFIS Manager Carol Gillespie and latent print examiner Scott Verbonus on the innovative palm print scan (2011).
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"Suspects may leave palmprints, foot prints or even prints of lips. These impressions can be photographed and developed just as fingerprints are, [and added to IAFIS]. Palmprints contain many more friction-ridge landmarks than fingerprints have, thus giving print examiners more points of comparison when determining matches." |