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45 Med. Sci. & L. 1 (2005)

handle is hein.journals/mdsclw45 and id is 1 raw text is: Leadbetter: Fingerprint Evidence in England and Wales - The Revised Standard 1 Fingerprint Evidence in England and Wales - The Revised Standard MARTIN J LEADBETTER, RFP FFS BA (Hons) Head of the Fingerprint Bureau, Cambridgeshire Constabulary Correspondence: Martin J Leadbetter, Fingerprint Bureau, Cambridgeshire Constabulary Headquarters, Hinchingbrooke Park, Huntingdon, Cambs PE29 6NP E-mail: Martin.leadbetter@cambs.pnn.police. uk ABSTRACT Evidence of personal identity, often based solely on the comparison of a single finger impression, or fragment of an impression, has been accepted by courts of law at all levels in England and Wales since 1901, when the fingerprint system of identification was first adopted by police forces. Fingerprint identification is used by police forces world-wide, not only for the identification of latent fingermarks left at crime scenes, but also as the basis for ensuring accuracy in the criminal record system. For more than a century fingerprint evidence has been shown without doubt to be the best form of personal identification yet devised and millions of compar- isons and subsequent identifications have been effected world-wide without any flaw in the system having been detected. From 1953-2001 it was the usual practice in England and Wales for the police to proffer finger- print evidence showing 16 common matching char- acteristics, or features in agreement, between the two impressions being compared. In 1996 the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) commis- sioned a review of the existing methods of presenting fingerprint evidence before the courts and on 11 June 2001 a new standard of fingerprint evidence was adopted by the police forces of England and Wales. This paper describes how the new standard was developed and implemented and why it was considered necessary to move away from the existing 16-point standard. INTRODUCTION The idea of using fingerprints (which can also refer to prints or marks made by the thumbs, palms, or soles of the feet) for the means of personal identification was first adopted in the United Kingdom in July 1901. Until this time, there had been no truly effective and reliable method for the identification of persistent and habitual offenders. Consequently, the police and the courts were often totally unaware of whom they were dealing with, unless an officer was able to make an identification based upon his prior knowledge of the culprit, or had other sources of information upon which he could rely. Obviously this was a most unsatisfactory situation and deprived the court system of the opportunity to pass sentence appropriate to the defendant's past criminal activities. Furthermore, the police were not always aware of the true identity of the persons they had in custody and it would have been quite simple to unwittingly release an offender charged with a minor offence, when in fact he or she may have been wanted for a serious offence, such as murder. The only other method for establishing personal identification, apart from the use of photographs, was that known as anthropome- try, devised by the French scientist, Alphonse Bertillon. Anthropometry relied upon several comprehensive body measurements being carefully recorded from each offender who had been arrested, in addition to other notice- able personal features such as tattoos, scars, amputations, circumcision etc. Clearly, this method was not only time-consuming to im- plement and update, but very unreliable and to a large degree, subjective (see Table I). The system of fingerprinting was first suggested to the Home Office by Edward Richard Henry in 1900 following his return to England from working in India. It was pre- sented as his own invention although the

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