finger print

the British legal system to assist in the detection of crime, whether it is for confirming identity or for identifying potential offenders
from fingerprints recovered at scenes of crime.

At the outset such evidence was used just for the confirmation of identity but it was soon realised that persons left their ingerprints at crime scenes, whether it be in the latent form or within a contaminant and that these to could be matched.

Over the ensuing century methods have changed, as technology has changed and the police now have a computer system which
generally allows them to compare fingerprints from anywhere within the nation, and obviously much more quickly than the
previous manual method.

During the same period, techniques for finding fingerprints have also expanded with the finding of a range of techniques where the
powder and brush will not give a good result. There are now available physical and chemical techniques including lasers and light sources which can be used when the surface is “difficult” and whilst there are surfaces where fingerprints cannot be found the application of the correct treatment to the surface will assist.