Raymond Dussault | Editor

Fingerprints catch crooks. With AFIS technology, they catch a lot of crooks and faster.

The History of Fingerprints Prehistoric picture writing of a hand with ridge patterns was discovered in Nova Scotia. In ancient Babylon, fingerprints were used on clay tablets for business transactions. In ancient China, thumbprints were used on clay seals. In 14th century Persia, various official government papers were sealed with fingerprint impressions, and one government official, a doctor, observed that no two fingerprints were exactly alike.

1686 Marcello Malpighi, an anatomy professor, notices ridges, spirals and loops in fingerprints. 1823 John Evangelist Purkinji publishes his thesis discussing nine fingerprint patterns. 1856 Sir William Herschel, Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India, uses fingerprints on native contracts.

1880 Dr. Henry Faulds publishes an article in Nautre discussing fingerprints as a means of personal identification and the use of printers ink as a method for obtaining fingerprints.

1882 Gilbert Thompson, on a U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico, uses his own fingerprints on a document to prevent forgery 1883 Mark Twain popularizes the use of fingerprints as a means of identification in Life on the Mississippi and Puddn Head Wilson.

1892 Sir Francis Galton published his book, "Fingerprints", establishing the individuality and permanence of fingerprints. The book included the first classification system for fingerprints.

1892 Juan Vucetich, an Argentine police official, makes the first criminal fingerprint identification using GaltonÕs system. He was able to identify a woman by the name of Rojas, who had murdered her two sons, and cut her own throat in an attempt to place blame on another. Her bloody print was left on a doorpost, proving her identity as the murderer. 1901 Fingerprints are introduced for criminal identification in England and Wales, using Galtons observations revised by Sir Edward Richard Henry. The Henry Classification System is still used today in all English-speaking countries. 1902 First systematic use of fingerprints in the U.S. by the New York Civil Service Commission for testing. Dr. Henry P. DeForrest pioneers U.S. fingerprinting.

1903 The New York State Prison system began the first systematic use of fingerprints in U.S. for criminals. 1904 Leavenworth State Penitentiary in Kansas and the St. Louis Police Department begin using fingerprints, assisted by a Sergeant from Scotland Yard who had been on duty at the St. Louis WorldÕs Fair.

1918 Edmond Locard writes that if 12 points are the same between two fingerprints, it constitutes positive identification.

1924 an act of Congress establishes the Identification Division of the FBI. The National Bureau and Leavenworth consolidate to form the nucleus of the FBI fingerprint files.

1946 The FBI has processed 100 million fingerprint cards in manually maintained files. 1971 The FBI files have grown to over 200 million cards.

Late 1990s Biometric information, especially fingerprints, begins to be offered for online authentification.Source: Greg Moore, Fingerprint Consulting ServiceConventional wisdom tells us that one of two things prevents people from committing crimes: ethics or the fear of being caught and punished.

In 1996, Morgan Reynolds of the nonprofit National Center for Policy Analysis released a statistical analysis that plotted the rate of serious crimes from 1950 through 1996, and compared that line graph with punishment a criminal could expect during the same period of time. The results, while not definitive, showed a correlation between crime and punishment: When the expected cost of committing a serious crime dropped from an average of 50 days in prison in 1950 to an average of 10 days in prison in 1970, the rate of those crimes nearly tripled, from five per 1,000 to 14.3 per 1,000 in population. Twenty years later, the level of punishment began to rise and, not too surprisingly, the rate of crime began to drop again.

FEAR IS GOOD

While issues ranging from opportunity to economics obviously affect the level