Fingerprints

The functions of the National Fingerprint Office are:

1. To maintain the national fingerprint records.

2. To put fingerprint information on to the Police National Compu­ter fingerprint file.

3. To compare the fingerprints of persons arrested for criminal offences against the National Fingerprint Collection to identify the individual.

4. To file the fingerprints received from the Governors of Her Majesty’s Prisons.

5. To provide help in the investigation of certain crimes and assist in the identification of cadavers and persons suffering from am­nesia.

Records

The functions of the National Criminal Records Office are:

1. To receive notification of people arrested for specified criminal offences. Where identity is established the police officers con­cerned are notified and provided with details of any previous convictions. Where identity is not established, a record is cre­ated.

2. To keep a record of all people who have been convicted of, or are waiting trial for, specified criminal offences.

3. To remove the records of anyone who, having no previous con­victions, is acquitted of the offences which have been notified.

4. To provide reference details on the names file and the convic­tions file of the Police National Computer of anyone recorded in the Bureau.

5. To circulate details of stolen property or people wanted, or suspected of crime.

6. To supply photofit kits to all police forces in the United King­dom. These kits comprise over 700 photographic components from which over one million photofit impressions can be com­piled.

Storage

There are over 5,000,000 records kept on a microfilm system, copies of which are provided to operational police officers on request.

The fingerprint impressions are stored as electronic images on videotape. When impressions are required for comparison purposes they are retrieved with the aid of the computers and presented for viewing on visual display units. In addition the original fingerprint impressions are kept on a manual basis.

Disclosure

The Bureau provides a 24-hour service and handles about 1,000,000 enquiries a year, by post, telephone and computer link.

Information is given only to serving U.K. police officers needing help in their investigations. The identity of each caller is carefully checked and replies are only given by making a return call to the enquirer’s telephone number - which is also checked to ensure it belongs to an authorised user.

The supply of police information about convictions is governed by the general principle that no information is given to anyone outside the police service, however responsible, unless there are weighty considerations of public interest which justify departure from the general rule.

3. Fingerprints

Very many books and scientific papers have been published on the subject of Fingerprints, and reference to ‘the prints from man’s hand’ can even be found in the Bible.

The study of the application of fingerprints for useful purposes appears to have started in the latter part of the 17th Century when, in 1684, the anatomist Doctor Nehemiah Grew published a paper on the subject which he illustrated with drawings of various fingerprint patterns. About the same period, in Italy, Professor Malpighi was investigating the functions of the skin.

It was in 1860 that the use of fingerprints as a reliable means of individual identification really started. Sir William Herschel, an administrator in the province of Bengal, India, appreciated the unique nature of fingerprints and established the principle of their persistence. Fingerprints are formed in full detail before birth and remain unchanged throughout life unless they are affected by a deep seated injury. A method of classifying fingerprints and research in this field was initiated by Sir Francis Galton and Henry Faulds independently at the end of the 19th century.

The Fingerprint Branch at New Scotland Yard, which started with just three people, has expanded over the years and the present Identification Service is now provided by a staff of600 technical and administrative officers. Today, there are two Fingerprint Bureaux at New Scotland Yard,.the National Fingerprint Office (which together with the National Criminal Record Office forms the National Identification Bureau) and the Metropolitan Police Scenes of Crime Branch, which incorporates the Fingerprint, Photographic and Scenes of Crime Examination Services.

The importance of having a National Fingerprint Collection has been recognised by all police forces in the United Kingdom even though they have their own local fingerprint bureaux.

Each day, the fingerprints of people who have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment, and those who have been arrested and charged with other than the most minor offences, are sent to New Scotland Yard for processing. The fingerprints of those who are not subsequently convicted are, of course, destroyed.

One of the primaiy functions of the National Fingerprint Office is to establish whether the person has a previous record. After a name check has been made, the enquiry fingerprints are compared with the master set of any suggested match. If this proves negative, the fingerprints are coded and the coding transmitted to the Police National Computer at Hendon.

The coding of the enquiry prints is analysed by the computer and only those criminals whose prints could possibly match are listed as respondents on a computer print-out.

Until recently, Identification Officers would make a comparison of the enquiry with the paper fingerprint forms of the respondents, which are all filed in the National Fingerprint Collection, in order to establish whether any computer suggestion was positive.

Within the organisation of the Scenes of Crime Branch there operates a field force of 200 Identification Officers and Scenes of Crime Officers who are responsible for examining Scenes of Crime throughout the Metropolitan Police District. Scenes of serious crime are examined for fingerprints by Senior Identification Officers. The function of these officers is to detect and record any finger and palm marks which an offender may have left at the scene. They also retrieve forensic clues, e.g. blood samples, shoe marks etc., which are then forwarded to the Forensic Science Laboratory for analysis.

Finger and palm marks are sent to the Metropolitan Police Scenes of Crime Branch at New Scotland Yard where, after various elimination and checking procedures, the finger marks are coded for search on either the Police National Computer (Scenes of Crime System) or the Automatic Fingerprint Recognition System (AFR). The suggested possible fingerprint matches may be compared using the Videofile System or by browsing through the actual fingerprint collections. The Automatic Fingerprint Recognition System is a computerised method of matching fingermarks found at scenes of crime with recorded fingerprints of known offenders. The computer lists, in order of probability, any possible fingerprint matches, but does not itself make any “identical or not identical” decisions. Palm marks are retained for comparison with the palm prints of persons suspected of committing the crime. Final comparisons between crime scene marks and offenders prints and decisions as to the identity are carried out by Identification Officers.

One of the earliest cases involving the use of fingerprint evidence was in 1905, when a thumb print left on a cash box at the scene of a murder in Deptford of shopkeepers Mr and Mrs Farrow, was identified as belonging to Alfred Stratton, one of two brothers. As a result of this identification they were jointly charged with the crime and subsequently hanged.

Since then, fingerprint identification has played an important role in many major crime investigations, including such cases as the Great Train Robbeiy in 1963 and, the sad case of Lesley Whittle, who was found brutally murdered in a drainage shaft in Kidsgrove in 1975 and, the intriguing case of the “Stockwell Strangler'” who was responsible for the murders of eleven pensioners, in 1986.

Apart from the technical assistance which is given by Fingerprint Staff in the investigation of crime, positive identification by means of fingerprints has given vital help in cases of serious accidents: for example train and plane crashes. They have also been valuable in identifying people who have suffered from amnesia.

Like any other major organisation, the Identification Services are always seeking ways of improving the service provided. Although computerisation leads to greater efficiency, it cannot replace the individual expertise of trained Identification Officers and the final decision as to identity which is always made by a qualified Fingerprint Expert.