Vol. 12 No. 12 (December 2002)

 

SUSPECT IDENTITIES: A HISTORY OF FINGERPRINTING AND CRIMINAL IDENTIFICATION by Simon A. Cole. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. 369 pp. Paper $17.95. ISBN 00-674-01002-7.

 

Reviewed by Craig Hemmens, Department of Criminal Justice Administration, Boise State University, chemmens@boisestate.edu .

 

In January, 2002, a United States District Court judge in Philadelphia initially ruled that fingerprint evidence did not meet the evidentiary standard required of scientific evidence set forth by the United States Supreme Court in DAUBERT V. MERRELL DOW PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. (1993). The judge was concerned by the evidence of high error rates on proficiency exams for fingerprint examiners and the lack of empirical data demonstrating that fingerprint tests were accurate and reliable. While he later relented and allowed the introduction of fingerprint evidence, his decision to reconsider the scientific validity of fingerprinting sent shockwaves through the legal community. SUSPECT IDENTITIES, written by one of the witnesses who testified at the trial in Philadelphia, is a timely and thought-provoking examination of an understudied area of criminal justice, the so-called “science” of fingerprinting. Cole, a Ph.D. in science and technology studies, describes the history of fingerprinting and its acceptance as a valid form of evidence in the early part of this century.

 

In the first portion of the book Cole provides a history of fingerprinting. He notes that as society became more urban, governments were faced with a problem created by the new mass society—how to determine the identity of persons not personally known to government agents. The earliest identifications were based simply on personal knowledge—there was no system of personal identification, no driver’s license photos, no social security numbers. Relying on personal knowledge worked well enough when towns were small and isolated and people rarely traveled far from home, but as people moved into cities, it became more difficult to identify people.

The need to be able to identify people accurately first developed in civil matters, such as identifying workers picking up their paychecks. The use of fingerprinting for identity verification was first developed in India by a British official, William Herschel. Soon, however, law enforcement officials became interested in developing a system for identifying criminals. The development of criminal identification systems such as fingerprinting mirrored the development of modern police departments. Police departments realized they needed to be able to identify recidivist, or “career” criminals. Personal recognition was no longer very effective, as the numbers of criminals increased. In Britain in particular, the decision to abandon transport to Australia in favor of prison as a sanction for criminal offences led to the creation of a large recidivist criminal population. In 1869 the Habitual Criminals Act required judges to take past crimes into account in passing sentence; this further increased the need to know who was who.

 

Fingerprinting was initially used by law enforcement simply as a means of identifying who had been arrested or incarcerated. Only later did the possibility of using fingerprints as a means of solving crimes develop. Henry Faulds published the first article on using fingerprints in criminal investigations in the scientific journal NATURE, in 1880. Francis Galton, the father of eugenics, subsequently developed a system (still in use today) for numbering the ridges on the tips of the fingers, which made it easier to use fingerprint information. Mark Twain even wrote a mystery novel, PUDD’NHEAD WILSON, which employed fingerprints as a key plot device, in 1894. The first criminal trial in which forensic fingerprint evidence was used to help identify the criminal took place in India, in 1898. The first United States trial using fingerprint evidence occurred in 1910. By the 1920s fingerprints were regularly being used in criminal courts, and by 1930 fingerprint evidence was routinely accepted by judges and juries in every state.

 

Fingerprinting developed about the same time as anthropometry, a system of bodily measurement whose main proponent was Alphonse Bertillon. The Bertillon system used eleven bodily measurements and body marks/scars to identify individuals. Anthropometry developed at about the same time as the school of criminal anthropology, promulgated by the Italian scientist Cesare Lombrosso. Lombrosso believed in the notion of a “born criminal” and the idea that such persons could be identified by certain bodily characteristics such as large brows and hunched shoulders.

The Bertillon system was for many years seen as more scientific than fingerprinting. This was because the Bertillon system utilized a precise measurement system while fingerprinting relied on the interpretation of patterns. The Bertillon system gradually fell out of favor, however, as fingerprinting was easier to do and better suited to deal with situations where individuals closely resembled each other. The William West case in the United States in 1903 helped foster support for fingerprinting over the Bertillon system. This case involved two youthful inmates in a Kansas prison who appeared to be twins, but claimed not to know each other and who had different fingerprints. Prison authorities were unable to tell them apart via bodily measurements, but were able to distinguish them via their fingerprints.

 

The use of fingerprints in forensic matters represented a shift from determining criminality as indicated by the body (i.e. criminal anthropology) to using the body to prove criminality. Fingerprints could be used not just as a system of identification but as a means of solving crimes. The major issue was the use and interpretation of latent prints—those found at a crime scene. There is a world of difference between interpreting a full set of ten fingerprints taken in a police station and a single full or even partial print lifted from a crime scene. Fingerprint forgery, examiner incompetence, and varying standards for determining fingerprint “expertise” and for establishing a match cloud the issue. Furthermore, the claim that no two fingerprints are alike has never been proven, and, even more importantly, never been subjected to rigorous scientific examination.

 

After detailing the history of fingerprinting, Cole moves on to what is the most interesting part of the book, the debate over the validity of fingerprinting as science. Fingerprinting has been accepted, Cole argues, simply through a lack of contradiction and relentless repetition. Perhaps even more important factors, which he alludes to but never explicitly identifies, were timing and necessity—fingerprinting was adopted during the Progressive era, a time which saw the endorsement of experts and technicians and the “good” of new technology. In addition, the rise of the urban state and the increase in crime during this period greatly increased the need to be able to identify people and solve crimes.

 

Expert witnesses can have a powerful impact on a jury. Their testimony that no two fingerprints are alike, and that the fingerprint found at a crime scene matches that of the defendant, often ends a case. Yet it is far from clear that fingerprinting is a science, or that all fingerprint “experts” do in fact possess recognized expertise. Cole discusses the notion of “Black-boxing”—a sociology of technology term for taking a technical process for granted. An example is the truism that no two fingerprints are alike. We assume fingerprinting works, but how do we know it does? What constitutes a match? France and Australia require 12 identical points; Italy requires 16; while standards in United States vary by and within states.

 

The early refusal of juries to treat fingerprinting as valid evidence gave way by the end of the 1920s to almost universal, unquestioned acceptance of the technique. As fingerprinting grew in both use and acceptance, file centers were created in local police agencies and throughout the United States. The FBI currently has a fingerprint database containing more than forty three million sets. Fingerprinting has become an accepted and widely used criminal investigation tool.

 

The issue today is not so much whether two fingerprints could ever be exactly alike, but whether they might be similar enough to fool an expert. Cole notes several recent cases, such as the McKie case in Scotland, indicating that this does happen on occasion. A recent national proficiency test found the misidentification rate to be as high as 20%. In a recent FBI test, examiners at fifty-three agencies were asked to compare a defendant’s prints with two latent prints found at a crime scene. Only twenty-one agencies said both prints matched; while eight could not match one print and six could not match the other.

 

Cole next links the debate over the science of fingerprinting to a discussion of the legal standards for the admission of scientific evidence at trial enumerated in DAUBERT. In that case the Supreme Court determined that the old legal standard of “general acceptance in the particular scientific community” was no longer sufficient. The high court ruled that in addition to “general acceptance” there must be evidence of peer review of the scientific technique, hypothesis testing, and a known error rate. Several scientific techniques, including fingerprinting, may not meet this new standard, as the district court judge in Philadelphia initially ruled.  Cole uses the discussion of the legal standards for the admissibility of scientific evidence as an opportunity to delve into broader issues, including how our society views science, whether it is appropriate to use one’s biology as identity, and the unintended/unfortunate consequences or spin-offs of using biology as a proxy for identity, such as eugenics, the belief in “born criminals,” sterilization of “feebleminded” women in the 1920s, and the current search for a so-called “criminal gene.” This is a fascinating, and at times troubling, discussion of the ways society has misused science.

 

Cole also discusses the possible replacement for fingerprinting, the use of DNA evidence. While he attempts to compare the development of fingerprinting and DNA testing, this chapter comes across as a bit of an afterthought. While Cole does not quite make his case here, this is but a minor blemish on an otherwise outstanding work.  SUSPECT IDENTITIES is a fascinating social history, with an excellent discussion of the legal and ethical implications of using biology as a proxy for identity. Cole’s history of the development of fingerprinting provides strong support for his argument that as science became and becomes increasingly accepted in modern society, support for new scientific techniques is more easily established, and the public tends to rely too heavily on science as the solution to almost any problem. It is important not to let science triumph because it is science, but rather because it is right. This is an area of particular concern in the criminal justice system, where sociological explanations for criminal behavior (such as unemployment, child abuse and neglect, and differential opportunity structures) are in danger of being dismissed in favor of biological explanations. This book should be required reading for sociologists, criminologists, legal scholars, attorneys and judges.

 

REFERENCES

DAUBERT V. MERRELL DOW PHARMACEUTICALS, INC., 509 U.S. 579(1993).

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Copyright 2002 by the author, Craig Hemmens