Advances in Fingerprint Technology.pdf

Preface
The first edition of this book was published as a volume in the Elsevier Series
in Forensic and Police Science. Elsevier’s book business has since been
acquired by CRC Press LLC and CRC has supported and extended their
forensic science program. We thank CRC for the opportunity to revise
Advances in Fingerprint Technology to this second edition.
Fingerprints is an area in which there have been many new and exciting
developments in the past two decades or so, although advances in DNA
typing have tended to dominate both the forensic science literature and
popular information about advances in forensic sciences. Particularly in the
realm of methods for developing latent prints, but also in the growth of
imaging and AFIS technologies, fingerprint science has seen extraordinary
breakthroughs because creative applications of principles derived from physics
and organic chemistry have been applied to it.
Fingerprints constitute one of the most important categories of physical
evidence. They are among the few that can be truly individualized. Fingerprint
individuality is widely accepted by scientists and the courts alike. Lately there
have been some modest challenges to whether a firm scientific basis exists
for fingerprint individuality, based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1993 Daubert
v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. decision [113 S.Ct. 2786 (1993)] in which
new standards for the admissibility of scientific evidence were articulated for
the first time. The issues underlying these challenges are treated in Chapters 9
and 10. A perspective on the history and development of fingerprinting and
the fundamentals of latent print identification are treated in Chapters 1 and
2, revised from the first edition. Latent fingerprint residue chemistry, on
which every latent print detection technique is ultimately based, is covered
in detail in a new Chapter 3. Chapter 4, the survey of latent print development
methods and techniques, has been revised and updated. Chapter 5 on
ninydrin analogues has been revised and updated. New chapters on physical
developers (Chapter 7) and photoluminescent nanoparticles (Chapter 6) are
added. AFIS system technology and fingerprint imaging are now widespread
and may be considered mature. They are covered in a new Chapter 8.