America
Fingerprints remain stable over time: Study by Indian professor
New York, June 30
In what could put an end to
controversies surrounding admissibility of fingerprint evidence in
courts of law, a study by an Indian-origin researcher has found that
fingerprint pattern remains stable over time.
"We wanted to
answer the question that has plagued law enforcement and forensic
science for decades: Is fingerprint pattern persistent over time?" said
Anil Jain, professor at the Michigan State University.
"With
multilevel statistical modelling, fingerprint recognition accuracy
remains stable over time," Jain, an alumnus of Indian Institute of
Technology, (Kanpur) said.
Fingerprints have been used by law enforcement and forensics experts to successfully identify people for more than 100 years.
Though
fingerprints are assumed to be infallible personal identifiers, there
has been little scientific research to prove this claim to be true. As
such, there have been repeated challenges to the admissibility of
fingerprint evidence in courts of law.
The researchers used
fingerprint records of 15,597 subjects apprehended multiple times by the
Michigan State Police over a time span varying from five to 12 years.
The
results said fingerprint recognition accuracy does not change even as
the time between two fingerprints being compared increases.
Experts
agree that Jain's research addresses one of the most fundamental issues
in fingerprint identification and is of great importance to law
enforcement and forensic science.
"This study is one of the
fundamental pieces of research on a topic that has always been taken for
granted. The permanence of fingerprints has not been systematically
studied since the seminal work of Herschel was presented in Galton's
book: Finger Prints (1892, Macmillian & Co.)," professor Christophe
Champod from Universite de Lausanne, Switzerland, said.
"This
study is a monumental achievement and one that will benefit forensic
science teams worldwide," Captain Greg Michaud, director of the Forensic
Science Division, Michigan State Police, said.
The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.