FINGER-PRINTING

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 April 1938, Page 10

FINGER-PRINTING

WHAT SCOTLAND YARD THINKS Finger-prints are still- proof of .youi identity: in other words the- ridges ami furrows of your lingers can still land you in gaol in spite of claims that an impression can be faked. I* can't, writes Richard Jones in: the “Daily Mail.” Scotland Yard. with 4ft years shrewd experience behind it, is todav more convinced than ever of the infallibility of its finger-print, system, the finest in the world. With the aid of a small mirror and a. pad of plastic substance a, man accused —and subsequently acquitted, as the evidence did not justify a- conviction —at. Croydon Quarter Sessions of breaking into a club pavilion asserted that. :i finger-print could be faked. He. pressed the pad against a warder's finger, applied the pad to the mirror, and the finger-print appeared on rile glass. “That,“lie declared io the Recorder, "is a finger-print of (his officer —and ho has. not touched the mirror.” But Scotland Yard still maintains that, ii, is impossible to fake or forge a. finger-print by any method which its experts' could not instantly detect. More than half a- million identifications have been made by finger-prints, and they have never yet been known to err.

■ Secrets by which Yard' men have (rapped and brought to justice' some of the cleverest criminals in the ! world I learned in the finger-print Imfcau at. Great. Scotland Yard. There are in existence 1 to-day some 11,(JOO.000 or more sets of fingerprints taken from convicted criminals of fill countries. The bureau has a, collection of more, than 600,000 sets, ’or 6.000.000 individual prints. More than 25.000 are added yearly, and an [expert can “read” them as 'easily as 'the average man leads a newspaper, i Frankly, finger-print experts would 'like to meet, any man who has found [a flaw in what has proved for forty years to be the ipost infallible identification system in the records of criminology. He would have to be an astonishingly clever man. It is contended that the method shown in the Croydon Court was so crude that, a. finger-print expert would have immediately detected' that it was not genuine. In this case, however,' the other evidence was also in the man’s favour.

Indeed, the chances of a finger-print, being forged are almost as remote as the chances of two flh’ger-pfiuts- being alike —and they were estimated by Sir Francis Gallon, pioneer of the finger-print system, at no less than one in 64.000.000,000. Certainly there is no record of any finger-print having been successfully faked in tiny part of the world. « THE FOUR POINTS.

There are four things which the intended forger would have to contend with if he planned l to fake a fingerprint. He would first of all have to obtain an exact replica, ot the fingerprint he proposes to forge; secondly, it must be left in a place where he Has no business to be; and thirdly, a cast-iron alibi might be established' by the man he was going to betray. A fourth point, too, is that he would have to ensure the “fake” being discovered by the investigating officers. The man who successfully overcame all four obstacles would indeed be a sup er-ci - i mi nal. I Even were ho able to obtain the finger-prints of a he planned' to “shop,” he has then to reproduce them and repeat the process before he can

obtain the correct impression, and by that tiffie, the experts say, the characteristics would be practically indecipherable. What does not appear to have been commen.ted' on at Croydon is the. fact that the finger-print on the mirror was a reverse impression. . The lines that were shown on the glass were not Hdges, but .furrows. A simple blit telling point when it conies to crime detection. Criminals have adopted the most amazing ruses in an effort' to beat the finger-print expert. All have failed.

Not. so long ago there’ was a case of an American gangster who obliterated the characteristics of his fingers with acid. He knew full well that if he was caught his finger-prints would have, identified him as one of the most callous of United States desper-, adoes. The skin of his burned, fingers grew again, and he thought his past was safe. He fell into the police net over a small crime; his “dabs” were takon, and found! to be identical with his original prints.! . No wonder the Yard), pins' its taith to the finger-print system.