Crim 304

Katerina Mayo

Student Number:220034250

University of New England

Assessment One

Unit Co-ordinator: Jenny Wise

Due Date: 1st of April 2010

Word Count: 2569

Is the concept of identity related to the creation of forensic identification
techniques? Consider the historical development of identification techniques and
the potential future for forensic identification techniques.

In today's society we are swamped with television shows and movies that demonstrate to us all of

the different methods used when trying to solve and catch the guilty person in a criminal case. The

main evidence that the police in these shows rely on is the forensic evidence that is left behind at

the crime scene. Having forensic evidence against a person is a vital part in any criminal case, it

unmistakenly puts the individual at the scene of the crime. This type of evidence has not always

been around and the type of forensic evidence they use now is is much more technical then when it

was first discovered. The need for forensic identification techniques was due to the simalarity of

some people in an appearance sense. Some people may look alike and therefore an innoccent person

may have been convicted of an offence which they did not committ. There needed to be a way to

make sure that they were getting the right person. There have been many different indentification

techniques used over time including the body being marked (mutilation, baldening or branding)

(Crim304 Topic Notes:2010), keeping photographs of offenders, anthropometry, dactylography

(fingerprinting) and DNA, these have all been significant methods used over time. Many of these

technological evolutions have occurred in Britain or the United States of America, but are used to

help identify criminals in almost all countries around the world.

In the medieval and early modern times eyewitness accounts were used and relied upon heavily to

identify a criminal. Due to the small sizes of the towns in which people lived in, it was common that

most people knew one another and so therefore eyewitness testimony was proof enough. To be
identified to the rest of the public as a criminal then the guilty person would have their body

'marked' in a certain way. This would include brandings which would be placed on a visible place of

the body such as the face, this would inform people of their criminal past and would help the police

to identify them as a repeat offender (Crim304 Topic Notes: 2010). The use of branding was also

used to shame the offender and bring shame upon the offenders family. Mutilation was also a way

in which an offender would be punished, for instance there are many stories of a theif having their

hand amputated as a form of punishment, the loss of a limb would also help people to identify

criminals and show who can be trusted or not. These types of punishments still continue to this day

in some countries, such as Iran.

As more and more people started to travel and move around, the reliablility of eyewitness testimony

began to be questioned. The arrival of 'strangers' into these towns made it impossible for everyone

to know one another and therefore a new system of identifying people was needed (Hoover: 1929).

Strangers become to be more of a threat because they were unknown to people. Due to the

increasing amount of people 'on the move' governments began to panic. In 1792, France was the

first country to introduce identity documents for people who wanted to travel to and from France

(Crim304 Topic Notes: 2010).

In the early part of the 18th century, some police departments in Europe employed officers with

excellent visual memory to try and mentally record the faces of certain criminals and the crimes that

they had committed (Hoover:1929). It is easy to see how this method could have produced many

mistakes. Governments felt that it was strongly needed to know who were habitual (repeat)

offenders or first time offenders. Habitual offenders would therefore receive a harsher penalty then

a first time offender, this played an extremely significant role in the changed momentum of

identification (Crim304 Topic Notes: 2010).

The next way used in helping to identify criminals and repeat offenders was the introduction of the

photograph. Photographs of prisoners started to be used in Britain and France in the 1840's. In

England from 1862 photographs of criminals were sent to Scotland yard, and these photographs
formed the 'Rogues Gallery' (Metropolitan Police History Archives). The Rogues Gallery is defined

as “a collection of photographs of known criminals, used by police to identify suspects” ( Oxford

Dictonary). The Rogues Gallery can be looked at as one of the first criminal identification databases

in history,it was abled to be expanded, adding the descriptions of the type of crime the person had

committed and the likely hood of them offending again (Williams & Paul: 2008: 21). Also anyone

who received a sentence of incarceration of more then one month were also added to these records.

These records gave police officers a starting point to identifying a criminal, they were able to read

these files and come up with a suspects list based of previous offences, and then were able to use

the photograph to show witnesses to see if they recognised anyone (Williams & Johnson: 2008: 22).

A young man by the name of Alphonse Bertillon, who started off working as an assistant clerk in

the criminals records office of the Paris police department saw how the rogues gallery often failed

to identify a person. Most of the photographs where of poor quality and some of the criminals

distorted their faces, so an accurate identification was often hard (Fisher: 2008). Bertillon started

thinking of different ways of being able to identify a person without using their name or a

photograph (as people tended to lie upon being arrested and often the photographs were not stored

properly). He came up with the concept of anthropometry, a scientific measurement used to identify

criminals (Fisher: 2008) and he perfected his theory in 1882. This theory was based on the

propostion that certain body parts remain constant throughout adulthood and these were the parts

that would be meausred and used to identify a person. The parts of the body that were meausred (11

measurements were taken all up), was “height, the length of the outer arms, ear, left foot, left

middle finger, left little finger, left foreram and the width of the cheek and the head” (Hoover:

1929), these measurements were added to a description of characteristics that the offender

possessed. Bertillon establised certain rules that an officer had to abide by when recording a

criminals decription, weight, colour of hair, eyes and complexion, also the inclusion of any scars,

marks, moles and tattoos (the location and size of these also had to be recorded (Hoover: 1929).

Bertillon developed the first portrait parle`, which included a photograph of the face of the offender
and also a right profile shot, and also the 11 measurements. This become the basis of our modern

police records. Like the idenfication techniques before this, it had it's problems and wasn't 100%

reliable. It was only slight differences in measurements that could identify someone and have them

sentenced as guilty, it to be made sure all the measurements were done in the same manner, which

they weren't, some people took loose measurements while others took close measurements. Also

this method of measuring was not an effective way when dealing with persons under the age of

twentyone or over the age of sixty because during these years the body is constantly changing

(therefore the measurements would also change ) (Hoover: 1929). So again a new way of being able

to identify criminals and people was needed.

Throughout history it has been shown that people have observed that the patterns on each persons

fingertips were different from everyone else's. The history of dactyloscopy (fingerprinting) has been

well documented and was not only used a method identifying criminals but were also used in India

in the 19th century as a way of contolling the hostile natives (Crim304 Topic Notes: 2010). There

has been a dispute among three men as to who was to use the fringerprinting method first, Francis

Galton, William Herschel and Henry Faulds all claim to have been the first to use fingerprints as an

identification tool (McCartney: 2006: 3).It was Henry Faulds though who, published a “Guide to

finger-print identification” in Nature in 1905, and it was his “classification system that saw the

adoption of fingerprints as the identification evidence of choice for the legal system (McCartney:

2006:3). Fingerprints have two roles within the criminal justice system, the first is to identify

individuals before the police to be able to match them with their criminal record, and the second is

to compare with latent prints located at the scene of a crime (McCartney: 2006: 4). In 1880, Doctor

Faulds (who was working in a hospital in Japan at the time) did experiments which established that

each individual had unique fingerprints and that they remained constant throughout a persons life ,

also he found that if the ridges (fingerprints) were removed (burnt, removed with a pumice stone or

acid) the very same patterns grew back (Hoover: 1929). Fingerprints as a form of identification

were given a trial in London in 1901. This new method proved to be an instant success with the
identification of 1722 repeat offenders in the first year, compared to the 642 identifications made by

Bertillonage (Crim304 Topic Notes: 2010). When fingerprints were first used in criminal

investigations, there was no set way to determine a match. A numerical standard was starting to

evolve so that when matching a set of prints, it could be done to a certain degree of accuracy. At

first practitioners believed that finding 12 similar ridge characteristics was enough to declare a

positive match. In 1924 New Scotland Yard adopted a 16 point standard, not all police forces used

the new 16 point method until 1953 when a common approach was agreed and this resulted in the

National Fingerprint Standard (McCartney: 2006: 88). Matches could be made with only 8 points of

similarity and therefore people argued the need for a point system and especially one as high as 16.

On the 11th of June 2001 the 16 point standard was offically replaced by a non-numerical system

(McCartney: 2006: 90). The FBI in America currently has over 250 million sets of fingerprints

records in a computer datsbase known as IAFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification

System) (Komar & Buiskra: 2008). The use of dactyloscopy is still very important in criminal

investigations today and is continually used to help identify criminals.

With the advancement of technology, a new way of identifying people came in the form of DNA

(Deoxyribonucleric Acid). DNA was dicovered in the 1920's and up until this time, bloodstains of a

human were hard to be distinguished from that of an animal. Doctor Edmond Locard discovered the

Law of Contact. He found that when something came into contact with another thing, it left behind

some evidence of the initial contact. If two people brush shoulders when they are walking down the

street, they may not know it, but a strand of hair or skin particles could end up on the other person,

showing that they had made contact. In 1985, UK scientist Alex Jefferys and his team discovered

that sections of the Genome Sequence were individually unique, excluding identical twins

(Crim304 Topic Notes: 2010). This new method was given the name 'DNA fingerprinting', to try

and highlight how much this new technique could benefit the process of identification. As DNA is

found within a person and cannot be changed or manipulated, and everyone has their own unique

DNA, it is the purest form of identification. The skin, semen, saliva, hair and blood all have the a
persons DNA on them. If a single strand of hair is left at a crime scene, then forensic scientist can

test the strand for DNA and if they find a match then they have a suspect. All DNA samples

gathered at a crime scene are added and scanned through the NDNAD (National DNA Database), if

the offender is on the database then a match will show up.

In 1989 the use of DNA was put to the test in England in the Pitchfork case. In 1983 and 1986, two

young girls were found sexually assualted and murdered in Narborough. The police were convinced

that both murders were committed by the same person even though they were three years apart.

Rodney Buckland admitted to the murder of one of the girls, but not of the other, and since the

police were so convinced it was the same person who had committed both murders, they asked Alex

Jeffreys to perform DNA tests on both of the crimes, and the results proved that Buckland was not

the killer. Because DNA was still very new, the police were very unsure about using it, but they

conducted a DNA mass screen of all adult men in the area of Narborough (this involved over 4000

men) but came up with no matches. A year later a man was overheard bragging about how he had

been paid by Colin Pitchfork to give a DNA sample under his name, the police later DNA tested the

real Colin Pitchfork and he was a match to both murders and was sentenced to prison (McCartney:

2006: 38).

There were certain rules as to how DNA could be collected and it wasn't until the 1990's that these

rules were extended and circumstances as to how DNA could be taken were introduced. Before a

person could plead the 5th amendment (not giving evidence that will imcriminate themseleves) and

would refuse to give DNA. Later police were allowed to be able to take inobtrusive DNA samples

(saliva swaps of the mouth). Sometimes when a suspect is told that their DNA has been found at a

crime scene, they may confess because of the DNA evidence against them.

There was a problem with DNA though, many investigators relied too much upon it. If they had

DNA from a crime scene and then found a match, they generally stopped looking for any other

suspects. If while in a police interview a police officer tells the suspect that they have their DNA

and where it is the suspect is able to explain away why the DNA was there. Also not all criminals
are on the NDNAD.

With all the advancements in technology, it is hard to say what to expect in the future for

identification techniques. At some schools children have to have ID cards and have to show them

everyday, while other schools use fingerprint or iris scans. It may come to the point where everyone

has their fingerprints scanned and DNA taken and put on world wide databases. This would enable

a sure match to any DNA collected at a crime scene, put could also be seen as an invasion to

peoples privacy. There is a huge future in identification techniques, it's just a waiting game for them

to be discovered.

As seen, the need for different identification tecniques over time are due to the fact that each person

is an idividual and the need to identify criminals as soon as possible is needed to ensure public

safety. The identification techniques mentioned were all successful because people are idividuals

and are able to be identified through unique traits such as fingerprints and DNA. If people all had

the same fingerprints and DNA then these methods would be useless and techniques such as

branding and multilation may still be used to help identify repeat offenders.
 Reference List

Crim304 Topic Notes by Jenny Wise 2010

Hoover, J. Edgar. 1929 “Criminal Identification – Annals of the American Academy

of Political and Social Science” Vol. 146 pp.205-213

www.met.police.uk/history/archives

Oxford Dictionary

Williams, R. & Johnson, P. 2008 “Genetic Policing: The Use of DNA in Criminal

Investigations” pp.19-36

Fisher, J. 2008 “Alphonse Bertillon: The Father of Criminal Identification”

McCartney, C. 2006 “Forensic Identification and Criminal Justice: Forensic science,

justice and risk”

Komar, D. & Buiskra, J, E. 2008 “Forensic Antropology: Contemporary Theory and

Practice” pp. 208- 238