What led to the use of Fingerprinting for Personal Identification

Fingerprint, Los Angeles is rightly considered as the gold standard for personal identification. It owes its popular use to the fact that no two people share the same fingerprints; not even siblings and twins. Identifying criminals with their fingerprints is therefore, the most reliable method. In fact, the trustworthiness of this method has expanded its use beyond prisons and cops.

Employers, employment agencies and licensing authorities are using fingerprinting for background check of prospective applicants before making the final hiring and licensing decision. People with a criminal background are therefore, kept at bay, thereby leading to safe and secure workplaces.

The Initial Spark

However, although fingerprinting has been used for personal identification for over a century, what sparked its need was an interesting case that occurred at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.

A prisoner named Will West’s arrival in prison back in 1903 created a massive confusion. The records clerk at the prison confirmed that he had processed the same person two years ago for a crime. Will West continued to insist that he had never ever been there as a prisoner. The clerk, McClaughry checked the records; only to find a person named William West, whose photo was identical to Will West. Back then the Bertillon measurements (the dimensions of the key physical features) were used for identification of criminals.

Surprisingly, the Bertillon measurements of both William West and Will West were also the same, thus, revealing the shortcomings of the Bertillon system for personal identification. It was then that fingerprinting came into vogue for criminal identification.

Prior to this, the Bertillon system was used. Here’s the tale behind the birth of the Bertillon system.

The Bertillon system

Soon after the advent of photography, police kept images of rogues and criminals for identification. However, quick retrieval of important information continued to be challenging. Identifying a criminal from the countless images was undoubtedly tough. The need of the hour was a more organized system. This is when Alphonse Bertillon invented the Bertillon system. Here, images were recorded with measurements of the criminal’s key physical features.

The five important measurements included:

• Head length
• Head breadth
• Length of middle finger
• Length of left foot and
• Length of cubit (the measurement of the forearm from the elbow to the extremity of the middle finger)

The length of the little finger and eye color were also recorded. The records were further divided into “small”, “medium” and “large” to make recording and retrieval simple and easy. The system was extremely helpful in creating a record of unique identifiers that proved to be helpful in tracking inmates, suspects and repeat offenders.

Despite the difficulty in use, it was widely accepted as the standard method for keeping criminal records. The Bertillon system was standardized in 1888. It was used till 1903, when its shortcomings were exposed in the William West case. It was then that it came to light that physical measurements were not truly unique characteristics.

After almost 20 years, it was displaced by the easy-to-use and more reliable method of fingerprinting. What’s more, the advent of electronic fingerprinting through Live Scan has made capturing, recording and retrieval of fingerprints much easier and faster.

So, if you require fingerprinting for employment, licensing or others, Anshin Mobile Notary & Livescan is the perfect destination. For further details, contact them at www.anshinotary.com