Adjunct Professor

Adjunct Professor

Fingerprints Identification it has been around for more than 100 years.   Is been used by many countries and governments as a means of identification to find and prosecute criminals all over the world. Fingerprints are the most commonly used forensic evidence in the world, but many have doubts about the reliability of fingerprints. The words "reliability" and "validity" have specific meanings to the scientific community. Reliability means consecutive tests brings the same results. Validity means that the results accurately show the external criteria being measured. Are Fingerprints really accurate? Should we convict someone based on fingerprints? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint
On one side of the coin we have organizations such as the International Association for Identification also known as (IAI) created in 1915 and the IAI’s Certified Latent print examiners program created in 1977.   They strongly agree with the science of fingerprints, and other organizations such Navy Seals and the FBI back them up. For example the Navy started using fingerprints in 1907, which is more than 100 years ago. In 2005 INTERPOL's computerized Fingerprint Identification System repository exceeded 50,000 sets fingerprints for vital international criminal records from 184 member countries.   More than 170 countries have 24 x 7 interface ability with INTERPOL expert fingerprint services.   http://www.onin.com/fp/fphistory.html   These databases are fundamental for many institutions, because fingerprints are not only used to find criminals, but also to identify victims of crimes. These worldwide databases, makes us be somehow more secure, because it is an easy way to connect crime scenes and criminals from all over the world.
On the other side of the coin we have those that were affected by errors in identifications of fingerprints. For example we have the case of Rene Ramon Sanchez, he was a legal Dominican immigrant, arrested twice with the charges of DUI,...