Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification

Front Cover
Harvard University Press, Jun 30, 2009 - Social Science - 381 pages
No two fingerprints are alike, or so it goes. For nearly a hundred years fingerprints have represented definitive proof of individual identity in our society. We trust them to tell us who committed a crime, whether a criminal record exists, and how to resolve questions of disputed identity. But in Suspect Identities, Simon Cole reveals that the history of criminal identification is far murkier than we have been led to believe. Cole traces the modern system of fingerprint identification to the nineteenth-century bureaucratic state, and its desire to track and control increasingly mobile, diverse populations whose race or ethnicity made them suspect in the eyes of authorities. In an intriguing history that traverses the globe, taking us to India, Argentina, France, England, and the United States, Cole excavates the forgotten history of criminal identification--from photography to exotic anthropometric systems based on measuring body parts, from fingerprinting to DNA typing. He reveals how fingerprinting ultimately won the trust of the public and the law only after a long battle against rival identification systems. As we rush headlong into the era of genetic identification, and as fingerprint errors are being exposed, this history uncovers the fascinating interplay of our elusive individuality, police and state power, and the quest for scientific certainty. Suspect Identities offers a necessary corrective to blind faith in the infallibility of technology, and a compelling look at its role in defining each of us.

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Contents

Jekylls and Hydes
1
1 Impostors and Incorrigible Rogues
6
2 Measuring the Criminal Body
32
3 Native Prints
60
4 Degenerate Fingerprints
97
5 Fingerprinting Foreigners
119
6 From Anthropometry to Dactyloscopy
140
7 Bloody Fingerprints and Brazen Experts
168
10 Digital Digits
235
11 Fraud Fabrication and False Positives
259
12 The Genetic Age
287
Bodily Identities
303
Notes
313
Credits
347
Acknowledgments
349
Index
353

8 Dazzling Demonstrations and Easy Assumptions
190
9 Identification at a Distance
217

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Page 190 - ... powder is a demonstration impressive and convincing. It might well be that, until a juryman witnessed this demonstration, he would never believe that a plain porcelain slab would reveal the incriminating finger print, but having seen their own finger prints developed from invisible impressions on sheets of paper, it was no longer a question of speculation ; it was to the jurymen a fact as commonplace as radium, or wireless, or flying in the air.
Page 96 - I should say that one of the inducements to making these inquiries into personal identification has been to discover independent features suitable for hereditary investigation. It has long been my hope, though utterly without direct experimental corroboration thus far, that if a considerable number of variable and independent features could be catalogued, it might be possible to trace kinship with considerable certainty. It does not at all follow because a man inherits his main...
Page 190 - To a layman, unsophisticated and incredulous, the idea that a finger laid on a clean sheet of paper, leaving no visible trace, thereby leaves a signature upon that paper, absolutely and positively is a fact startling enough, but to see that finger print developed under the finger print powder is a demonstration impressive and convincing.
Page 165 - God's finger-print language,' the voiceless speech and the indelible writing imprinted on the fingers, hand palms, and foot soles of humanity by the all-wise Creator for some good and useful purpose in the structure, regulation, and wellbeing of the human body, has been utilized for ages before the civilization of Europe as a means of identification by the Chinese, and .who shall say is not...
Page 326 - Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974); Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Herbert G.
Page 83 - On the back of each slip is recorded the prisoner's name, with dates and full particulars of the case, and the slip thus filled up is forwarded to the Central Office. On receipt there, they are classified by one officer, and his work is tested by another, before they are filed in their respective collections and groups...
Page 28 - What is wanted is a means of classifying the records of habitual criminals, such that, as soon as the particulars of the personality of any prisoner (whether description, measurements, marks, or photographs) are received, it may be possible to ascertain readily, and with certainty, whether his case is already in the register, and if so, who he is.
Page 84 - ... slip the right thumb impression of which is a lateral pocket, and his eye then glances at the left thumb. If it is not a Twinned Loop, he passes on to the next slip, and finally stops at one which has the right thumb a Lateral Pocket, the left thumb a Twinned Loop, and the two ring fingers Central Pockets. He then compares the ridge characteristics of one or two impressions on the slip in his hand with the corresponding impressions of the slip in the Record, and if they agree he knows that his...
Page 84 - U/U (IO/IO) 14, and makes over the slip and the search form to the searcher, who first verifies the correctness of the formula, and then proceeds to search. The type in all the impressions is unmistakable, so there can be no doubt as to the correctness of the Primary Classification number...
Page 27 - ... select committee of the House of lords on prison discipline; and, of the report of a committee appointed by the secretary of state to inquire into the dietaries of county and borough prisons.

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