Can other parts of a crime lab be as scientific as the DNA lab Essay

Can other parts of a crime lab be as scientific as the DNA lab - Essay Example Many police and anti-crime organizations the world over still rely on fingerprint evidence to track down a criminal but this technique has recently been put into doubt. Part of the reason is that new DNA technique is more accurate and reliable but most organizations lack the expensive equipment and expertise to do DNA testing. However, experts claim fingerprinting is not 100% fool-proof or reliable. Overview of fingerprinting – the first-ever precedent-setting criminal case in which the only evidence of fingerprints left at the crime scene was used to convict a suspect was the Rojas murders; this was a case in Necochea, Argentina back in 1892 in which the mother killed her two young children but originally accused her neighbor of the twin murders. However, when she was confronted with the incriminating evidence of bloody fingerprints on her door post, she admitted to the crime. Prior to fingerprinting, there was also the Bertillion system that had utilized a set of body measurements to identify and classify people; it was named after Alphonse Bertillion who was a French anthropologist. However, the famous case of Will West – William West in which two people had the same measurements, had almost the same names also and almost identical facial features (based from their photographs) called his systems reliability into question and caused doubts among criminologists. Fingerprinting was found to be reliable than the Bertillion system, in the same way that DNA testing is today more reliable than fingerprinting. Basic scientific principles – the method of fingerprinting was first developed by a great British anthropologist named Sir Francis Galton who first suggested the use of fingerprints based on the uniqueness of very minute details. It was another Englishman named Sir Edward Henry, assigned to Bengal, India as inspector general of the police during the