History of forensic and science - Essay Example

Later on, Locard came up with his Exchange Principle which claimed ‘any action of an individual, and obviously, the violent action constituting a crime, cannot occur without leaving a trace’ (Locard, La police 8.). In fact, Locard also made significant contributions in improving dactylography, the science that deals with fingerprints. In this connection, he started the science of poroscopy, or the study of fingerprint pores and the impressions produced by the pores. One of his important studies was that if there are at least 12 specific points identical between two fingerprints, that is a positive identification.

Thus, for the first time, this enabled police forces to use fingerprints to identify criminals. In the year 1929, Locard jointly with various other criminalists started the International Academy of Criminalistics in Switzerland. However, this initiative could not withstand the turbulence of the Second World War. In fact Dr. Locard is called the Father of Ridgeoscopy because advancing from the observation by Sir Francis Galton that there are variations in individual friction ridge path, he managed to define those friction ridge events successfully.

This enabled the area to evolve into Ridgeology , enabling police forces to do effective fingerprint verification. According to Locard, as published in the year 1914, if more than 12 concurring points are visible and if the print is sharp, the positive identification of fingerprints is indisputable. However, if 8 out of the 12 concurring points are visible, it should be considered as a borderline case, and in such cases, the identity will have to depend on other factors like the sharpness of fingerprints, the rarity of the fingerprint type, the presence of the center of the figure and the triangle in the exploitable part of the print, the effective use of poroscopy, and the degree of clarity visible in the width of the papillary ridges and valleys followed by the line directions, and