Quantitative assessment of evidential weight for a fingerprint comparison. Part II: A generalisation to take account of the general pattern

• Published in: Forensic science international Vol. 214; no. 1; pp. 195 - 199
• Main Authors: Neumann, Cedric, Evett, Ian W, Skerrett, James E, Mateos-Garcia, Ismael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ireland Ltd 10.01.2012; Elsevier; Elsevier Limited; Elsevier Sequoia S.A
• Subjects: Assessments; Biological and medical sciences; Crime; Dermatoglyphics; Evidence; Fingerprinting; Fingerprints; Fingers; Fingers & toes; Forensic medicine; Forensic science; Forensic sciences; Forensic Sciences - methods; General aspects; Humans; Investigative techniques, diagnostic techniques (general aspects); Likelihood Functions; Likelihood ratio; Medical sciences; Pathology; Prints; Probability; Public health. Hygiene; Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine; Ridges; Software packages; Studies; Weight of evidence; Fingerprints; Likelihood ratio; Weight of evidence; Fingerprint; Forensic science; Legal medicine; Fingerprint method; Evidence-based practice; Forensic aspect; Comparative study; Weight; Quantitative analysis
• ISSN: 0379-0738; 1872-6283
• DOI: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2011.08.008

Abstract The authors have proposed a quantitative method for assessing weight of evidence in the case where a fingermark from a crime scene is compared with a set of control prints from the ten fingers of a suspect. The approach is based on the notion of calculating a Likelihood Ratio (LR) that addresses a pair of propositions relating to the individual who left the crime mark. The current method considers only information extracted from minutiae, such as location, direction and type. It does not consider other information usually taken into account by fingerprint examiners, such as the general pattern of the ridge flow on the mark and the control prints. In this paper, we propose an improvement to our model that allows a fingerprint examiner to take advantage of pattern information when assessing the evidential weight to be assigned to a fingerprint comparison. We present an extension of the formal analysis proposed earlier and we illustrate our approach with an example.