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Home Office

Answer

Mr. McNamara: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what guidance is available for chief police officers in standardising procedures for assessing fingerprint evidence; how frequently have standards been changed since a standardised system was first introduced; and what standards are used by police forces of (a) other European Union member states and (b) the United States. [134881] Mr. Charles Clarke: The current requirement for presenting fingerprint evidence in court is based on at least 16 points of comparison. This dates from 1935. In 1988 the Home Office commissioned a review of this requirement. A report was published in Fingerprint World and the Journal of Fingerprint Identification and was placed in the Library. In 1994 the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) initiated a review which concluded that fingerprint evidence should in future be based upon the expert testimony of fingerprint officers rather than any particular fixed number of points of comparison. ACPO are planning to introduce a non-numerical standard in the new year, once they are satisfied that the appropriate quality assurance standards, inspection, training and competency testing regimes that will underpin the new standard are in place within force fingerprint bureaux. There is no single common standard in Europe. Norway has a non-numerical standard while others have numerical standards varying between eight and 16 characteristics. Europol are considering moving to a non-numerical standard. The United States uses a non-numerical fingerprint standard.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

134881; 356 c109W

Session

1999-00

Subjects

Fingerprints Evidence Identification of criminals

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk