Date of Award

Spring 5-2018

Degree Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Criminal Justice

First Advisor

Dean Bertram

Advisor Department

Criminal Justice

Abstract

While much research exists on latent fingerprints, there is a lack of research on palm prints. This study aims to discover how the variable of pressure affects the distortion of latent palm prints recovered from a crime scene. This study used various development techniques to extract prints from aluminum Coca-Cola cans, white copy paper, and household steak knives. The collected prints were scanned into the AFIX Tracker system and an auto-extract number, based on the number of minutiae points, was generated automatically from the system. These auto-extract numbers were then compared to a baseline, which consisted of an average of 400 perfectly rolled unknown palm prints. There was a significantly lower number of minutiae points from the partial prints that were lifted than the average of the 400 that were perfectly rolled. The analysis of the collected data revealed that, for the most part, when a medium amount of pressure is applied to an object, it yields a higher auto-extract number than when a low or high amount of pressure is applied.

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