Facilitation of the ongoing development of fingerprint subject matter expertise

ABSTRACT

Although considerable expertise exists in the fingerprint domain, there are opportunities for improvements to be made regarding the development and maintenance of expertise, and in the reliable application of scientific methods and principles. Here, we propose a framework for the facilitation of ongoing development of fingerprint subject matter expertise in order to improve reliability and minimize errors. We describe two essential elements to support ongoing development: scientific leadership and continued education. Furthermore, we recommend that examiners should be exposed to opportunities for practice and feedback on the full myriad of tasks that they engage in (e.g. comparisons, report writing, court presentations, and evaluation of the latest scientific developments). These elements and the rationale behind them are discussed here in detail.

KEYWORDS:

• Fingerprints
• expert
• leadership
• education
• development
• professionalism

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Jim Pearson, Cate Quinn, Katie Nicol, Danielle Lynch, Christophe Champod and Nikola Osborne.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Victoria Police Forensic Services Department provided financial support for the conduct of the research, and assistance in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; and in the writing of the report. Netherlands Forensic Institute sponsored attendance for Caroline Gibb at the Australian & New Zealand Forensic Science Society’s 24th International Symposium on the Forensic Sciences which was held in Perth, Western Australia in September 2018.