Office of Justice Programs

The primary goal of this project was to provide a smart collection capability to gain enhanced information from chemicals extracted from fingermarks and smudges, with a focus on fatty acids that would expand the role of the traditional print collection and analysis process into an additional repository of probative information. To achieve this, latent prints were acquired from a diverse pool of individuals and a chemical print database was established to provide insight into fatty acid distribution in latent fingerprints. Personal characteristics of interest were age, gender, and ethnicity. This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 7