Re: do your fingerprints change if your fingers get burned?

Hi Jackie

To win your side of the debate, you are going to have to say how much!

If the burn destroys layers of skin, the finger-prints will change and 
the damage, and later scar tissue, will be obvious to any investigator.
So rather than burn ALL your fingers (very painful, I'd advise wearing 
gloves!

Given long enough, your healed, regrown, fingerporints will match the old 
ones within current state-of-art of automated finger-print matching. Of 
course by then finger-print matching techniques will have improved too.

As a strategy to avoid detection, it is rather poor. Damaged finger-
prints left at the scene would stand out a mile!


You might find the following of interest:
All about Fingerprints and Other Impressions by Katherine Ramsland
"He located a team of plastic surgeons who also had criminal records and 
paid them $5000 to alter his facial appearance and burn off his 
fingerprints with ..."
www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/fingerprints/3.html  

Booksontape.com : Blind Alley by Iris Johansen
"Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan meets her greatest challenge yet: a killer 
who leaves his victims faceless and with burned fingerprints. ..."
www.booksontape.com/bookdetail.cfm/6511  

mouser.org
"Wasn't there some fugative like in the 30's or something that used acid 
to burn off his finger prints? I think I remember reading that, like he 
almost died ..."
mouser.org/log/archives/2004/03/000426.html  

Fingerprints and Scarring
"I have read that fingerprints can survive Burn and Scaring. How can this 
be true? The definition of a scar is a fibrous connective tissue that 
forms at the ..."
www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/mole00/mole00292.htm  

Biometrical Fingerprint Recognition: Don't Get Your Fingers Burned
"A copy of that article "Biometrical Fingerprint Recognition: Don't Get 
Your Fingers Burned" (which received the "best paper" award at that 
conference) is ..."
cryptome.org/fake-prints.htm  

John