Police Procedure

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deleted-192826
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:23 pm
Occupation: Student: 9th Grade
Project Question: Does wearing gloves when processing a fingerprint preserve the clarity and identifiableness of the fingerprint?
Project Due Date: February 10, 2014
Project Status: I am finished with my experiment and analyzing the data

Police Procedure

Post by deleted-192826 »

Hello --

My science fair project is on forensic science, specifically fingerprints and gloves worn at a crime scene. Do you know anything about the handling of evidence or the rules of processing a crime scene that I can use to guide more of my research.

Thank you -- nellienelson10
SciB
Expert
Posts: 2071
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:00 am
Occupation: Retired molecular biologist, university researcher and teacher
Project Question: I wish to join Scibuddies to be able to help students achieve the best science project possible and to understand the science behind it.
Project Due Date: n/a
Project Status: Not applicable

Re: Police Procedure

Post by SciB »

Hi Nellie and welcome to Scibuddies,

I am a scientist, not a CSI, but I do know basically how investigation has to be done to preserve evidence. Wearing latex gloves sounds like a good idea to prevent contamination with one’s own fingerprints or DNA. Are you thinking of a specific question with regard to fingerprints? I am familiar with extracting and analyzing DNA from a variety of sources and I know how carefully this must be done or the evidence is worthless.

I’m sure there are whole libraries written about forensic analysis and how to obtain the evidence without compromising it. If you could give us a more specific and less broad question, we could help you better.

Best wishes,

Sybee
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