Are your fingerprints on file?

[AceLuby]

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I've been watching too much CSI and reading too many mysteries lately. They'll always mention AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System as a way to identify unknown persons.

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BTW, this doesn't exist IRL. There is no centralized computer with everyone's fingerprint, and there isn't a computer that can take a single whole fingerprint (none the less a partial) and find the person, or really even get a small group of people.

Fingerprints are all done by hand and are rarely used in any cases unless there is a lot of other evidence, which it shouldn't be necessary anyway. It is completely subjective.

They do file them, but there is no 'database' where a program will select the match based on another print.

This is the main reason why I started hating crime dramas, every story is based on this non-existant program and database.