Name: Fact check: Claim linking widespread fingerprint use to nearly identical inmates misses mark
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Fact check: Claim linking widespread fingerprint use to nearly identical inmates misses mark

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USA TODAYFingerprints are unique, and most law enforcement agencies rely upon them to identify people. But how did that practice get started?A Facebook post claims it was after two nearly identical men were sent to&nbsp;the same prison."These two men look nearly identical, they had the same name, and they were sent to the same prison," the reads. "Before imprisonment, they had never met. They are the reason why fingerprints are used to identify people."The post, which includes photos of two strikingly similar men dressed in the same clothes, accrued more than 100 shares and 1,400 reactions in less than a day.Analyzing someone's fingerprints&nbsp;is one form of biometrics,&nbsp;the use of people's physical or biological characteristics to identify them, &nbsp;No two people have the same fingerprints, not even identical twins.The story of William and Will West, the two men in the picture, is true. But experts say the odd circumstance wasn't as pivotal to the widespread adoption of fingerprinting as the post claims.Fact check:&nbsp;USA TODAY reached out to the user who posted the claim for comment.In 1903, Will West was taken to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary&nbsp;in Kansas, where the clerk at the admissions desk recognized him&nbsp;despite West never having stepped into&nbsp;the prison before, It turned out that West looked almost identical to William West, another inmate who had been there since 1901 serving a life sentence.&nbsp; at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary indicate there was a "Will West,"&nbsp;identified with number 927, and a "William West," with number 9372, between 1895 and 1931. Records don't show pictures or specify how long they were in prison.Both men shared almost the same Bertillon measurements, the FBI website said.The Bertillon System had become the standard method of identifying convicts throughout Europe and the United States in the late 1800s, according to &nbsp;The system took measurements of certain parts of the person's body, including the skull width, left middle finger and foot length. Along with photographs, there were also annotations of the person's hair and eye color.Will and William's fingerprints were taken to corroborate they were different people, the FBI wrote.Fingerprint analysis was in use well before the Leavenworth situation.The earliest use of fingerprints as a form of identification dates back to the Qin Dynasty in China around 221 B.C, according to the Justice Department's &nbsp;which describes itself as "the definitive guide to the science of fingerprint identification."Fingerprints continued to be used throughout time across Europe and Asia to identify people and sign documents, according to the Fact check:The use of fingerprints&nbsp;as part of criminal investigations around the world also predates the West case&nbsp;at Leavenworth.A murder case in Argentina in 1892 is considered the first homicide to be solved with the use of fingerprint evidence, according to the DOJ book. The country became the first to rely solely on fingerprints as a method of identification.The Facebook post&nbsp;says Will and William&nbsp;West are the reason fingerprints are now used to identify people,&nbsp;but historians say that's unlikely.Fingerprinting did begin at Leavenworth shortly after the West incident, but that timing was likely coincidental.In October 1904, two officials started fingerprinting all inmates at Leavenworth after seeing the demonstration of fingerprints at a 1904&nbsp;exposition in St. Louis, &nbsp;by&nbsp;&nbsp;a professor of criminology at the University of California-Irvine.&nbsp;He said the case didn't become well known until 1918."I think the claim that Leavenworth officials noticed the West's fingerprints in 1904 was actually a myth concocted after the fact in 1918," said Cole, who published about the history of fingerprints in criminal identification.Historian agreed, saying fingerprinting had already been adopted in the U.S. in the first years of the 1900s.Asen, whose research includes&nbsp;recent developments of fingerprinting in the U.S., told&nbsp;USA TODAY in an email&nbsp;the change to fingerprinting wasn't immediate across the country – the Bertillon method was kept in many places for another decade or two.The first systematic use of fingerprints in the U.S. dates back to 1902&nbsp;– a year before the West case. The New York Civil Service Commission started fingerprinting civil service applicants to "prevent importers from taking tests for otherwise unqualified people."&nbsp;Fact check:A year later, in 1903, the first systematic use of fingerprinting for criminal records was developed in New York with the creation of the "American Classification System," which kept records of all criminals in the state.The&nbsp;fingerprinting at Leavenworth in 1904 was&nbsp;the beginning of the U.S. government's fingerprint collection, the Justice Department's book says.Based on our research, we rate PARTLY FALSE the claim that two nearly identical male prisoners are the reason why fingerprints are used to identify people. The story of the two inmates is real,&nbsp;but the event didn't directly spur adoption of fingerprinting, according to historians. The technique had already been in use for decades around the world. And the use at Leavenworth specifically stemmed from a presentation at a fair, not this case.Thank you for supporting our journalism.&nbsp;You can&nbsp;Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.Featured Weekly Ad

USA TODAYFingerprints are unique, and most law enforcement agencies rely upon them to identify people. But how did that practice get started?A Facebook post claims it was after two nearly identical men were sent to&nbsp;the same prison."These two men look nearly identical, they had the same name, and they were sent to the same prison," the reads. "Before imprisonment, they had never met. They are the reason why fingerprints are used to identify people."The post, which includes photos of two strikingly similar men dressed in the same clothes, accrued more than 100 shares and 1,400 reactions...

Fact check: Claim linking widespread fingerprint use to nearly identical inmates misses mark

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