Wednesday, July 21, 2010

To avoid ID, more are mutilating fingerprints: Police say scarring can thwart detection

The Boston Globe reports:
State Police detectives say they have seen a sevenfold spike in people arrested with mutilated fingertips, a disturbing trend they said reflects dire efforts to evade the harsher punishments that come with multiple arrests, to avoid deportation, or to fool the increasingly sophisticated computers that do most fingerprint checks.