FBI Fingerprint’s Timeline: Evolution of Biometric Identification

1896: The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) established the National Bureau of Criminal Identification to compile and exchange criminal identification data.

1902: The first known systematic use of fingerprints in the United States was installed by Dr Henry P. DeForrest to prevent applicants from having better-qualified persons take their tests. This was established with the New York Civil Service Commission.

1904: The United States Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, adopted the fingerprint system. John Ferrier and Major M.W. McClaughry began fingerprinting all inmates at the federal prison. These fingerprint records became the beginning of the U.S. Government’s fingerprint collection.

1924: Establishment of the FBI’s Identification Division by Acting Director J. Edgar Hoover. Fingerprint files from Leavenworth prison and the National Bureau of Criminal Identification were consolidated, totalling 810,188.

1933: The Civil Identification Section was established within the Identification Division. The United States Civil Service Commission turned over more than 140,000 fingerprint cards of government employees and applicants.

1933: A Latent Fingerprint Section within the Identification Division was established. Specialized technicians make technical examinations of latent or inked prints.

1944: The Identification Division grew so large it had to be moved to a federal armoury larger than a football field.

1958: The Identification Division received its 150 millionth fingerprint, submitted by a Boy Scout for his merit badge.

1972: The prototype automatic fingerprint reader, called FINDER, was delivered and installed at the FBI. FINDER was set to be used by the Identification Division in daily production operations to duplicate human technician’s visual and mental processes.

1983: The Identification Division completed the conversion of its criminal fingerprint searching from manual to automated searching. This allows the division to perform computerized fingerprint searches on virtually all the fingerprint cards it receives.

1990: Congress appropriates $185 million for the first three years of Identification Division’s Revitalisation & Relocation (R&R) Project funding. FBI Director Sessions and Robert C. Byrd determine that West Virginia is the best new location for the Identification Division.

1992: The Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS) forms within FBI Headquarters alongside the Identification Division. The Latent Fingerprint Section (Disaster Squad) gets realigned with the Laboratory Division from the Identification Division. Three hundred employees are hired to work at CJIS Complex in West Virginia.

1997: The CJIS Wide Area Network (WAN) was installed in all 50 states, and the backlog reached 2.9 million fingerprint cards, an all-time high.

1999: Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) becomes operational, and the Bureau identifies its one-millionth fingerprint transaction.

2000: The FBI’s Flyaway teams acquire the technical capability to capture remote locations internationally and submit them electronically into IAFIS.

2004: Department of Defense leadership authorises a biometric identification system as a pilot effort. Thus, the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), which stores, searches and matches biometric data, was born. ABIS was modelled after the development of the Next Generation Identification System.

2007: CJIS Division provides its first records testimony in a court of law. In this landmark case, an FBI fingerprint examiner provided expert witness testimony in the case ‘State of Illinois v. Cornell Drapes’. Cornell Drapes, on trial for murder in Chicago, was convicted based on this expert testimony.

2013: The National Palm Print Service (NPPS) is established, dramatically improving law enforcement access to palm prints previously stored within local, state, tribal, and federal databases.

2014: The FBI announced its Next Generation Identification (NGI) System had achieved full operational capacity. The NGI System expanded the Bureau’s biometric identification capabilities, ultimately replacing IAFIS while adding new services and capabilities.

2015: The FBI dedicated its new 360,000-square-foot Biometric Technology Center (BTC), located on the campus of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The BTC facility enables the CJIS Division to advance biometric technologies.

2017: A fingerprint image taken from a digital photograph was submitted to the NGI System from the Texas Department of Public Safety. The search produced an investigative lead and helped solve a child exploitation case of a predator who was taking and sharing child pornography.

2019: The NGI Interstate Photo System grows to 93 million civil photos, criminal photos, scars marks and tattoo images. Of this number, over 38 million criminal photos are available for facial recognition searching by law enforcement agencies.

2020: The NGI Iris Service reached full operational capability following a robust and successful pilot program. The iris image repository contains 1.38 million enrollments submitted from federal, state, and local databases.

2023: NGI Missing Persons Services was launched to provide fingerprint-based information to identify unknown decedents and resolve missing person cases.

2024: The National Palm Print Service repository maintains more than 30 million unique palm print identities and more than 66 million individual palm prints tied to those identities.