Identifying Fingerprint Patterns - Types of Fingerprints

Emii December 15, 2007

In days gone by, many of the civilizations used tattooing, branding and even maiming as a means to identify people and criminals. Although most of us have always been aware of the basic fact that each and every individual possesses a unique set of ridges on the hands and fingers, making use of these prints to identify criminal persons was not really accepted or fully understood till the early 1900’s.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation established its first fingerprint identification division in the year 1924, with a collection of 810,188 fingerprint files taken mostly from the Leavenworth Penitentiary. These files became more and more important with the emergence of an increasing number of intellectual criminals who crossed all legal and state lines.

Today, the FBI has in possession more than 250 millions different sets of fingerprint records. This collection is enormous and is composed of both civil as well as criminal prints. The civil file includes prints of government employees and candidates for federal jobs.

They say that if all the fingerprint cards in the FBI were to be piled one over the other, they would probably be equal to one hundred and thirty three times the size of the Empire State Building! – But that’s only a saying. Fingerprints will always differ from person to person and is based on certain distinctive patterns of ridges.

Types of Fingerprint Patterns
There are essentially seven different types of fingerprint patterns that are being used for fingerprint identification, which are:

Loops – Loops make up almost 70 percent of the patterns that have been encountered so far. A loop pattern is basically the existence and combination of one delta and one core and a ridge count. There are basically two types of loops – ‘ulnar’ and ‘radial’.
Whorls – Whorls constitute around 25-35 percent of the patterns that have been brought in and mainly consists of whorls. A fingerprint pattern that contains 2 or even more deltas will always be a whorl pattern.
Plain Whorl – A plain whorl is that whorl that consists of at least one ridge that could possibly make a complete circuit, with 2 deltas, where an imaginary line will be drawn and it should have at least 1 recurving ridge.
Central Pocket Whorl – This type of a whorl consists of one recurving ridge, 2 deltas, an obstruction to the line of flow and no recurving ridge inside the pattern area is touched or cut.
Double Loop Whorl – This whorl is made up of 2 distinct yet separate loop formations having 2 separate and distinct shoulders and also 2 deltas.
Arches – Arches are encountered in only 5 percent of the patterns received. Arch patterns consist of ridges that run from one side of the pattern to the other. There is generally no delta. There are two types of arches – Plain arches and Tented arches.
Whorl Tracings – There are essentially two different components to a whorl classification – the first is the pattern and the second is the tracing. To find a whorl tracing you must identify the left delta.

These are the different types of fingerprint patterns that have been firmly established by fingerprint examiners and experts all over the world.