ABSTRACT
Fingerprint analysis requires extensive documentation to record important details with notes, sketches, official forms, photographs, reports, and/ or visual aids prepared for use in courtroom testimony. Most departments or agencies require that documentation be completed according to their particular standard operating procedures (SOPs). Whether notes are standardized on a particular official form or free-form in nature, they must include a detailed description of the evidence, steps taken to develop fingerprints in the laboratory, the dates and times the processes are performed (in sequence), and the results of each process.
