Advancing forensic fingermark recovery in low-resource settings: an exploratory study on fired brass cartridge cases

Abstract Background The recovery of latent fingermarks on fired cartridge cases is still problematic despite advances in the techniques for their development. This problem is exacerbated in low-resource forensic laboratories where access to the advanced enhancement techniques is limited. The present study addresses this limitation by evaluating the efficiency of a cost-effective, locally adaptable technique for developing fingermarks from fired brass cartridge cases. Latent fingermarks from fifteen donors were naturally deposited on five different types of brass ammunition, subsequently fired, and aged for 1 day, 7 days, and 14 days before enhancement. The fingermarks on each batch of fired cartridge cases were developed using a non-conventional cyanoacrylate fuming chamber (for fuming), followed by fluorescent dyeing and a locally prepared acidified hydrogen peroxide solution. The enhanced fingermarks on the fired cartridge cases were graded using the Home Office fingermark grading scheme and statistically analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis H-test post hoc Dunn’s test. Results The results show that all the sequential fingermark detection techniques were efficient, with cyanoacrylate fuming followed by Basic yellow 40 dye and acidified hydrogen peroxide solution, demonstrating superior performance, yielding an estimated 90% of identifiable fingermarks across all ammunition types and aging periods. The quality of the developed fingermark diminished with increased aging time, with the most profound decline observed at 14 days. A statistically significant difference ( p < 0.001) was observed in the performance of the fingermark techniques. Conclusion This finding suggests that low-cost, non-conventional fingermark development techniques, such as those tested in the present study, may produce results comparable to standard forensic methods, indicating their potential as practical alternatives for operational forensic laboratories in low-resource settings.