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Fingerprint Law Is Urged for Nation (This great idea is a reprint for the “Fifty Years Later Section” of the June 1997 California Highway Patrol newsletter. Thanks to Jim Lawson--retired Chippie--—for the submission. Jim, did you ever ride with Ponce or Jon?) On Jan. 8, 1947, Rep. Raymond S. Springer of Indiana introduced a bill in Congress providing for compulsory national fingerprinting and requiring everyone over the age of 16 to be fingerprinted. This bill is only one of many introduced in Congress providing for national fingerprinting. Each and every one of these bills had been allowed to die, although a Gallup Poll conducted during the war disclosed that 70 percent of the people wished to see such a bill enacted. The fact that favorable sentiment toward these bills received a great impetus during the war is an indication that, prior to hostilities, the people as a whole had failed to grasp the entire purpose behind such proposed legislation. Mr. Average Citizen associated fingerprints with murderers, thieves and worse. To be fingerprinted was considered a stigma. J. Edgar Hoover has said, “Fingerprints would permit quick, infallible identification of all accident and catastrophe victims, restoration to relatives of lost and runaway children, identification of adults suffering from amnesia, prevention of mix--ups of babies in hospitals, reducing to a minimum insurance frauds and false claims to estates or family relationships, and finally cheating potter's fields all over the country of any more unknown dead. There would be no unidentified dead if everyone's fingerprints were on file, nor any grief--stricken families wondering, hoping, waiting.”
This article was reprinted in “THE PRINT” |