I know that fingerprint ID's used to take a month. I know that at some point AFIS came out, and the time went down dramatically.

I just need to know when AFIS was available to local PD's. Specifically, I need to know this:

If a murder occurred in November of 1975, how long would it take to ID a full set of print gleaned from the crime scene?

Bonus question: When an ID came back, the interrogatory would be answered with a name of a suspect. If there was no positive match, what would the answer say?

Double bonus: Did anyone ever see a situation where they thought the system had a match, but they didn't want to cough up the ID? I'm thinking an overriding federal investigation or some such complication. If so, what would be the response?

That's a lot of variables.
Is the bad guy still using the same name? Unfortunately, most criminals are their dumbest when they are juveniles. But, you can't keep juvenile prints un less they have committed a felony and are tried as an adult. (Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act 1974)

The offender has to have a set of prints on file if they have committed a crime as an adult and State law has not blocked the taking of prints. For example printing an offender if they have committed a misdemeanor.

AFIS has made ID'ing finger prints easier IF there is a master set in the system. In 1975 everything was done with ink on paper and digitizing those prints may not of happened yet.

Keep in mind you rarely ever get a "full set of prints" from a crime scene. You might get a partial if your lucky. Thanks to the entertainment media, smart bad guys are wearing gloves to keep from leaving prints.

Yes, the way the system works there are huge road blocks to getting the name information on a suspect which includes getting a search warrant for a John Doe on a specific case. I really haven't figured out why except lawyers need to make a living and there are rules protecting bailiwicks. (bureaucrats)

Like I said, there are so many variables. Good luck and maybe someone else will add to this.
kwg

OK. I think you've answered my big question. In 1975, there was no way to submit a set of prints and get a name back in a timely manner. Prints were important, but you could not count on prints alone to give you a suspect's name.

As an example, if I was printed for going to work in a bank in 1975, a stray set of prints showing up later would not have been immediately linked to my name. On the other hand, if I had been fingerprinted previously, and I had been already linked to a crime by some other means (say an eyewitness) my prints could be retrieved and compared to a set found at the scene.

Cool. I can deal with that. I just needed to be accurate.

Many thanks, sir.

If you had asked these questions a few years ago, shaman, I probably would have been able to get you some pretty solid answers but unfortunately my wife's step-brother has since passed away.

He spent his entire career in law enforcement CSI with fingerprint analysis being as his specialty.

One interesting multiple murder case his department was instrumental in positively identifying which resulted in a conviction there were no fingerprints at all. The only hard evidence they had was a partial palm print he termed a "writers print" on a hand written note which they were able to match to the prime suspect's palm.

TV gets us thinking that fingerprint ID's are an easy thing. What I gathered was that sometime around 1969 they started looking at cataloging them using a computer and a set of 10 criteria per print. Numbers are easier to store than images. That method of automated cataloging came online sometime around 1975 or later. I could find specifics. That still involved a human entering the data. It only automated the search process. It was still rooms full of ladies with magnifiers to do the heavy lifting.

The full computerization with image recognition and online storage is a very contemporary thing. The thing that I can readily grasp is the storage. In 1990, 600 Megabytes of disk storage cost about $1,000 on a Novell Network. In 1992, I learned that NASA had the largest Novell array, and it was 2TB-- over 3,300 of those 600 MB drives. It held data from the Voyager and Pioneer missions.

Times change.I just installed a 3TB drive at the house, fully accessible on the my home network for $80. At the same time I started uploading my family photos to it. Each shot is 3-4MB in size. I don't know how much data is required to store a set of fingerprints, but my up upload to that drive was 220GB, and took 4 days. I then sent them all out over the Internet to the Amazon Cloud for permanent archive. That job has been running for 6 days, and it's a little more than halfway done.

At the time they first set about automating fingerprint retrieval there were 69 million fingerprints stored on cards in the FBI's files. I'm only talking about 220,000 family shots. Just so you know, at my last job, I was sending several terabytes of data a day over the Internet. This was a daily backup of a logistics company's operation.

I think 3,333 of those 600 MB drive would be about 2 TB.

oops. You're right. I'll correct it.