Recommendation FP21: Recommendation 21
From The Fingerprint Inquiry Report, published 14 December 2011.
Recommendation
Steps should be taken to reduce the risk of over-familiarity with prints where an examiner has prior knowledge of the print before conducting an analysis of the mark: (i) Examiners should be made aware of the risks arising from over-familiarity with prints, by way of written guidance and training. (ii) As wide a range of examiners as possible should be involved in the work when this risk is present. As an example, when an identification is made in such circumstances at least one verifier should be an examiner who has not previously seen the prints in question.
Government response
No government response to this recommendation is on the record yet.
Blanket government agreement does not establish acceptance or delivery by each addressee. Some response passages cover groups of recommendations.
Scope of the government response
The Scottish Government's news release of 14 December 2011, the day the report was published, is its only published statement on the recommendations. Its one sentence about them is given for all of them together and states no position. The Scottish Police Services Authority's release of the same day accepts "all of the recommendations made of it by the Inquiry" without listing them; the site records that on the recommendations addressed to its forensic service. The Authority no longer exists, and the site files its words under the Scottish Police Authority, which took over its forensic services in 2013.
Delivery
No statement on delivery from the addressee has been found in the sources searched (last checked 18 June 2026). This is separate from the response above.