Recommendation FP33: Recommendation 33
From The Fingerprint Inquiry Report, published 14 December 2011.
Recommendation
Practitioners should conduct their individual ACE comparisons conscious of the fact that they are working in a field where there is no certainty and where there is scope for differences of opinion. When it comes to verification, examiners should be encouraged to be open and to adopt a challenging attitude to the opinions of other examiners, irrespective of seniority. Standard Operating Procedures should emphasise that the fact that one examiner reaches the opposite conclusion from another, or entertains any doubt, does not necessarily cast any aspersion on the competence of either examiner.
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.