Recommendation FP85: Recommendation 85
From The Fingerprint Inquiry Report, published 14 December 2011.
Recommendation
The SPSA should task identified staff with: (i) maintaining up-to-date knowledge of cases, at least in anglophone jurisdictions, in which fingerprint evidence has been disputed; and (ii) monitoring cases in which courts, inquiries or other investigating bodies have made significant criticism of existing fingerprint practice and of considering whether those criticisms should be taken into account in developing and improving fingerprint practice in Scotland. Such staff should be tasked also with advising an identified contact in COPFS as to these matters.
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.