Suspect Identities

Archival Summary & Scope

**Suspect Identities** by Simon Cole challenges the bedrock belief in fingerprint infallibility. Cole excavates the murky history of criminal identification, tracing its origins to the 19th-century bureaucratic desire to control increasingly mobile and diverse populations. This global history explores the evolution of identity systems—from anthropometry and photography to fingerprinting and DNA typing—revealing how fingerprints ultimately won public and legal trust. As genetic identification emerges and fingerprint errors are exposed, *Suspect Identities* offers a vital examination of individuality, state power, and our often-blind faith in technological infallibility.