Characteristics of homoscopic traces and possibilities of their investigation from the point of view of forensics

A quite new subject “Characteristics of Homoscopic Traces and Possibilities of their Investigation from the Point of View of Forensics” was analyzed in this master’s thesis, whereas it cannot be found such a concept as homoscopic trace, although there is some scientific work in which the same trace is called homeoscopic. Homoscopic traces are the ones that are left by human body parts and they are divided into handprints, footprints (barefoot and footprints in footwear), bite marks, fingernail scrapings and prints that are left by a surface of a head. The first part briefly sets out what is the meaning of the traces and their types within the topic of the thesis. Also each kind of the homoscopic traces are discussed anatomically and from the point of view of forensics, thus the characteristics of homoscopic traces are given. At first handprints are discussed because they are mostly detected and examined. Furthermore by using them it is easy to identify a person. Then the characteristics of footprints, bite marks, fingernail scrapings and prints left by a surface of a head (especially lip prints and ear prints) are represented. Using them we can also determine person’s identity but it is more difficult than using handprints. On the other hand, we can learn some information about individual circumstances of the crime. The institutions in Lithuania in which specialists’ researches and forensics are carried out are noted in the second part of master’s thesis. In addition, the possibilities of homoscopic traces’ investigation finding, developing, recording, lifting and researching in laboratories are given, therefore the tools and techniques used to investigate each homoscopic trace are presented. The handprints research is the most common kind of researches and it includes dactyloscopy, palmoscopy, poroscopy and edgeoscopy. Dactyloscopy is the most important from the point of view of forensics because it is easy to identify a person. The issues of homoscopic traces’ researches are also mentioned in this section. Lastly, the conclusions of the topic of the master’s thesis are stated