Footprints and shoe prints as evidence
Footprints and shoe prints serve as crucial forms of evidence in criminal investigations, providing insights into the individuals involved in a crime. These impressions, made by shoes or bare feet in various surfaces like soft ground or snow, can reveal essential details about the size, sole pattern, and unique wear characteristics of the footwear, which may be linked to specific suspects. Forensic scientists can analyze these footprints to estimate information such as the height, weight, and gait of the person who left them, enhancing the understanding of their movements at a crime scene.
In addition to linking individuals to locations, shoe prints can indicate entry and exit points, the number of perpetrators, and even help uncover other evidence. Investigators utilize various techniques to enhance and preserve these impressions for analysis, including chemical methods and three-dimensional capturing. While shoe prints are more commonly examined than bare footprints, ongoing research aims to explore the uniqueness of foot ridges and marks left inside shoes, potentially leading to new methods of identification in the future. Understanding the significance of footprints and shoe prints can aid those seeking knowledge about their role in forensic science and criminal justice.
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Subject Terms
Footprints and shoe prints as evidence
DEFINITION: Impressions left by feet—wearing shoes or barefoot—in soft ground, blood, snow, or other surfaces.
SIGNIFICANCE: Foot and shoe impressions that are found at crime scenes can be used to link specific individuals to such scenes based on foot size, sole patterns unique to particular brands and styles of shoes, specific wear patterns, and unique stray marks. In addition, forensic scientists can often estimate the height, weight, and gait patterns of persons from the footprints and shoe prints they leave behind.
At many crime scenes, shoes prints (and less frequently bare footprints) are present even if they are not always visible to the naked eye. Such prints provide a wealth of information that can link suspected perpetrators to the locations of crimes. Based on the correspondence of shoe type as well as individual characteristics, an alleged perpetrator’s shoe may be positively identified as the specific shoe that made one or more impressions at a crime scene. Potential suspects may also be exculpated by the absence of their shoe prints at the scene. Footprints and shoe prints can sometimes provide evidence that links various crime scenes together in serial crime situations.
Types of Evidence
Footprints and shoe prints are also important because they provide information on individuals’ points of entry into a and their points of exit. Such prints can also help investigators to determine the number of perpetrators involved in a crime. In addition, by tracking the impressions, investigators can often find other evidence, such as discarded firearms.
When shoe prints are found at a crime scene, investigators can often ascertain information on the brand names and styles of the shoes by running comparisons of the prints with the contents of a footwear database. While law enforcement officials have access to several privately-run databases, a 2021 study conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concluded that the establishment of a national footwear database system was not practical or economically feasible. The study suggested several regional options that could eventually be formulated into a national system.
Such prints can also provide some evidence on the gait of the person who made the impressions, especially if the person has a medical condition that affects how he or she walks. In some cases, shoe prints can allow investigators to estimate the height, weight, and gender of the person who left them by measuring the stride, step length, and angle at which the feet contacted the ground. These elements can also indicate the rate of speed at which the person moved.
Forensic scientists use a variety of chemical techniques to enhance both wet and dry foot impressions to make them easier to analyze, and a variety of techniques allow them to preserve foot and shoe marks in three-dimensional form for analysis. When the shoe and foot impressions found at crime scenes cannot be captured in any other way, investigators take photographs of them.
Research on Footprints
Impressions of bare feet are found less often at crime scenes than are shoe prints, so forensic scientists spend less time examining footprints than they do analyzing shoe prints. Footprints have been the subject of some interesting research, however. It has been theorized that the ridges in the skin on the soles of human feet are as unique to individuals as fingerprints, but this has not been determined conclusively.
Other research in this area concerns the marks left by bare feet on the insides of shoes, including the marks left by the top of the foot on the inside upper surface of a shoe. If such marks are discovered to be distinctive, they may one day be used to connect particular persons to particular shoes, which may in turn be connected to crime scenes.
Bibliography
Bodziak, William J. Footwear Impression Evidence: Detection, Recovery, and Examination. 3d ed. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 2013.
Cassidy, Michael J. Footwear Identification. Ottawa, Ont.: Canadian Government Publishing Centre, 1980.
Hilderbrand, Dwane S. Footwear, the Missed Evidence: A Field Guide to the Collection and Preservation of Forensic Footwear Impression Evidence. 2d ed. Wildomar, Calif.: Staggs, 2007.
"How It’s Done." Forensic Science Simplified, www.forensicsciencesimplified.org/fwtt/how.html. Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.
James, Stuart H., et al., eds. Forensic Science: An Introduction to Scientific and Investigative Techniques. 4th ed. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 2014.
McVicker, Brian C., John F. McGurk, and Stephen D. Shaw. “US National Footwear Database System Feasibility Study.” Office of Justice Programs, December 2021, www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/u-s-national-footwear-database-system-feasibility-study. Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.
Whittle, Michael W. Gait Analysis: An Introduction. 4th ed. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007.