Shoudl all citizens be subjected to being fingerpinted before the age of 18 ? what would be the impact of such measures for criminal investigators

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The question of whether juveniles should be fingerprinted has arisen many debates with seemingly a majority of the people supporting the idea. A look upon the law, however, reveals that the police departments have an implied authority under the law to record fingerprints of juvenile offenders, but there are strict provisions to keep those records inaccessible unless as authorized by the court (Kent, p. 6). However, of keen importance is the fact the law allows for fingerprinting of juvenile offenders only. Concerning fingerprinting all juveniles, the question is whether it is necessary to subject children to a practice concomitant with creating criminal databases. Additionally, gathering and maintaining a fingerprints database for all infants and juveniles presents some logistical and financial challenge (Kent, p.7). The implementation of the process would require people to report to a specific location to be fingerprinted. It is going to be challenging keeping track of the people who are already in the database and those who aren’t. The whole franchise of fingerprinting juveniles goes against the guarantee of individual rights under the constitution and the international law instruments on human rights. Minors should not be subjected to a process that was initially designed for criminals.
To criminal investigators, fingerprinting may be beneficial, but we cannot overlook the shortcomings. Maintaining a fingerprint database narrows down the search process in criminal investigations, to focus on the already existing database to bring to an end the string of unsolved cases.

However, the safety and security of this information are questionable (Pretty 38). Is it possible that any person accesses this information because the most logical storage form is digital? Additionally, having this information only a click away is detrimental to investigations since it may encourage abuse of such power. During investigations, detectives might find fingerprints of a particular innocent person at the scene of the crime and incriminate that person despite the possibility of those fingerprints appearing at the crime scene before the crime was committed (Pretty 40). This may lead unjust incrimination of an innocent person.
Overall, collecting juvenile fingerprints has more shortcomings than importance. It should be the case that fingerprints are only used and acquired when a crime has been committed.
Works Cited
Kent, Arthur H. “Tax Litigation in Illinois.” The University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 1, no. 5, 1934, p. 698.
Pretty, Jules. “October.” Cornell University Press, 2018.