Can inconclusive mean...

[josher89]

...that you just couldn't find it? You don't want to say 'exclude' as it might be there, so what do you do? This would be reserved for partials where you have no orientation or location clues (maybe not even a crease to go off of). One could always say they need major case prints before they will tender an exclusion decision but, what if major case prints are obtained and they don't help? We don't come across these all that often so I want an effective and appropriate way to report them when we do.

How do you handle latents that you can't place on a finger or a particular part of the palm but are sufficient to ID or exclude?

[Peter Griffin]

We would say:

The inconclusive result to John DOE (PIN: 12345678) is due to a lack of quantity and/or quality of detail in the latent print.


It is better to go with an inc. than an exclusion if you are not sure.
PG

[John Vanderkolk]

"... I don't know?"

[ER]

Absolutely.

I would even say that limiting INC to only mean that you need better exemplars is a policy choice that actually forces examiners to make errors.

[Boyd Baumgartner]

If we're using the USACIL language, it means 'can't associate', which poses a problem for the inner statistician. After all, what is the probability that you can even find it in the first place? And how is that built into anyone's statistical model? Inquiring minds want to know...

P.S. I was encouraged by everyone's questions on the group chat in Swofford's presentation.

[David Fairhurst]

I think Alice would call that an "incomplete" comparison.