Lasting Impressions : Fingerprinting of Workers and Volunteers Keeps County Clerks Busy

For the third time in the last 18 months, Linda James went through the fingerprinting routine.

First her right thumb was inked, then rolled on a card. Clean the thumb and ink the four right fingers, roll them on a card. Repeat the messy procedure for the left hand.

But James wasn’t being arrested. She was undergoing the procedure at the west county station of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department so that she could volunteer as an aide at the nonprofit Child Abuse and Neglect organization.

“I do about 10 to 12 fingerprints a day,” said Rose Butler of the Sheriff’s Department. In a year, Butler prints more than 2,000 non-criminals.

“I stay busy,” she said.

Everybody from bankers to child-care workers to legal immigrants are required to be fingerprinted. People who want to adopt a baby, sell real estate in California or become a notary public also need to be printed.

“There’s a whole litany of things people need to be fingerprinted for,” said Kathy Leclair, who manages the Sheriff’s Department’s fingerprinting program in Moorpark. Leclair said her office averages about five sets of prints a day.

The process for an old hand like James lasts just a few minutes. The more one gets fingerprinted, the quicker the routine. Recidivist crooks make the best customers, criminal lab employees agree.

James, 52, garnered her fingerprinting experience for other reasons. “Even nice people get fingerprinted,” the Ventura resident said.

The child-abuse organization that she helps wants to check on the background of its volunteers and employees. So they are asked to be fingerprinted, and the prints are sent to the FBI to weed out any convicted criminals.

Organizers of the group talked the Sheriff’s Department into providing free fingerprinting, but most people have to pay for the service.

Prices vary widely in the county. The Ventura Police Department charges $22 and Santa Paula charges $17.50.

In contrast, the Sheriff’s Department charges $7 in Ventura and $5 in Moorpark.

“That seems fair for the few minutes it usually takes,” said Karl Kesler, a Sheriff’s Department volunteer.

The Port Hueneme and Oxnard police departments charge $5, while the Simi Valley Police Department does not provide fingerprinting.

A few private companies, such as One Hour Photo in Thousand Oaks, also provide fingerprinting services for slightly higher fees. One Hour charges $11.99.

“As long as they have decent ridges, I can get them out of here in about 15 minutes,” said Tim Breingan, One Hour assistant manager.

It is those ridges that define fingerprints, which no two people share. And fingerprints can tell a lot about a person.

In 1901, a British inspector general of police in Bengal, India, grouped fingerprints into categories that are still used today.

Arches, loops and whorls are the three defining characteristics used to categorize fingerprint ridges.

Law enforcement officials use them to identify criminals. Nearly 36,000 fugitives are caught annually through checks by the FBI, which has 33 million prints on file.

And today, high-tech security systems use fingerprint matches to allow entry into secured rooms, while parents fingerprint their children in case they are kidnaped.

Meanwhile, doctors have studied fingerprints as a way to predict high blood pressure.

People with fingerprints that are mostly whorls are more likely to develop high blood pressure than those with arches and loops, three British doctors concluded in 1993.

But all of this scientific discussion about fingerprints is lost on Kesler, who fingerprints about six people a day.

“I don’t know about any of that stuff,” he said. “I just ink them up and send them on their way.”