COMPUTERIZED CLASSIFICATION OF THE SHOEPRINTS OF BURGLARS SOLES

In the matter of shoe soles, there are many different types of designs which make the creation of an effective group classification difficul t. The system created at the forensic technical laboratory in Neuchate l, Switzerland, offers a new means of classification concerning the st andards of the shoeprints of burglars' soles. This classification syst em has been created using the data processing programm FileMaker Pro 2 .1 of Macintosh. It has been established in Neuchaatel for 4 years and contains over 1500 reference files. During this period of time it has been possible to identify four times as many burglars through shoepri nts than with fingerprints.