Alphonse Bertillonage Essay

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Alphonse Bertillon and the Discovery of the Bertillonage System
Have you ever wondered who aided in the discovery of identifying the criminals of today? A French man by the name of Alphonse Bertillon who was born on April 24, 1853, is to be acknowledged for his great work. Bertillon was the son of a man named Lois Adolphe Bertillon who was a physician and statistician. Although Bertillon has greatly contributed his techniques to science, he faced some difficulties before his discoveries. Bertillon dropped out of school and because of this, his father sent him to Great Britain for a while and then returning home. After returning to France, he was inducted into the army until 1879. Following his retirement from service, he took a job as a clerk with the Paris Prefecture of Police. While working at this police …show more content…

He soon realized that the information that he was copying down was useless in specifically identifying the individuals and began to think of more efficient ways to identify them. In France at that time, there was concern about individuals who were repeat offenders; these criminals could serve longer sentences, but because of the identification methods at that time, it was difficult to identify them. Bertillon sought out a new method and called it bertillonage, this method used 11 body measurements along with descriptive information and photographs, now known as mug shots, stored on cards to identify criminals. However, the Bertillonage system had a major flaw, Bertillon made the assumption that every individual had a different body measurement. Because of this, he figured that the more measurements he took of a person, the less likely someone else would have those same dimensions. This system was used frequently but was soon booted out once fingerprinting became more predominant in the

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