Footprints and Forensic Podiatry

Abstract

The impressions left behind by an individual while running or walking are known as Footprints. The term Footprint is basically used for shoe print or bare footprint or series of impressions left and recovered from the floor, stairs, tables, chairs, drain pipes, mud, soil, etc. Footprints can be seen in a few sorts of cases and crime scenes like burglary, HBT (House Break-in and Theft), rapes, shoplifting, kidnapping, homicides, etc. They can be considered as important evidence encountered at many crime scenes. Footprints can reveal the actual activity of an individual at the crime scene and can also help in identifying patterns of action in the order in which they happened in spite of the absence of other documentation of the crime scene. 

Footprint evidence can be classified into two types, as can numerous different kinds of forensic evidence. First is class characteristics, it includes information of general sort of footwear impression i.e. types of tread present at the base of the footwear which is usually explicit to the manufacturing brand and model of the footwear, this classification also includes person pattern of movement while walking, running, jogging, etc. as well as the size of footwear. Another is Individual characteristics, it includes wear and tears marks of the footwear if bare footprints are present different features of toes like bumps in the lines of the toe, flatfoot condition and phalange marks can be investigated. Footprints found on mud, snow dust, etc. are considered as three-dimensional or depressed or sunken foot impressions, and those found on materials like blood, ink, oil, powdery substance, etc. on the hard or smooth surface are known as two-dimensional or surface footprints. Therefore, various types of footprints are as follows latent footprints which are not visible with naked eyes, patent or visible footprints they are visible with naked eyes, and impressed foot impressions they can be seen with naked eyes as well as can be photographed.