Police departments are now using palm prints as means of identifying offenders.

All of a person's "friction ridged skin" is distinctively patterned: soles, palms and even the writer's palm, as the outer side of the hand is called. Surveys of law enforcement agencies indicate that at least 30 percent of the prints lifted from crime scenes — from knife hilts, gun grips, steering wheels and window panes — are of palms, not fingers.

30 police agencies around the country now have palm databases.

Beginning next month, the [New York City] department will be able to do computerized matches of the 100,000 palm prints it has already collected. As the database grows, it will become one of the largest of its kind.

Defense lawyers are dubious about the new "science."

Using palm prints for identification concerns some defense lawyers, who point out that the reliability of fingerprint matching has come into question in the courts in recent years, and that there is even less data available on palm prints.

...Some defense lawyers raise the same objections to palm print identifications as they have to fingerprints. "The criminal courtroom is no place to experiment with a scientific method that may incriminate someone," said Steven D. Benjamin, the co-chairman of the forensic evidence committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The FBI says the technique is as reliable as that for fingerprints, and in a few years, they probably will be adding footprints.