It did not take long for law enforcement officials to recognize the potential value of fingerprint evidence. Sir Edward Richard Henry, a British official stationed in India, began to develop a system of fingerprint identification for Indian criminals. (Henry created 1,024 primary fingerprint classifications.) In Argentina, Juan Vucetich, a police official, also used Galton's findings to create a fingerprint system. (He used Galton's research to make a fingerprint identification of a murderer in 1892.) By the beginning of the twentieth century, Scotland Yard had begun to compile fingerprint information, using a classification system based on Henry's work and creating a Central Fingerprint Bureau. In the United States, the New York Police Department, the New York State Prison System, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons instituted a fingerprint system in 1903, and in 1905, the U.S. Army began using fingerprint identification.

The first murder case in the United States in which fingerprint evidence was used successfully was in Illinois in 1910, when Thomas Jennings was accused of murdering Clarence Hiller after his fingerprints were found at Hiller's house. Jennings appealed his conviction, but the Supreme Court of Illinois upheld the evidence in 1911 and Jennings was executed in February 1912. People v. Jennings thus established fingerprint evidence as a reliable standard.