Under what conditions may a juvenile be fingerprinted without consent?

• A. Consent from parent
• B. Probable cause for delinquent conduct with comparison fingerprints available
• C. If the juvenile requests
• D. Never allowed without consent

Answer: (B)

A juvenile can be fingerprinted without consent only when there is probable cause to believe the juvenile has engaged in delinquent conduct and there are comparison fingerprints already available to use for identification. This exception to consent is allowed because it ties the intrusion of taking prints to a concrete investigative basis—a credible suspicion and the existence of usable fingerprints to compare against. Without this, fingerprinting would usually require consent, but with probable cause and ready comparison records, the investigation can proceed. The other scenarios—consent from a parent, the juvenile requesting it, or “never allowed”—don’t apply here because they don’t involve the specific investigative exception that permits without-consent fingerprinting.