NBD chloride was found to be more sensitive than ninhydrin for moderately old fingerprints (3-9 months) and never inferior to ninhydrin in all other cases. A qualitative evaluation technique was used to establish the relative efficiency of each method. This is based on the number of points of identification, assessed on a 1-4 scale, where 4 represents a courtworthy print (less than 12 points) and 1 represents a print containing no identification points. (Publisher abstract)