Your fingerprints are formed underneath your skin in a layer called dermal papilae.  As long as that layer of papilae is there, your fingerprints will always come back, even after scarring or burning.   

          Gloves don't necessarily help you from leaving fingerprints.  Surgical gloves were made to keep surgeons from infecting their patients.  You can actually leave prints through surgical gloves.  Surgical gloves were made to keep sterile conditions during operations.  They have to fit like a second skin for surgeons to be able to pick up their instruments. They fit so tightly that fingerprints 'pass through' the latex membrane.  They can also be turned inside out to yield fingerprints from the inside surfaces.  Leather gloves can be treated in the same manner.  Also, leather gloves can leave a print that is unique to that glove and no other (leather comes from cow skin, which is just as random as human skin).  Even cloth gloves, such as mittens, can leave a distinctive print that can be traced back to the mitten that made it. 

           Prints are left on a surface because we are constantly secreting water and body oils and other compounds through our pores.  This material is left on the surface we touch in the form of a fingerprint.   

           Different surfaces require different techniques for developing prints.  In the movies, you usually see detectives with brushes.  They are powder processing the prints.  Minute particles of powder cling to the print residue as the brush passes over it.  The print is then lifted with tape.  Another process involves fuming.  Vapors of iodine and superglue (bonds in seconds) will coalesce inside the print residue to reveal a latent print.

           There are special processes that develop prints on paper, wood and cardboard.  Fingerprints can be developed on objects that have been in water.  Prints can be developed off of skin (such as from the neck of a strangulation victim).  There are very few surfaces on which a print cannot be developed. 

          Computers have revolutionized the techniques used to match fingerprints.  Until recently, the old standard was the Henry Classification System; a cumbersome sequence of letters and numbers broken down into several levels of classification.  It could take weeks, sometimes months to compare a suspect fingerprint to a department's print files.  The advent of digital technology has changed all of that. Prints can be image scanned directly into a computer, doing away with ink and fingerprint cards.  Prints can be compared at a rate of 400,000 per second.  You couldn't do that in your lifetime. 

          It's called AFIS.  Automated Fingerprint Identification System.  Departments will input all the prints from arrests and all of the print cards they already have on file to create an historical record.  They also input all of the prints from any unsolved crimes, in the hope that a hit might come up from a routine arrest.  Local departments are linking their systems into a national database.  The FBI wants national standards and a fully functional national network in place by the year 2000.  With a national network, you could get busted in New York and have a print hit come up from a crime you committed in California.  
     
Q. What is friction skin?
A. Present on the inner (palmar) surface of the hands and fingers and the bottom (plantar) area of the feet is skin which is different from the skin on other areas of our bodies. This skin is rough or corrugated, consisting of raised portions which we call ridges. These ridges do not run continuously from one side to the other, rather they may curve, end, and split or divide in two or more ridges. These ridges aid the finger's ability to grasp by increasing friction, thus the term friction skin.

Q. What is a latent print?
A. Present on the tops of the friction skin ridges are very minute sweat pores which are constantly exuding perspiration. This perspiration adheres to the outline of these ridges. Other substances, like oil from touching your face or hair, can also adhere to these ridges. When an object is touched, a recording of these characteristics may be left upon the surface. At times, these impressions will be visible, and at other times they will be invisible; thus the term "latent." While visible prints are truly patent prints, they are frequently referred to as latent prints. The invisible latents must be developed or made visible either by the application of powders, chemicals or electronic means. 

Q. What is an inked fingerprint?
A. An inked fingerprint is a reproduction of the ridges of the finger with black fingerprint ink on an exemplar form.

          I think I will stop with this....I can go on and on forever on this subject.