People have tried hard to get rid of their fingerprints — the gangster John Dillinger famously had his burned with acid. It almost never works, and the reason lies in how the skin is built.
Why prints come back
The ridge pattern isn't just on the surface. It's determined by the dermis, the deeper layer of skin, which acts as a template for the outer epidermis. Superficial damage — minor cuts, abrasions, burns that don't reach the dermis — heals and the same pattern grows back. To permanently change the pattern you'd have to destroy the dermis itself.
When alteration leaves its own signature
Deliberate, deep mutilation can obliterate a section of ridges — but it replaces them with scar tissue, and scars are themselves permanent, distinctive features that make a finger more identifiable, not less. Examiners readily recognise the tell-tale patterns of attempted alteration, and the surrounding intact ridges and other fingers usually still identify the person.
Temporary and medical exceptions
Some genuine loss is temporary or medical: heavy manual work or certain skin conditions can wear ridges down, some chemotherapy drugs have been reported to cause temporary loss, and a few rare genetic conditions mean a person is born without normal ridges (adermatoglyphia). These are exceptions, not escape routes.
The bottom line
For all practical purposes, fingerprints are permanent. Attempts to erase them tend to fail, damage only part of the pattern, or create scars that aid identification — which is exactly why the ridge patterns formed before birth remain one of the most durable identifiers we have.