Forensic genetics and the prediction of race: What is the problem?
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Forensic genetics and the prediction of race: What is the problem? David Skinner1
Springer Nature Limited 2018
Abstract A new wave of innovations in forensics seeks to support criminal investigations by making inferences about the racial or ethnic appearance of as yet unknown suspects using genetic markers of phenotype or ancestry. This paper argues that to grasp fully the potentials of these innovations they must be understood both in the context of established patterns of police–minority relations and as part of significant changes in the use of ‘race’ as an object of knowledge in science, policy, and politics. Socio-technical developments offer new means of identification through geneticisation, datafication, and visualisation and heighten the visibility and valorisation of racial difference. Elements of this are already evident in existing national police forensic DNA databases whose operation, outcomes, and accompanying ethical frames are racialised in varied ways. By openly mobilising race and ethnicity, however, predictive techniques raise new questions about the validity, interpretation, dissemination, and application of results. Examination of existing use by the police and public of suspect descriptions shows the enduring power of common sense visual and linguistic understandings of race and appearance. That very power makes it hard to transition effectively from moments of collective stigmatisation to the identification of individual suspects. Keywords Ethnicity Forensic genetics Phenotype prediction Race Racism
& David Skinner [email protected] 1
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
D. Skinner
Introduction The application of genetic science to police forensics is sometimes understood in terms of three overlapping waves (Williams and Wienroth 2014). The first saw, from the 1980s onwards, the establishment of genetic testing as a credible identification tool and means of linking known suspects to crimes. The second involved, in the next two decades, the growth of national police DNA databases containing millions of records that are routinely, speculatively searched in an attempt to match as yet unknown people to offences. We are now entering a third wave where new techniques infer personal characteristics of as yet unknown suspects using crime scene samples. Experts seek to predict the likely appearance of suspects using genetic markers of phenotype or ancestry. The growing list of potentially detectable Externally Visible Characteristics (EVCs) includes age, eye colour, hair colour, and skin pigmentation. Moreover, ‘phenotyping’ is a promissory science which, its proponents argue, will eventually allow prediction of a wider set of traits and deliver finer grained descriptions of suspect appearance (Aldhous 2014; Claes et al. 2014; Kayser 2015). Forensic scientists also utilise analysis of biogeographic Ancestry Informative Markers (AIMs), a technique used for some time by genealogy services, to generate statements about the likely
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