Where There is a Way There is a Will - The Scientification of Policing

• In Event: Issues with Police Tactics and Techniques

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the scientification of policing (Ericson and Shearing 1986) - that is the escalating use of forensic science techniques and technologies to transform policing, where it has been contended that science and technology seemingly provides policing legitimacy by uncovering the ‘truth’ in a rationally accepted way. What will be suggested here is that cold case major crime reviews have become part of this spiral of finding new and necessary ways of using technical innovations to shape policing practices. Based on ethnographic research with a major crime review team and interviews with experts drawn on to help to detect hard to solve major crimes, this paper will suggest that cold case investigations typify this ‘amplification effect’ as is the advances in forensic science techniques and technologies, and especially the introduction of the National DNA Database which have enabled detectives to return to long term unsolved major crimes to identify previously unknown offenders. In turn, cold case review successes have been used to justify expending resources on new scientific technologies. Case study examples of cold case murder and stranger rape will be used to illustrate how forensic science has been used to legitimate looking back at cold cases.

Author

• Cheryl Allsop, University of South Wales