Dealing with uncertainty in policing and law enforcement: The strategical (re)construction of knowledge between experts and judicial actors in the context of DNA forensics

• In Event: POLWG Panel 15. The use of data, evidence and knowledge in Policing and Criminal Justice: Exploring legal boundaries, partnerships and power relations.

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that scientific knowledge needs to be translated into a legal code if it is to be useful in the judicial field. This translation operation implies a reduction in the scientific complexity required to produce a binary response that can be incorporated into the legal coding. In return, the judicial process is rationalized and stabilized by recourse to scientific discourse, which enjoys a singular discursive authority. Thus, representations of scientific knowledge play a key role in the way experts' conclusions are received: the use of expertise will depend on the credibility given to the scientific word, and therefore on the representations attached to this word, but also on the way it is communicated and understood. However, the reception of scientific information by the judicial or police authorities not only depends on factors relating to the expert, but is also closely linked to their own immediate professional needs and interests. Building on theses premises, our research is rooted in the epistemological problematization of the interplay between legal and scientific knowledge, which includes an analysis of the circulation of knowledge, the power relationships that this circulation implies or in which it is embedded, and the various actorial strategies that result from it, based on a specific question: how do police and judicial players deal with scientific uncertainty in the context of forensic DNA expertise? This contribution draws on an empirical work carried out in the National Institute of Criminalistic and Criminology in Belgium, with key legal and technical operational players involved in conventional DNA matching, familial research, Y-STR identification and forensic DNA phenotyping. It aims to shed light on the factors influencing the ways DNA data circulates and is ultimately manufactured by the players identified, as well as their concrete effects on policing and law enforcement practices.

Authors

• Margaux Coquet, National Institute of Criminalistic and Criminology

• Bertrand Renard, National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology (NICC-INCC)