Genetic Surveillance and Crime Control

Social, Cultural and Political Perspectives

Helena Machado, Rafaela Granja

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367521417
• eBook ISBN: 9780429537028
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Criminologia

Genetic Surveillance and Crime Control presents a new empirical and conceptual framework for understanding trends of genetic surveillance in different countries in Europe and in other jurisdictions around the world.

The use of DNA or genome for state-level surveillance for crime governance is becoming the norm in democratic societies. In the post-DNA, contemporary modes of criminal identification are gradually changing through the increasing expansion of transnational sharing of DNA data, along with the development of highly controversial genetic technologies that pose acute challenges to privacy and generate fears of discrimination, racism and stigmatization. Some questions that guide this book are: How is genetic surveillance in the governance of crime intertwined with society, ethics, culture, and politics? What are the views and expectations of diverse stakeholders –scientists, police agencies, and non-governmental organizations? How can social sciences research about genetic surveillance accommodate socio-cultural and historical differences, and be sensitive to specificities of post-authoritarian societies in Europe?

Taking an interdisciplinary approach focused on challenges to genetic privacy, human rights and citizenship in contemporary societies, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of social studies of science and technology, sociology, criminology, law and policing, international relations and forensic sciences.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780429261435-1

Introduction

A striking aspect of 21st-century societies in the governance of crime is the growing role of scientific and technological innovations in the field of forensic genetics. The aim of forensic genetics is to identify individuals through the collection of their biological traces – blood, hair, saliva, or other fluids. The possibility of deriving DNA (a biological structure considered unique to each individual) from biological matter – whether inadvertently left behind by criminal suspects at crime scenes or directly obtained from the bodies of criminal suspects − has contributed decisively in predisposing governments to support the developments and ambitions of forensic genetics. This book aims to explore some of the complex and multidimensional social, cultural, and political implications of forensic genetics’ uses in security and criminal law activities. We intend to provoke critical thinking about the repercussions of forensic genetics on the nature of social control and citizenship in contemporary societies, viewed through the lens of social science research and taking as our starting point the social phenomenon of genetic surveillance in the governance of crime. By genetic surveillance we mean the acts involved in the systematic monitoring of individuals or groups based on their genetic body specificities in order to detect and/or reconstruct a crime. By governance we refer to a cluster of social values and norms, expectations, and practices of conduct and decision making, as well as institutional provisions taken both by governmental and non-governmental actors.

The present volume is based on a six-year investigation (the “Exchange project”¹) aimed at studying the expectations of scientists, international security professionals and other stakeholders with a direct interest in the technical development of forensic genetic technologies and criminal DNA databases in Europe. The study was guided by the following overarching research questions: how is genetic surveillance in the governance of crime intertwined with society, ethics, culture, and politics? To what extent and how significantly are the views and expectations related to genetic surveillance reflected in the discourses of diverse stakeholders? What are the social identities, power relations, hierarchies and asymmetries that emerge from this process? Our interrogations also imply a critical reflection on the role of genetic surveillance in shaping contemporary societies. More concretely, it helps us to understand how social life has come to be imagined as explicable and governable through the decoding and manipulation of genetic material (Hacking, 2006; Nelkin & Lindee, 1995; Rabinow, 1996), at a historical period when DNA came to be described as the single most important element of human identification (Cole, 2001).

In 1985 Alec Jeffreys and colleagues published an article in Nature, entitled “Individual-specific ‘fingerprints’ of human DNA,” that has since become an inaugural chapter in the story of the uses of genetics for human identification purposes. The author presented a technique using highly variable segments of DNA “… to produce somatically stable DNA “fingerprints” which are completely specific to an individual (or to his identical twin) and can be applied directly to problems of human identification…” (Jeffreys, Wilson, & Theint, 1985, p. 76). The technology of DNA profiling promised to provide reliable knowledge of individual human subjects, rendering the body as a system of standardized and repeatable properties. However, unlike many other techniques of bio-identification, like fingerprints or anthropometry, the analysis of DNA is not constructed from an impression of the body or through the manipulation of the body’s visible aspects; instead, forensic genetics goes “under the skin,” allowing to capture the very essence of that body and turn it into information (Lyon, 2001; Van Der Ploeg, 2005; Williams, 2010).

The introduction of DNA profiling into the criminal justice system began in 1988, when Englishman Colin Pitchfork became the first person to be convicted through the use of DNA evidence. The case gave rise to highly optimistic social expectations about the practical application of this method and its evidentiary value in the formal accusation and prosecution of criminal offenders. In the decades that followed, broader global networks of scientists, biotechnology companies, stakeholders, and end-users (e.g., police institutions and the justice system) stabilized DNA as a powerful tool of justice, establishing the general consensus that genetics technologies should play a vital role both in courts and in criminal investigation activities (Aronson, 2007; Lynch et al., 2008). However, along with its stabilization processes, the innovations in forensic genetics also combine a variety of relatively unstable social formations, insofar as they are being continually co-constructed and re-shaped (Granja, 2020; Granja & Machado, 2020; Kennett, 2019; Lawless, 2012; Samuel & Prainsack, 2018; Wienroth, 2018).

In the aftermath of the stabilization process of DNA profiling, one of the most prominent aspects of forensic genetics’ use in the criminal justice system has been the growth of national forensic DNA databases as a means of storing, searching, and comparing crime scene DNA profiles with profiles from known individuals obtained and retained under a variety of legal regimes (Reed & Syndercombe-Court, 2016; Santos, Machado, & Silva, 2013). This has been possible through a combination of technical, organizational and legislative developments which include: improvements in DNA extraction and analysis; the establishment of national and international laboratory standards; the judicial avowal and trust in the robustness of DNA evidence; and the creation of new technical and scientific working groups and associations, at national and international levels, thus stabilizing the epistemic and ontological status of DNA profiling (Derksen, 2010; Lawless, 2012; Lynch & McNally, 2009).

Alongside these technical and scientific developments, accompanied by changes in legislation and in criminal justice procedures – a process that Michel Lynch and Ruth McNally designated as “biolegality” (Lynch & McNally, 2009) – we witnessed a series of political and historical transformations that ideologically legitimized − and continue to legitimize − the expansion of surveillance based on the creation of large-scale information technology database systems. The increasing interoperability of forensic DNA databases which, albeit nationally based, are also engaged in transnational comparing and exchange of DNA profiles and other kinds of data, is a clear example of the expansion of genetic surveillance (Amelung, Granja, & Machado, 2020; Machado & Granja, 2018; McCartney, 2014; Prainsack & Toom, 2010, 2013). The technological innovations in the domain of storing and exchanging of DNA data are accompanied by issues of safety and security related with broad social and political concerns about terrorism and crime, and they are embodied in a variety of biometric surveillance systems.

Another important historical turn is what we call a post-DNA era, in which the ambitions for genetic informativity are amplified, thereby shifting the focus of forensic science from the construction of evidence to the generation of intelligence considered valuable to criminal investigations (Machado & Granja, 2020; Wienroth, 2018). The move from genetic to genomics, which has been blurring the general accepted boundary between “non-informative” and “informative” genetic markers, ushers the advent and consolidation of technologies that allow a speculative generation of criminal suspects based on information provided by DNA profiles, such as forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) and next generation sequencing (NGS) (Amorim & Pinto, 2018; Granja & Machado, 2020; Samuel & Prainsack, 2018; Wienroth, 2018). In this introduction we explore some of the ramifications stemming from this progress of transition from genetics to genomics in the criminal identification area.

The work of Robin Williams accurately outlines the interrelated social and epistemic domains comprising the typical focus of DNA profiling and DNA databasing governance, namely: the juridical-scientific, the operational, and the ethico-political domains (Williams, 2010, pp. 140–147). From the author’s perspective, the juridical-scientific involves the subjection of DNA profiling and DNA evidence production to a legal framework that both enables and limits the management of DNA profile data, as well as their legitimate uses and resistance to judicial and scientific challenges. The operational domain pertains to the assessment of criminal DNA databases’ effectiveness and efficiency for policing and other crime governance-related activities. The ethico-political domain relates to civil liberties and human rights, namely in terms of the monitoring and independent scrutiny over the operation and uses of DNA databases, as well as issues of public trust in governance. Based on the existing literature on the governance of forensic genetic technologies in the security and criminal law fields, the following table provides a summary of the most recurrent themes and issues:

Table 1.1 Governance in forensic genetics applied to criminal investigation

Domains	Stakeholders	Practice	Potential issues
Juridico-scientific	Scientists and policymakers	Legal framework (admissibility of DNA evidence in court)Procedures and standards for management and use of DNA profiling and databasing	(Lack of) legitimation of criteria for inclusion/retention of DNA data (which can have either expansive or restrictive effects)(Lack of) utility and reliability
Operational	Laboratory practitioners, police agencies, courts, and oversight bodies	Quality assurance, reliability, and oversight of operations	Use of flawed random match probabilities“CSI” effectContamination, mistakes, false positives or false negativesBacklog in deletion of profiles that might no longer be used
Ethico-political	Civic organizations, academics, and other critical commentators	Monitor and advisory role	Privacy risksStigmatizationFunction creep (widening the scopes of uses for purposes other than those for which the technology or database was designed)Surveillance and social sorting

Source: Authors, inspired by Williams (2010).

This book aims to expand the academic debate around the governance of forensic genetics, by expanding the approach proposed by Robin Williams to encompass the “juridico-scientific,” “operational” and “ethico-political” domains (see Table 1.1). Williams’ approach broadens the horizons and opens new ways to address technologies of control and their implications on our conceptions of the human, justice and the role of science at a time that might be described as a post-DNA era, insofar as forensic analyses are increasingly converging toward the study of the human genome. As we reflect upon the social, cultural, ethical and political implications of genetic technologies, we need to look more closely at the modes of individual and collective social identity performativity, as well as to imaginaries of nationhood and historical trajectories that condition the relations between the state and its citizens (rendering them to a greater or lesser degree predisposed to release sensitive data), in the context of a society which has been won over by the promises of genetics and is enthralled with the processes of datafication.

Genetic surveillance

The expansion of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Forensic Genetics and Genetic Surveillance in Europe: A Historical and Sociological Analysis
• 3. Transnational genetic surveillance in the EU: The case of the Prüm system
• 4. Genetic Surveillance in Post-Communist European Countries
• 5. The Uses of Familial Searching In Europe: At The Crossroads Between Expanding Suspicion And Historical Reparation
• 6. Expanding Genetic Informativity Through Emerging Technologies: The Cases of Forensic DNA Phenotyping and Next Generation Sequencing
• 7. Non-Governmental Organizations and the Critique of Genetic Surveillance
• 8. Conclusion
• Index