In recent years, the concept of objectivity has been subject to much scrutiny across a spectrum of academic disciplines including philosophy, history of science and historical criminology. Some of this scholarship challenges the traditional approach to epistemology which sees objectivity in terms of uncovering and describing an independent reality, arguing instead that objectivity is temporally and culturally contingent and is created or performed rather than discovered. Notably, the history of objectivity has attracted considerable attention in the history of science (e.g. through the work of Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison) and is a familiar subject for historical enquiry in that field.1 However, an interest in objectivity is far from confined to the history of the development of scientific knowledge and analyses of crime history show that objectivity in relation to crime and criminals is subject to similar concerns over the culturally contingent nature of its construction.
A study of that which is taken to be objective knowledge of crime, scenes of crime, crime materials, criminals and the procedures involved in solving crimes reveals the variety of ways in which what might be termed forensic objectivity is constructed and also that many different actors are involved in the construction of forensic objectivity. Forensic objectivity is, therefore, a useful concept for thinking about crime and the ways that knowledge about crime and criminals is created, either explicitly ‘scientifically’ or otherwise. For historians, it would seem that the best way to understand objectivity is to examine the way it has been created; historical case studies can reveal not only the multifaceted nature of objectivity but can also show that many people, not just experts, are involved in creating it. Of course, there is an important way in which attempts to achieve forensic objectivity can be seen as problematic and this relates to expert witnesses, particularly within the time-span which this book encompasses. In adversarial legal systems, such as those which operate in the UK and USA, an expert witness appears for the prosecution or the defence. There is always a question of impartiality. In the UK, the question of impartiality bedevilled the fortunes of expert witnesses from the nineteenth century onwards when the role began to professionalize, signalling that the relationship between science and law has not always been a happy one.2 The courtroom is a place where expert witnesses can display their authority and where their analyses can be accepted or rejected.3 It is a place where forensic objectivity is constructed and challenged (although as we argue in this book it is not the only place where such challenges are made); there may be competing views of forensic objectivity even when juries are presented with the same facts. However, despite a caveat about the role of expert witnesses, and although there are examples of experts disagreeing with one another in this book, the ‘warring experts’4 issue does not feature strongly in what follows, rather the construction of forensic objectivity appears to be more subtle and more complex.
This book approaches crime history through detailed case studies of the ways in which forensic objectivity was constructed in relation to crime (mostly murder), mainly in the UK but with some important international comparisons made possible by the inclusion of chapters set in Germany, USA, Ireland and Sweden. It is notable that three of the UK-based chapters are set in Scotland which has been subject to much less historical attention than England in terms of the development of forensic sensibilities in relation to criminal justice.5 The case studies of two of the book’s chapters (by Kelly-Ann Couzens and Nicholas Duvall) demonstrate that the development of professional networks in forensic medicine in Scotland through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a major element of the development of forensic services and of achieving objective knowledge in relation to crime. There are some demonstrable differences in the legal system, policing and the development of forensic medicine and science in Scotland, when compared to the situation in England, which these chapters analyse. In both England and Scotland, institutional arrangements and indeed state support were to have a substantial impact on epistemological matters. This serves to emphasize a continuing theme in the history of crime, mirrored widely in the academy, which militates against universalist notions of objectivity. Local, contingent arrangements do more than influence the trajectory of knowledge; they make it.
Some of the book’s chapters address forensic objectivity directly, others more tangentially suggesting that it may be useful to consider forensic objectivity as a kind of emergent property, developing from professional practices and media commentary, systems of representation of crimes and crime artefacts. The book’s time period spans the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day. Around the middle of the nineteenth century important types of representational practices we now take for granted were crystallizing; these had to be worked out and agreed in the making and acceptance of what was taken to be objective knowledge about crime and criminals. Such developments include the beginning of crime photography, the use of diagrams and models specially constructed for and displayed in the courtroom so jurors could be ‘virtual witnesses’,6 the professionalization of medical and scientific expert witnesses and their professional networks,7 ways of measuring, recording and developing criminal records and the role of the media, particularly newspapers in reporting on crime, criminals and legal proceedings and their role in the shaping of public opinion on crime. A number of these developments are considered in the case studies presented here. Hence, the mid-nineteenth century appears to be an appropriate juncture from which to discern the threads of the development of forensic objectivity.
As the project took shape, a cut-off date of somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century began to feel increasingly artificial. Corinna Kruse’s chapter set in the present day (in a Swedish forensic laboratory setting) demonstrates, on one hand, the continuity with past approaches to the objective representation of crime, criminals and forensic materials but also shows how newer mathematical, particularly probabilistic approaches to objectivity are created and maintained. This acknowledges the relevance of scholarship on the ‘history of the present’, particularly as explicated by David Garland in relation to Foucault’s writing, ‘[b]y reconnecting contemporary practices … with the historical struggles and exercises of power that shaped their character’.8 Including a contemporary case study also serves to reinforce the argument that, in the post-DNA era, the question of forensic objectivity is far from sorted out and, in the paeans to modernity represented by gleaming, new forensic laboratories, truth and objectivity are just as much subject to negotiation, construction and framing even if regulatory regimes have changed and have become sedimented. In addition, forensic technologies and sciences continue to be subject to considerable critical scrutiny, especially in the UK and USA. As a good part of contemporary criticism centres on forensic science’s scientific credentials, it is apposite to consider where such scientific credentials have come from and how they have developed historically; this is the very stuff of forensic objectivity.9 A further reason for extending the temporal period to the present day lies in the potential to make a connection between ethics, in terms of the contemporary ethical treatment of historical material, and forensic objectivity. The ethical treatment of material from past crimes which still exists today is addressed explicitly in Angela Sutton-Vane’s chapter. But we must also consider our ethical duty to the victims of past crimes, not only in our descriptions of their lives but also in relation to photographic material, particularly images of victims.
As the case studies make clear, there is no suggestion of a direct progression from ‘primitive’ approaches to forensic objectivity in the nineteenth century to the present, hence the book is not structured chronologically. By centring the collection mainly on the UK, alongside important international case studies for comparative purposes, over a crucial century and a half for the concepts we explore, we are able to demonstrate some of the ways in which medical, policing and other expert knowledge was changing rapidly, despite always being mediated by public an...