From promise to practice

Hopman, Roos; Oorschot, Irene van; M’charek, Amade

doi:10.4324/9780429322358-9

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Instead, it can be located in the highly adaptive and situated work of composite drawers as they tailor their methods to both an ever-changing suspect population, the endless repertoire of drawing devices and reference materials available to them, and a particular eyewitness and criminal investigation. This is not to say that such work is not important to the development of DNA technologies (see Hopman et al, 2022), but rather helps open up the conversation on innovation as technological progress. To innovate then, does not necessarily mean leaving the past behind, but equally entails sticking to established, mundane technologies and putting these to work in different ways.…”

Section: Conclusion: the Promise Of The Mundanementioning

confidence: 99%

Between pencils and genetic markers: Rethinking innovation in policing through forensic face-making technologies

Hopman,

Bleumink

2023

International Journal of Police Science & Management

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article we take two forensic technologies used to generate facial renditions of suspects, forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) and facial composite drawing, to think through innovation in policing. Comparing more mundane, taken-for-granted approaches of facial composite drawing with ‘high-tech’ facial renditions generated using DNA traces, we complicate the value of technological innovation in the criminal investigation. Drawing on participant observations conducted with the Dutch police, forensic genetic laboratories and interviews with investigators and geneticists, we detail some of the technicalities behind the making of faces using these technologies, and show the differences in how the technologies are perceived and applied in policing. With our comparison, we show that although facial composite drawing is often quickly dismissed as being subjective and unreliable, the practice holds important lessons for FDP, in particular FDP's promise of producing a photographic likeness of a suspect. With that, we demonstrate that besides introducing ‘new’ things, innovation may also be located in more mundane and taken-for-granted technologies such as facial composite drawing. We conclude by suggesting that police and technology developers alike take existing technologies and practices more seriously, redirecting the focus of innovation towards the affordances of the mundane.

show abstract

Section: Conclusion: the Promise Of The Mundanementioning

confidence: 99%