The Social and Legal Construction of Suspects

Abstract

▪ Abstract DNA profiling and searchable databases enhance the ability of policing organizations to search for criminal suspects. In many respects, these technologies are incorporated within traditions of police work, supplementing familiar “subjective” methods of constructing suspects. In other ways, however, the construction of DNA databases in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere shifts criminal investigation toward suspect populations and statistical suspects. Not only is DNA evidence used to confirm that a criminal suspect is the source of crime scene evidence, it can be used to search freely through a suspect population for a possible source of such evidence. This method, commonly known as database trawling, comprises a new way of constructing suspects, one that bears close connections with new data mining technologies for prospectively identifying terrorist suspects.

Trumping Communitarianism: Crime Control and Forensic DNA Typing and Databasing in Singapore

“…In recent years, new genetic insights, the availability of large population genetic databases as well as technological innovations crystallized out in the application of DNA technologies aimed at clustering potential suspects (Cole and Lynch 2006;M'charek 2008;Toom 2012a). One application regards searching for possible familial relations between the unknown originator of a DNA trace and known subjects in the database (hereafter: familial searching).…”

Biolegality, the Forensic Imaginary and Criminal Investigation*

“…Various authors have discussed the role of bioidentification -or identification via the body, including identification from DNA profiles but also dactyloscopy (identification from fingerprints) and anthropometry (identification using physical measurements of the human body) used in various countries throughout the world including Portugal in the 19 th century (Cole, 2002) -as an integral feature of the development of the modern state apparatus (Cole & Lynch, 2006;Garland, 2001;Lyon, 2001). In this way, the criminal's career becomes visible to the state and potentially dangerous bodies are more easily controlled: a link is created between a particular (unique, identified and individualised) body and a state archive (databases of criminal records, fingerprints and, more recently, DNA profiles).…”

Bracketing off population does not advance ethical reflection on EVCs: A reply to Kayser and Schneider

“…If this is an assumption that is made in the public realm, it increases the risk of stigmatization of individuals and groups, reinforces racial categories [3,[8][9][10][11][12]15], and clusters an entire population group into a 'suspect population' [16]. If such assumptions enter investigative considerations as well, then members of such 'suspect populations' will have to be actively excluded as possible perpetrators e.g.…”