Over the last two decades, the analysis of DNA traces found at a crime scene have expanded the already established forensic DNA analysis for identification to include new techniques intended to predict a criminal suspect’s externally visible characteristics, such as eye, hair and skin colour (‘forensic DNA phenotyping’), or his or her ethnic, continental or regional origin (‘biogeographical ancestry’). In this paper, we conduct a dispositive analysis to investigate how extended DNA analysis in forensics catalyses inherent processes of racialization at three different levels: 1) in the categorizations that are integral to this technology, 2) in the images of the ‘dangerous other’ combined with inflated expectations regarding these technologies’ effectiveness that have framed discourses regarding the legalization of this technology, and 3) in the biases and stereotypes which often guide investigative practices using these technologies. We demonstrate that this is an example par excellence of how the interaction between different practice dimensions can exacerbate unintended discriminating, racialising and racist effects.
BackgroundEarly in the COVID-19 pandemic, it became apparent that members of marginalized populations and immigrants were also at risk of being hospitalized and dying more frequently from COVID-19. To examine how the pandemic affected underserved and marginalized populations, we analyzed data on changes in the number of deaths among people with and without Swiss citizenship during the first and second SARS-CoV-2 waves.MethodWe analyzed the annual number of deaths from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office from 2015 to 2020, and weekly data from January 2020 to May 2021 on deaths of permanent residents with and without Swiss citizenship, and we differentiated the data through subdivision into age groups.ResultsPeople without Swiss citizenship show a higher increase in the number of deaths in 2020 than those who were Swiss citizens. The increase in deaths compared to the previous year was almost twice as high for people without Swiss citizenship (21.8%) as for those with it (11.4%). The breakdown by age group indicates that among people between the ages of 64 and 75, those without Swiss citizenship exhibited an increase in mortality (21.6%) that was four times higher than that for people with Swiss citizenship (4.7%).ConclusionThis study confirms that a highly specialized health care system, as is found in Switzerland, does not sufficiently guarantee that all parts of the population will be equally protected in a health crisis such as COVID-19.
Genetic data contains a multitude of highly personal information and is therefore deemed an especially sensitive data category by data protection laws. But technological advances and the increasing demands of security policymakers have led to the continuous expansion of governmental authority over DNA extraction, analysis and storage. The protection of women from sexual crimes is often put forward as grounds to legitimise these expansions. Sexism and racism intersect in the most recent debate on further policy change, building on existing public fears of the threat posed by unknown male migrants to white German women and presenting controversial DNA technology as a solution. Issue 4This paper is part of Feminist data protection, a special issue of Internet Policy Review
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