Creating the Network and the Actors: The FBI's Role in the Standardization of Forensic DNA Profiling

Abstract

This article explores the FBI's early efforts to develop and implement a standardized DNA profiling regime in a legal and scientific landscape shaped by strong defense challenges to the technique. Although the FBI claimed numerous times that its standardization efforts were purely 'technical', the FBI knew it had to create a social infrastructure that would serve to ensure the validity and reliability of the forensic DNA evidence. At the center of the system would be the FBI, serving as the obligatory, if reluctant, passage point for both technical and social exchanges. The FBI decided largely by fiat that forensic scientists based in public crime laboratories, but with little molecular biology and genetics training, bore the primary responsibility for setting standards, as well as carrying out, forensic DNA analysis. At the same time, the FBI actively excluded representatives from the private biotechnology companies that introduced the technique into the legal system, as well as the members of the defense community that were responsible for highlighting potential problems with the technique in court.

The Sociological Gaze

“…In the late eighties and early nineties, when DNA profiling technologies began to be used as auxiliary tools in criminal identification, there were not any protocols nor rules regarding the interpretation of the information obtained from genetic profiles. Likewise, there was not a consensus in the scientific community about how to perform DNA analyses and interpret the results (Aronson, 2008;Derksen, 2010;Lynch, 1998). Nowadays, things are different: there are protocols, quality patterns for laboratories and legal frameworks.…”

“…Her approach uses examples from the history of DNA profiling to show specific, particular moments where the micro (for instance, consensus between two people about the validity of a DNA profile interpretation method) and macro (e.g., creating legislation for databases with thousands of genetic profiles) levels were translated into one another. Therefore, the author studied examples from the history of DNA profiling which show specific moments of translation where new knowledge is produced at micro level and is then taken up-entrenched-into new social structures at macro level (see also Aronson, 2008). In concrete terms, Linda Derksen argues that the stabilization and standardization process of scientific knowledge generated around DNA profiling technologies led to the creation of new and diverse social structures.…”

“…On the one hand, laboratory social studies are focused on practices and interactions in a specific location (the scientific laboratory), while on the other hand, they highlight the construction and consolidation of power relations in modern societies (Knorr-Cetina, 1995). infrastructure and a laboratory network that imposed their approach to the activities already being developed by private companies. At the same time, the FBI recruited prestigious forensic scientists to validate and lend credibility to the products and methods being developed by them (Aronson, 2008). This kind of approach allows us to understand how the stabilization of networks and structures for some actors may lead to the exclusion of others-a kind of perspective that emphasizes power inequalities within forensic genetics (Quinlan, 2014).…”

“…After "stabilizing" the credibility of DNA profiling technologies, it was possible to store the DNA profiles in vast computer databases and disseminate them among the different social actors in the justice system, locally, nationally and internationally. Nowadays, DNA profiles can be shared and compared between different laboratories, provided that they use the same computer system and have adopted the same protocols (Aronson, 2007(Aronson, , 2008Machado & Granja, 2018;Santos, 2017).…”

“…Focusing on the specific case of England and Wales, Robin Williams and Paul Johnson (Williams & Johnson, 2004, 2008 explored the operational, legal and political aspects that have been brought to the fore while establishing and expanding the use of DNA technologies and the NDNAD. Taking into consideration the way different knowledges, practices and routines jointly constituted the NDNAD, the authors have analysed the perspectives of different specialist areas.…”