Accomplishing Technical and Investigative Expertise in Everyday Crime Scene Investigation

This research, situated at the intersection of sociology, science and technology studies and police studies, provides the first sociological account of Crime Scene Investigator (CSI) training in England and Wales. Focusing on the acquisition and everyday enactment of CSI expertise, this qualitative, ethnographic investigation asks (1) what are the roles, practices and expertise of the CSI and (2) how is the CSI’s expertise developed in training and enacted in everyday work. These questions are explored through participant observation at the main training centre for UK CSIs, observation at crime scenes, interviews with trainees during and after their training and visual methods. By unpicking the visible and invisible components of CSI work, I analyse how CSIs are trained to document crime scenes and explore the practices of transforming a potentially relevant object from these locations into artefacts that meet the requirements of courtroom scrutiny. I demonstrate how CSIs engage actively and reflexively with the requirements of different conceptions of objectivity and the changing demands placed on them. They continually and performatively negotiate and delimit multiple boundaries, from the very literal in demarcating a crime scene to claiming their position within the investigative hierarchy in each interaction. Unlike other discussions of boundary work, for the CSI this is iterative, requires constant effort and is embedded in their routine practice. Within police environments, the CSI has scope for such boundary work. In the courtroom, however, crime scene investigation is narrowly defined. This thesis develops our understanding of the CSI and crime scene investigation as a practice. It stresses the significance of taking this actor seriously in any account of forensic science and investigative practices. By viewing the CSI as simply an evidence collector, or not considering her work at all, the expertise and pivotal role of this actor in the meaningful and efficient use of science in policing is blackboxed. My detailed qualitative analysis of the CSI’s role, work and specialist expertise contributes a necessary account of a key actor in the police and criminal justice system.ESR

Challenges of Expertise and Organizational Learning during the Digital Transformation of Forensic Fingerprint Investigation

The focus of the present dissertation is on personal and collaborative expertise in fingerprint examination, and the carrying out of interventions supporting the organizational transformation of forensic practices of learning and working. The study took place in the context of the digital transformation of fingerprint examination that involved moving from individuals working with real physical samples and analogical documentation to collective processes of analyzing digital fingerprint data. Internal and external criticism is forcing forensic communities to make improvements in terms of further harmonizing criteria, processes and competence requirements. The aim is to improve the quality of forensic investigation at the Fingerprint Laboratory of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) by creating a culture of collectively sharing and enhancing professional knowledge and competence among investigators. A further aim is to deepen understanding of forensic expertise on the personal, collective and organizational level. The conceptual foundations of the research lie in sociocultural frameworks such as adaptive expertise, professional vision, and collective knowledge creation. The assessment of personal and collaborative expertise in fingerprint examination is based on multiple case studies and action-research methods. The dissertation comprises this summary and three sub-studies published as internationally refereed articles. The findings from the studies were as follows. First, the new training methods enabled the apprentices to acquire sophisticated professional competences although their personal ways of reflecting on evolving professional performance differed. Second, the discrepancy meetings revealed how the experienced examiners used partial and limited information in making reconstructive inferences justifying their diverging judgments about the poor-quality latents. The meetings helped with regard to working out more refined criteria for assessing challenging cases and ending up with more coherent decisions. Third, analyses of the developmental seminar discussions revealed that the fingerprint examiners collectively succeeded in verbalizing and constructing their perceptions and interpretations toward a more refined, joint understanding of the criteria of no-value fingerprints, criteria for color-coding and work-out procedures for dealing with discrepant cases, and documentation and other aspects of using the digital instruments. The results of the research were incorporated into some of the NBIFL operational guidelines and quality requirements, as well as guidelines on professional activity in the laboratory.Digitalisaatio on olennaisesti muuttanut sormenjälkitutkimuksen välineitä, prosesseja ja käytäntöjä. Samaan aikaan kritiikki rikostutkimusyhteisön sisältä ja ulkoa ovat pakottaneet forensiikan palveluiden tuottajat tavoittelemaan toimintansa harmonisoimiseksi yhtenäisiä kriteereitä, prosesseja ja osaamisen pätevyysvaatimuksia. Tämä väitöskirjan tavoitteena on tuottaa syvempää ymmärrystä sormenjälkitutkimuksen asiantuntijuuden kehittämisen haasteista yksilön, yhteisön ja organisaation tasoilla. Väitöstutkimus erittelee adaptiivisen asiantuntijuuden, oppimisen, ammatillisen näkemisen ja kollektiivisen tiedon luomisen käytänteitä sosiokulttuurisesta näkökulmasta. Tutkimus on luonteeltaan tapaustutkimus ja toimintatutkimus. Väitöskirjan kolmessa osatutkimuksessa kuvataan ja eritellään sormenjälkitutkimusten eritasoisia haasteita. Tulokset ohjaavat tarkastelemaan forensisen alueen haasteita, jotka liittyvät koulutukseen, sormenjälkitutkimusten tulkintaan ja päätöksentekoon, dokumentointiin, laatuun, jaettujen sääntöjen luomiseen ja myös eri työprosessien ja tutkimusmenetelmien kehittämiseen. Tulokset osoittivat, että harjoittelijat saavuttivat ammatillisen pätevyyden ja heidän yksilöllisen tapansa reflektoida ammatillisesti. Toiseksi, tulokset osoittivat kuinka osallistujat käyttivät rajoittunutta tietoa arvioidessaan heikkolaatuisia sormenjälkiä. Kolmanneksi, tulokset osoittivat kuinka sormenjälkitutkijat tuottivat ja verbalisoivat kollektiivisesti tietoa ja kurottelivat oman pätevyytensä uudelle tasolle, tunnistivat kriittisiä käytänteitä ja löysivät tutkimuksille, prosesseille ja dokumentaatioihin liittyviä yhteisiä ratkaisuja kohti harmonisoidumpia tuloksia

The Inhuman Overhang: On Differential Heterogenesis and Multi-Scalar Modeling

As a philosophical paradigm, differential heterogenesis offers us a novel descriptive vantage with which to inscribe Deleuze’s virtuality within the terrain of “differential becoming,” conjugating “pure saliences” so as to parse economies, microhistories, insurgencies, and epistemological evolutionary processes that can be conceived of independently from their representational form. Unlike Gestalt theory’s oppositional constructions, the advantage of this aperture is that it posits a dynamic context to both media and its analysis, rendering them functionally tractable and set in relation to other objects, rather than as sedentary identities. Surveying the genealogy of differential heterogenesis with particular interest in the legacy of Lautman’s dialectic, I make the case for a reading of the Deleuzean virtual that departs from an event-oriented approach, galvanizing Sarti and Citti’s dynamic a priori vis-à-vis Deleuze’s philosophy of difference. Specifically, I posit differential heterogenesis as frame with which to examine our contemporaneous epistemic shift as it relates to multi-scalar computational modeling while paying particular attention to neuro-inferential modes of inductive learning and homologous cognitive architecture. Carving a bricolage between Mark Wilson’s work on the “greediness of scales” and Deleuze’s “scales of reality”, this project threads between static ecologies and active externalism vis-à-vis endocentric frames of reference and syntactical scaffolding

A critical review of the current state of forensic science knowledge and its integration in legal systems

Forensic science has a significant historical and contemporary relationship with the criminal justice system. It is a relationship between two disciplines whose origins stem from different backgrounds. It is trite that effective communication assist in resolving underlying problems in any given context. However, a lack of communication continues to characterise the intersection between law and science. As recently as 2019, a six-part symposium on the use of forensic science in the criminal justice system again posed the question on how the justice system could ensure the reliability of forensic science evidence presented during trials. As the law demands finality, science is always evolving and can never be considered finite or final. Legal systems do not always adapt to the nature of scientific knowledge, and are not willing to abandon finality when that scientific knowledge shifts. Advocacy plays an important role in the promotion of forensic science, particularly advocacy to the broader scientific community for financial support, much needed research and more testing. However, despite its important function, advocacy should not be conflated with science. The foundation of advocacy is a cause; whereas the foundation of science is fact. The objective of this research was to conduct a qualitative literature review of the field of forensic science; to identify gaps in the knowledge of forensic science and its integration in the criminal justice system. The literature review will provide researchers within the field of forensic science with suggested research topics requiring further examination and research. To achieve its objective, the study critically analysed the historical development of, and evaluated the use of forensic science evidence in legal systems generally, including its role regarding the admissibility or inadmissibility of the evidence in the courtroom. In conclusion, it was determined that the breadth of forensic scientific knowledge is comprehensive but scattered. The foundational underpinning of the four disciplines, discussed in this dissertation, has been put to the legal test on countless occasions. Some gaps still remain that require further research in order to strengthen the foundation of the disciplines. Human influence will always be present in examinations and interpretations and will lean towards subjective decision making.JurisprudenceD. Phil

Race, biometrics, and security in modern Japan : a history of racial government

This thesis is an historical study of biopolitical relations between racism and biometric identification in Japan since the late nineteenth century to the present day. Adopting Foucault’s historical method, it challenges progressive accounts of the history of racism and that of biometrics. During the nineteenth century, practices of biometric identification emerged as constitutive of the knowledge of race wherein imperial power relations between superior and inferior races were enabled. Progressive accounts proclaim that colonial practices of biometrics were not scientific but politically intervened, which has since been discredited and replaced by a ‘true’ science of biometrics as individualisation. Contra progressivist claims on postraciality, the thesis concretely historicises the ways in which subjectification and control of race is conducted through the interplay between the epistemic construction of race and the technology of identification in each historical and geographical context. It analyses three modalities of racial government through biometrics in Japan: biometrics as a biological technology of inscribing race during Japanese colonialism; biometrics as a forensic technology of policing former colonial subjects in post-WWII Japan; and contemporary biometrics as an informatic technology of controlling a newly racialised immigrant population. The thesis concludes that despite a series of de-racialising reforms in the twentieth century, biometrics persist as a biopolitical technology of race. Neither racism nor biometrics as a technology of race is receding but they are continuously transforming in a way that a new mechanism of racial government is made possible. Race evolves, it is argued, not in the sense of social Darwinism but because the concept of race itself changes across time and space wherein a new model of racism is empowered. The thesis contributes to existing literature on the biopolitics of security and biometrics by extending the scope of analysis to a non-Western context, explicating historical relations between racism and biometrics, and problematising biometric rationality at the level of racialised mechanism of knowing and controlling (in)security. It also makes contributions to Foucaultian studies by advancing the analysis of biopolitical racism beyond Foucault’s original formulation and by offering a critique of rationality in the field of biometrics

Latent science: a history of challenges to fingerprint evidence in Australia

Through a review of reported challenges this article explains how latent fingerprint evidence was routinely admitted and relied upon as proof of identity in criminal proceedings before its value and limitations were studied or understood. That it was admitted and used in ways that were disengaged from scientific research reveals a great deal about our adversarial system — of pleas, rules of admissibility, trial safeguards, standards of proof, and heavy reliance on the technical competence of lawyers and judges. This article draws on contemporary scientific research to explain how more than a century of routine legal reliance, along with quite a few admissibility challenges, produced few meaningful responses and no apparent endogenous understanding of the limitations of latent fingerprint comparison. Trial personnel and trial safeguards did not lead to the identification, recognition and communication of methodological problems, uncertainties or the frequency of error. Latent fingerprint evidence continues to be presented in ways that are not informed by scientific research, are inconsistent with mainstream scientific advice, exaggerate the value of opinions, and unecessarily threaten both the rectitude and fairness of criminal proceedings