The (re)invocation of race in forensic genetics through forensic DNA phenotyping technology

Abstract

This chapter explores, with different examples from European jurisdictions, the expectations of scientists regarding phenotype inference technology, seen as one of the most controversial but also most promising weapons of genetics in the identification of suspects in crimes. The extent of the controversies raised by this inference technology of visible physical characteristics of the human beings is sustained mainly by the fears that geneticists in Europe have of explicitly invoking the idea or concept of race. Indeed, in Europe, science has an ambiguous and contradictory relationship with the concept of race that involves concealing, and in that process of omission, making race more present than ever. By exploring how forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) combines and conflates ideas about human biological differences that are both race and population-based, the author demonstrates how attempts to deconstruct race within science can also, potentially, converge in its reconstruction, (re)creating dynamics of collectivisation of suspicion over specific population groups. The author argues that geneticists’ engagement in controversial aspects around the development and application of this technology, created within a logic of race-sorting, reveals hopes of ethical sensitivity towards historical and cultural past experiences associated with the hegemonic use of racially differentiated categories, eugenics and colonialism.