Foreword

AutorRobin Williams
Cargo del AutorProfessor of Forensic Science Studies, Northumbria University Centre for Forensic Science
Páginas11-12
Foreword
The establishment and on-going development of forensic DNA profiling
and databasing have been topics of scientific, legal, and social interest for
almost thirty years. There is an existing body of work that deals with one or
another of these aspects of forensic genetics and its reception within particu-
lar criminal jurisdictions, and sometimes across several jurisdictions. How-
ever, there has been no book which has discussed, in one volume, the techno-
logical affordances on which forensic DNA procedures rely, the policing ambi-
tions that encourage their expansion, the judicial desiderata which their uses
are expected to meet, and the human rights challenges that they create. It is
to Maria Jose Cabezudo Bajo’s credit that she has edited the first book that
includes treatments of all of these matters.
Maria Jose Cabezudo Bajo is a legal scholar who has recognised the neces-
sity for informed interdisciplinary conversation about current and emerging
uses of forensic genetics. It is fortunate for all of us that she also has the ability
to make such a conversation happen. This book is the splendid outcome of her
efforts to bring together a range of individuals with a variety of expert knowl-
edge and experience which have informed their views of the promises and
challenges that inhabit this domain. The chapters included are largely derived
from a Colloquium on forensic DNA databases held at the National University
of Distance Learning (UNED) in March 2011 and supported by the Spanish
Ministry for Science and Innovation. Scientists, legal scholars, and a variety of
criminal justice officials participated in the meeting and have written chapters
for this collection. Other contributions —including my own— have come from
European and American academics with an interest in studying the uses of the
life sciences in support of state security, criminal justice, and individual safety.
Anyone who wants to understand the complex issues that arise concern-
ing the governance of forensic DNA profiling, as what Lynch and McNally
have designated a particular instance of «biolegal» innovation, will profit
from reading the chapters of this book. Whilst the bulk of them deal with the
ways in which governance issues are shaped by the interaction between agen-
cies (especially legislators, police, the courts, government ministries, and data
protection officials) within a single European state, the understandings,
ambitions and anxieties that underlie the existence of a variety of governance
regimes are common to all modern democratic societies.
The book also reminds us of the restlessness of this area of biolegal inno-
vation. As the science develops, its operational uses expand, and as countries
with varying policing histories begin to embrace new forensic genetic tech-

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