Researcher Blog by Professor Alison Adam: Crime, policing, technology and the development of forensic science – lessons for today

About the author

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Alison Adam is Professor of Science, Technology & Society. She has published widely in the fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS), particularly around information systems (IS), gender issues and technology.  More recently her research interests have shifted focus towards historical topics, particularly the history of forensic science. Alison’s latest book is a research monograph, A History of Forensic Science: British beginnings in the twentieth century (Routledge, 2016).

 

Towards the end of last year Professor Alison Adam spoke at a workshop on ‘Crime, Policing and Technology in the 20th Century’ at the Open University. In a talk entitled, ‘Science in the service of detection: the British ‘scientific aids’ movement of the 1930s’ she presented results from her research on the history of forensic science in the UK in the early twentieth century. Following this, Alison spoke on the same topic at a History & Policy seminar on ‘New Technologies in Policing in the 20th Century’ at the Home Office. In this post Alison considers the significance for present day policing of some of the findings of her research into the history of forensic science.

 

At the Home Office seminar speakers were invited to consider the lessons that their historical research on technologies and policing offer for the present day. In my talk, I described the way in which the Home Office set up a network of forensic science laboratories in England and Wales from the 1930s onwards. If the Home Office did not actually invent the term ‘forensic science’ it certainly had a major influence in developing the subject. This laboratory network grew into the renowned Forensic Science Service (FSS) which was closed in 2012.

Throughout the history of forensic laboratories the issue of quality control has been paramount. Yet quality control is just as much a bureaucratic concern as it is a scientific question. The efforts of the Home Office in the 1930s and 40s to establish appropriate protocols and professional roles for police officers, detectives, scientists and, ultimately scenes of crime officers, show that the delineation of roles and oversight of the handling, analysis and reporting of forensic evidence is extremely complex. This is no less significant in the present day as is demonstrated by the recent scandal over potential manipulation of forensic evidence by employees of a Manchester-based forensic company. The BBC’s home affairs correspondent, Danny Shaw, described this case as ‘the biggest forensic science scandal in the UK for decades’. (See ‘Randox Forensics Enquiry: Drug-drivers to challenge convictions’, BBC).

Not only will some convictions be quashed and some cases dropped but over 10,000 criminal investigations must be reviewed within a criminal justice system that is already over-stretched. One of the upshots of this case is to flag the question of scrutiny of drug and alcohol testing for family courts. The Forensic Science Regulator (FSR), Dr Gillian Tully, is the independent official who is responsible for forensic science quality standards in the investigation and prosecution of crime, both establishing and enforcing such standards. Dr Tully has raised concerns about forensic companies working for family courts.

At present, the FSR role only covers criminal courts not civil or family courts. However, substance abuse can be a decisive factor in whether children can remain with their parents. As Mr Justice Baker warned the high court in 2012: ‘Erroneous evidence may lead to the gravest miscarriage of justice imaginable – the wrongful removal of children from their families.’ (See ‘Regulator calls for better scrutiny of drug testing in family courts’,Hannah Devlin, 23/11/17).

It may be some time before all the facts of the Manchester case are available. Nevertheless, it raises some troublesome issues about how forensic evidence is analysed. There is the question of standards, competence, whether corners were cut and whether appropriate controls were in place. Some may regard this case as the inevitable result of the closure of the Forensic Science Service and an attrition of quality standards all round.

But there is also the uncomfortable question of the motivations of the scientists involved in the Manchester case. Nowadays we no longer tend to regard scientists as selfless, dispassionate seekers after truth, nevertheless we are surprised, even shocked, when scientists are involved in alleged data manipulation. As Dr Gillian Tully put it: ‘I was also actually really shocked that people working [at] a forensic science laboratory could possibly have been involved in something improper.’ (See ‘Regulator calls for better scrutiny’ above).

 

 

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Please note: Views expressed are those of the Author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of SHU, C3RI or the C3RI Impact Blog.