Law, Probability and Risk Advance Access originally published online on July 23, 2009
Law, Probability and Risk 2009 8(3):233-255; doi:10.1093/lpr/mgp016
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© The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Forensics without uniqueness, conclusions without individualization: the new epistemology of forensic identification
Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
* Email: scole{at}uci.edu
Received on 17 November 2008. Revised on 8 May 2009. Accepted on 4 June 2009.
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Abstract |
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Among the causes of the current sense that the forensic identification disciplines are ‘under siege’ are conceptual difficulties in these disciplines. Forensic identification disciplines either claim to achieve or strive to achieve conclusions of ‘individualization’, the reduction of the donor pool to a single source. They tend to support such claims by reference to the supposed ‘uniqueness’ of their objects of analysis. Both these notions remain extremely salient among practitioners and courts. And yet, a broad consensus in the forensic literature holds that individualization is unachievable and uniqueness is largely irrelevant to supporting claims of individualization. Focusing on latent print evidence, this article provides a clear articulation of the need to make a clean break from both individualization and uniqueness as forensic concepts. It argues that trace evidence disciplines can live without these concepts, and it explores what defensible conclusions might look like and how they might be supported.
Keywords: individualization; unique; forensic identification; philosophy; epistemology; fingerprint
Presented as part of the Seventh International Conference on Forensic Inference and Statistics, The University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 21st to 23rd August, 2008.