Built on the fingernail clippings, shreds of hair, and saliva, the power of deoxyribonucleic acid, as well as the further understanding and application of this molecule, has ultimately served as one of the most important discoveries of all time. Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher was initially attempting to study the composition of white blood cells when he incidentally isolated a molecule from a cell nucleus. He defined this distinct molecule as DNA in the year eighteen sixty-nine, but it wasn’t until eight decades later that the true weight of this revolutionary discovery was fully unveiled. This self-replicating material that carries genetic information is the instruction manual for life itself. Not only is simply grasping the concept of this molecule a scientific milestone, but it has rippled into almost every facet of modern existence. Through the process of DNA profiling, where a specific gene pattern is obtained from a person and stored in a database, the criminal justice system has been entirely revolutionized through fingerprint technology. Cold cases over decades old have been solved at the same time as victims of crime have been identified in order to bring peace and closure to affected families. The utilization of DNA has reduced strain on prison systems while paradoxically filling them with new convicts in an interesting dichotomy where both criminals have been caught at quicker and more accurate rates while thousands of the falsely accused have been exonerated. DNA has been able to unite families worldwide through genetic analyses, pairing siblings together who were previously unaware of each other and serving as a bridge to reunite long lost family members. Conversely, this same process has torn apart relationships through the development of maternity and paternity tests, disclosing more unpleasant generational secrets. Not only is DNA just a personal identifier used to figure out scientific information about an individual, but this technology has reached back through history to redefine peoples genetic heritage through at-home DNA kits. All of this scientific innovation has not excluded ethical and statistical implications. The rise in genealogy has affected data that demographers use to measure population shifts and to monitor racial inequalities, and the level to which individual DNA profiles are being shared has brought up questions regarding consent and a person’s rights when it comes to balancing criminal justice efforts and privacy. Overall, the discovery of DNA has entirely changed the field of healthcare, criminology, and genealogy to name a few, rewriting history and unveiling a future of secrets hidden within one of the core elements of life itself.
Throughout history, the delicate craft of forensic science has played a timeless role in upholding justice and unraveling secrets. The field has been exponentially advancing on its early origins in the thirteenth century, when crime specialists in Ancient India would use tactics such as filling a suspect’s mouth with dry rice to examine salivation in order to deduce innocence or guilt. A common method of reducing the identity of a criminal in the early 1900’s was eyewitness testimony. Oftentimes in the setting of a court trial, individuals tied closely with the events of a crime would describe their perspective and recount what they were able to visually observe about the incident. This depiction was usually crucial evidence in the conviction process. While the effects of this method was not entirely understood yet by the legal system, the commonplace belief in witnesses to accurately recall details about a crime was still ultimately harmful to the criminal justice system due to its strong tendency to relay inaccuracies. In a study done by the California Innocence Project, as many as one in four eyewitness identifications are wrong. This overbearing trust in eyewitnesses unintentionally led to a commonplace of wrongful convictions and misidentifications. Not only did this trend create a generally imprecise system of crime-solving, but black Americans were disproportionately affected. In the early 20th century racial inequalities were evident within the criminal justice system, with white individuals typically receiving lighter sentences, higher likelihoods of acquittal, and more favorable treatment in general- this oppression within the criminal justice system merely mirroring the trend of segregation across the United States within this same time period. African Americans and other minority groups were targeted at a higher rate due to systemic bias, arrested in cases of racial profiling, and convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.
Pre-DNA forensic science doesn’t only reflect racial inequalities, but can be used to illustrate class disparity commonplaces as well. Individuals with higher socioeconomic status were routinely shown to have easier access to legal representation, which gave them a much greater chance to receive favorable treatment. Meanwhile, those from lower class backgrounds that couldn’t afford quality legal representation were much more likely to face harsher sentences. This common bias wasn’t fixed until 1963, when the United States Supreme Court held that state courts were required to appoint attorneys to any defendants who could not afford legal representation on their own. Similarly, this same time period served as an uprising of American citizens desiring to secure racial equality and eliminate biases within governmental systems, commonly deemed as the Civil Rights Era marked by Freedom Rides, the 1963 Civil Rights Act, and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” While racial biases and class division was extremely prevalent throughout the twentieth century, which exacerbated the impact of unreliable eyewitness testimony and disproportionate legal representation, there was a general uptick in resistance against these commonplaces during the fifties and sixties. Despite these steps in the right direction, the criminal justice field was still far from its outside image of fair, just, and factual.
After centuries of a too-often inaccurate criminal justice system, the 1980s saw a revolutionary development in the field of forensic science with the application of DNA to crime. Firstly beginning to be utilized for this purpose in the United Kingdom, pioneered by the work of Sir Alec Jeffreys, the late twentieth century reflected a complete shift in criminal control methodology as this new science began to integrate with the legal system. DNA evidence was first used to secure a conviction in 1987 with the case of Colin Pitchfork, and ever since that turning point the field of DNA profiling saw a trend of rapid expansion. Around ten years after the first integration of DNA into criminal justice the United States passed the 1994 DNA Identification Act, which established the Combined DNA Identification System, otherwise known as CODIS. Secondly this act provided for the US National DNA Index System, which served as a comprehensive framework to regulate the collections and use of DNA evidence. DNA itself- or rather deoxyribonucleic acid- can be simply explained as a string of numbers that is used to identify an individual. Gathered from a saliva swab, a piece of hair, or a skin cell extracted carefully from a crime scene, this string of numbers is used by scientists to upload to a DNA database, where it is compared with DNA profiles from crime scenes. Law enforcement officials now routinely match DNA from crime scenes to DNA in offender databases. With this development forensic scientists across the world were rapidly implementing the uses of not only DNA, but the databases beginning to be built as well. When initially introduced most states required only serious violent offenders that were convicted of their crime to provide a DNA sample. Over the years legislators have grown to add robbers, burglars, and convicted felons. In present day America all states now require DNA from any convinced felon. As of right now, there are between thirteen and fifteen million DNA profiles within CODIS. The main purpose in this requirement is to provide new leads for crimes where law enforcement falls short.
This scientific methodology created a mass ripple effect that pervaded every aspect of the legal system. Firstly, criminal justice simply became exponentially more efficient. The core of this shift lies within DNA’s capacity to link crimes together through a singular defendant. By comparing DNA profiles from crime scenes to offender databases, investigations were accelerated in all aspects. This newfound efficiency not only saves time, but saves resources with a reduced strain on the already fatigued correctional system. The accuracy of convictions was significantly enhanced, as the risk of false accusations of wrongful sentencing was immediately diminished. Studies have shown that DNA evidence is ninety-nine percent effective, showcasing a stark contrast from eyewitness testimony and confessions.
Further evidence of the shift relies on the subsequent exoneration of criminals after the application of DNA technology. Companies like The Innocence Project began to revisit closed cases that had suspicious elements of flawed testimony and eyewitness evidence in order to re-examine the guilt of convicted individuals. DNA has served to verify alibi claims in order to exonerate individuals, meaning that a defendant can demonstrate conclusively that they were not present at a crime scene. Pre-trial DNA testing has been shown to prevent thousands of wrongful convictions already. For example, pre-trial dna testing has prevented the conviction of hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent rape suspects, mostly black men accused of raping white women. Post-trial DNA testing has led to the exoneration of thousands of wrongfully convicted individuals. Cold cases that have long remained unsolved were given a fresh chance at justice, offering closure to victims and their families. Furthermore, the impact of DNA technology reveals more than just who is guilty and who is not. This paradigm shift continues to reveal longstanding systemic flaws within old criminology methods such as lineups, eyewitness identification procedures, and confessions as more and more criminals are shown to be wrongfully convicted on the basis of these measures. Conclusively, the introduction of DNA evidence as a gold standard in criminal justice has raised questions about reliability of older methods, hastened an outdated and slow legal process, and began to spark broader conversations about evidence-based approaches and past convictions.
When looking deeper into the claim that DNA databases reduced racial stigmatism and overgeneralizations through line ups, biases, and incorrect eyewitness testimonies, it is important to simultaneously note the counterargument. Many criminal justice experts claim that DNA technology has a tendency to further racial stereotypes. This claim is rooted in the practice of forensic DNA phenotyping, also known as FDP. This relatively new addition to the forensic world, FDP technology is essentially a set of techniques that aim to predict physical features of criminal suspects, such as eye skin and hair color. FDP also can infer ethnicity through biogeographical evidence found in DNA samples. FDP generally relates common traits shared by different population groups. Although this practice is intended to be purely scientific, this method of grouping traits together to infer a person’s race can lead to collectivisation of the suspect population. Because of the overabundance of black Americans in the CODIS system, many forensic scientists express this worry about FDP merely mirroring racial disparities that already exist within biomedical research.
Through several studies, mainly spearheaded by Dr. Jennifer Doleac, a professor at the University of Virginia, it was discovered that DNA databases were impacting offender behavior at an unprecedented rate. As establishments like CODIS grew in the United States between 2000-2010, violent and property crime rates fell as a result, recidivism rates lowered, and criminals seemed immensely deterred from crime.
The idea of deterrence is the analysis of the effects of threat of punishment upon crime prevention. Jeremy Bentham coined this famous concept and formulated a theory in which nearly all criminological policy and theory is based upon, and is specifically applicable when looking into how exactly this technological innovation enacted so much behavioral change. Betham stated that legal punishment had to be administered close in time to the act, and consistently and proportionally punished in order to be a constructive means of deterring delinquency. Everything that the pre-DNA criminal justice system was not. With the creation and establishment of DNA databases, both aspects of punishment were entirely revolutionized, and following suit with the deterrence theory- showed massive impact on criminal behavior.
In terms of Bentham’s first prong of his deterrence theory, criminal justice became exponentially more efficient with DNA databases. The core of this shift lies within DNA’s capacity to link crimes together through a singular defendant. By comparing DNA profiles from crime scenes to offender databases, investigations were accelerated in all aspects. Studies have shown that DNA evidence is ninety-nine percent effective, showcasing a stark contrast from eyewitness testimony and confessions. The ability for law enforcement officers to zero in on serial offenders more efficiently streamlines the conviction process, and can be used as an explanation for decreased crime rates after the implementation of DNA databases- criminals are now increasingly understanding the immediacy of punishment upon the delinquent act, and are therefore dissuaded from committing crime. Enacting a similar effect, the implementation of DNA profiling systems have become much more proportional, as Pre-trial DNA testing has been shown to prevent thousands of wrongful convictions already- evening out an unethical and biased past of mistrials.
These two aspects of change within the criminal justice system didn’t just serve to statistically improve the prison system and formally fit the definition of what is needed to change offender behavior, statistics and research have shown genuine results. DNA profiling reduced recidivism within the following year by as much as 43 percent.
Lower recidivism rates don’t just advantageously affect the criminals that are deterred from reentering prison systems, but they produce meaningful benefits for general society and public safety as well. Recidivism feeds the cycle of incarceration by leading to higher rates of re-arrest and re-imprisonment, which strains law enforcement resources, overwhelms courts and corrections systems, and drains taxpayer dollars.
Shortly, it is important to mention a specific demographic that disagrees with this assertion that the reduction in recidivism is due to the deterrence theory. Labeling theory criminologists oftentimes disagree with this entire claim, due to the labeling theory. The labeling theory states that once a criminal is arrested and found guilty of a crime, society then seeks to permanently attach a label to that criminal. In turn, that label becomes stigmatized by society and gets reproduced in the minds of criminals, which leads the criminal to accept this label and increase their own criminal behavior. This means that instead of citing the reduction in recidivism to the increase in DNA databases and their deterrent effect, some criminologists argue that this reduction is caused by other reasons and that DNA databases most likely increase criminal behavior because they add more of a stigmatized label to criminals.
Lastly, the effects of DNA databases spread widely into more fields than just criminology. The popularity of public genealogy databases has made a remarkable surge with sites like 23 and me, where voluntary participants can order a testing kit online and send in a DNA sample to companies. Upon receiving this sample the DNA undergoes rigorous testing, where genetic markers are discovered and a detailed report on an individual’s ancestry composition, potential health risks, and carrier status for certain conditions are revealed later online. Also available with this type of testing are ancestry breakdowns and family connections as well. This new widespread trend of desiring to learn more about ancestral history through the use of public genealogy bases has created many interesting implications. For example, DNA is not just a unique personal identifier, but it can also reveal details about a person’s heritage. Advances in DNA technology have allowed for the surge of at-home genealogy kits that provide people with information about their possible genetic background. Thousands of people have discovered through genetic analyses that their parents were not who they thought they were. Others have found and been reunited with siblings they never knew existed. Such discoveries have implications for users’ wider family members, most of whom won’t have put their DNA in such a database.A new study by Stanford sociologists delves into how such changes could affect data that demographers use to measure population shifts and monitor racial inequalities. With thousands of participants figuring out new facets of their identity, it’s clear that the growth of these public databases is inciting a widespread shift in personal racial and ethnic identification.
This new trend hasn’t come without ethical implications. As genealogy databases are growing there has been an unfortunate truth that biological information submitted to these websites could be used without the donor’s explicit consent. People who choose to upload their DNA could unknowingly be helping police to trace a relative — now and in the future. The case of the Golden State Killer, linked to at least 50 rapes and 12 murders between 1976 and 1986, had gone cold — although investigators believed they had a reliable sequence of the perpetrator’s DNA. Next they needed a match. So, according to reports, they uploaded the data to a popular website that compares people’s genetic information to trace their relatives — in effect, creating a profile for him. They got lucky: a match with family members led them to identify and arrest Joseph James DeAngelo. This arrest lead to controversial implications for the DNA field. Many people supported this method of utilizing genealogy databases in order to catch a criminal and provide victim’s families with closure, whilst many felt as if this was a violation of privacy.
In conclusion, the discovery and application of DNA technology have been transformative across various fields, reshaping the landscape of healthcare, criminology, and genealogy. From Friedrich Miescher’s isolation of DNA in the 19th century to the development of public genealogy databases like 23andMe in the 21st century, our understanding and utilization of DNA have evolved significantly. In the realm of criminal justice, the integration of DNA profiling has revolutionized investigations, resulting in more accurate identifications, solving cold cases, and preventing wrongful convictions. The efficiency and accuracy brought about by DNA databases have contributed to a significant reduction in recidivism, challenging traditional criminological methods. However, the implementation of DNA technology has not been without ethical concerns, raising questions about consent, privacy, and the potential for unintended consequences. Moreover, the expansion of public genealogy databases has not only reunited families and provided insights into ancestral heritage but has also introduced new ethical dilemmas, particularly regarding the use of genetic information for criminal investigations. As we navigate the intersection of science, ethics, and justice, the impact of DNA technology continues to unfold, offering both promises and challenges for the future.