‘Is your accuser me, or is it the software?’ Ambiguity and contested expertise in probabilistic DNA profiling

Abstract

What happens when an algorithm is added to the work of an expert group? This study explores how algorithms pose a practical problem for experts. We study the introduction of a Probabilistic DNA Profiling (PDP) software into a forensics lab through interviews and court admissibility hearings. While meant to support experts’ decision-making, in practice it has destabilized their authority. They respond to this destabilization by producing alternating and often conflicting accounts of the agency and significance of the software. The algorithm gets constructed alternately either as merely a tool or as indispensable statistical backing; the analysts’ authority as either independent of the algorithm or reliant upon it to resolve conflict and create a final decision; and forensic expertise as resting either with the analysts or with the software. These tensions reflect the forensic ‘culture of anticipation’, specifically the experts’ anticipation of ongoing litigation that destabilizes their control over the deployment and interpretation of expertise in the courtroom. The software highlights tensions between the analysts’ supposed impartiality and their role in the courtroom, exposing legal and narrative implications of the changing nature of expertise and technology in the criminal legal system.