Swedish crime scene technicians: facilitations,epistemic frictions and professionalization from the outside

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the role of crime scene technicians in the Swedish criminal justice system, and particularly how Swedish crime scene technicians not only examine crime scenes but also facilitate the criminal justice system’s joint production of forensic evidence. It proposes thinking about the criminal justice system as a conglomeration of epistemic cultures, that is, of communities with different ways of producing and understanding forensic evidence. Such a perspective makes it possible to understand interprofessional frictions as epistemic frictions as well as to draw attention to the facilitations, mediations and translations that crime scene technicians perform. This perspective also makes it possible to illuminate how the crime scene technicians’ professionalization – a professionalization from the outside – affects both their future crime scene work and their facilitations.     

Race,ethnicity, and social change: The democratization of middle‐class crime*

Since the mid‐1970s, the percentage of non‐White people convicted of white‐collar type crimes in the federal judicial system has been growing steadily. In 2015, non‐Whites accounted for more than half of all convictions for certain white‐collar type crimes, but the increase in non‐White participation has not occurred evenly across all race and ethnic groups. Asians and Latinos have increased their participation in white‐collar crime more so than Blacks. Using data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the U.S. Census, we investigate whether the differential increase among race and ethnic groups in white‐collar type crimes can be explained by their differential increase in middle‐class occupations. The findings have implications for opportunity, cultural, and race‐centered perspectives on crime, as well as institutional anomie theory, and they suggest that low‐level white‐collar crimes are being democratized along lines of race and ethnicity.     

Genetic Testing and the Future of Disability Insurance: Ethics, Law & Policy

Predictive genetic testing poses fundamental questions for disability insurance, a crucial resource funding basic needs when disability prevents income from work. This article, from an NIH-funded project, presents the first indepth analysis of the challenging issues: Should disability insurers be permitted to consider genetics and exclude predicted disability? May disabilities with a recognized genetic basis be excluded from coverage as pre-existing conditions? How can we assure that private insurers writing individual and group policies, employers, and public insurers deal competently and appropriately with genetic testing?     

The Global Adoption of National Policies Protecting Children from Violent Discipline in Schools and Homes, 1950–2011

With a focus on the relationship between women's and children's rights and theories of globalization, we conduct an event history analysis of more than 150 countries between 1950 and 2011 to assess the factors associated with policies banning corporal punishment in schools and homes. Our research reveals that formal condemnation of corporal punishment in schools is becoming a global norm; policies banning corporal punishment in the home, in contrast, are being adopted more slowly. We find that the percentage of women in parliament is associated with the adoption of anti‐corporal punishment policies in both schools and homes, suggesting a nexus between women's and children's issues. Countries with more ethnic diversity are slower to adopt home policies, however. We propose that minority groups in these countries may be resistant to laws because of the risk of selective or prejudicial enforcement. In terms of globalization, more aid is associated with both school and home policies, and countries that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child are more likely to adopt home policies. Surprisingly, international nongovernmental organizations are not significantly associated with either type of policy adoption.