The Social Life of Forensic Evidence

In The Social Life of Forensic Evidence, Corinna Kruse provides a major contribution to understanding forensic evidence and its role in the criminal justice system. Kruse argues that forensic evidence can be understood as a form of knowledge, and as such, pieces of forensic evidence have social lives and biographies. She shows, for example, how the crime scene examination is as crucial in creating forensic evidence as the analyses done in the laboratory; the plaintiff, witness, and suspect statements elicited by police investigators; and the interpretations that prosecutors and defense lawyers bring to the evidence.

Drawing on ethnographic data from Sweden and on theory from both anthropology and science and technology studies, Kruse examines how forensic evidence is produced and which social relationships it creates as cases move from crime scene to courtroom. She shows how forensic evidence is neither a fixed entity nor solely material, but is inseparably part of and made through particular legal, social, and technological practices.

Corinna Kruse is a lecturer in the Department of Thematic Studies—Technology and Social Change at Linkoping University.