Systemic (mis)trust in technolegal worlds: Three key trust relationships in forensic genetics

The deployment of science in support of criminal justice objectives is subject to particular trust relationships. On the example of forensic genetics, this chapter discusses some features of criminal justice that treat trust as a local and fragile achievement, subject to constant and rigorous testing. This restlessness about the fragility of the achievement of trust is a constitutive and distinctive feature of criminal justice uses of science. This chapter considers the ways in which trust in forensic genetics is negotiated. It explores some of the multiple uses of the term trust in context together with the types of people who are invoked as part of three trust relationships – epistemic, operational and courtroom credibility – in order to explore the role of trust in organising technolegal worlds around the use of genetics in the criminal justice system. The chapter develops the concepts of systemic trust for forensic genetics in the criminal justice system, and technology of situated trustworthiness in order to characterise trust relationships here.