Abstract
Recent decades have witnessed the development and expansion of the uses of science and technology in many areas of social life. For criminal justice, this expansion can constitute an opportunity to incorporate and test the power of the new forensic tools. However, being traditional institutions, police forces, and the justice system in general, can go through adaptation periods where novel tools are incorporated into existing ways of thinking and doing. Through focus groups carried out in Forensic Technical Police Units (UPT) in Portugal and adopting qualitative and interpretative methodologies, this paper seeks to understand how DNA technology is incorporated into investigative police work. In doing so it explores the “reflection in action” done by the UPTs and the “troublesome knowledge” associated with their work: tacit, inert, ritual, alien and also a new type of knowledge that we call here illusory knowledge.
Keywords:
police; DNA; reflection in action; illusory knowledge