Trust and Credibility through Standardization: The Accreditation of Crime Scene Work

How can expertise be trusted when it is too complex to be assessed and evaluated by its recipients?This project analyzes the process of striving to make the production of complex expertise legitimate and trustworthy through a study of the currently on-going accreditation of crime scene work in Sweden.

The recent decision against accreditation made by the German federal police will serve as comparison material.

The project will observe the accreditation process in Sweden, interview key actors in Sweden as well as in Germany, and collect relevant documents.

It will study the accreditation of crime scene work as a complex process with many different involved actors and an outcome that cannot be taken for granted beforehand.

This makes it possible to pay systematic attention to the negotiations of standards and routines that the process of accrediting crime scene work entails as well as how the accreditation and subsequent monitoring reshape the practices they certify.

For the analysis of the empirical material it thus generates, the project brings together two hitherto separate theoretical fields – STS-informed studies of forensics and bureaucracy studies – to gain a novel perspective on and new insights into how expertise can be made trustworthy and legitimate.

In consequence, the project not only contributes to understanding crime scene work and accreditation but also to the functioning of society, not least the criminal justice system.