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Forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) encompasses a set of technologies aimed at predicting phenotypic characteristics from genotypes. Advocates of FDP present it as the future of forensics, with an ultimate goal of producing complete, individualised facial composites based on DNA. With a focus on individuals and promised advances in technology comes the assumption that modern methods are steadily moving away from racial science. Yet in the quantification of physical differences, FDP builds upon some nineteenth- and twentieth-century scientific practices that measured and categorised human variation in terms of race. In this article I complicate the linear temporal approach to scientific progress by building on the notion of the folded object. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in various genetic laboratories, I show how nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anthropological measuring and data-collection practices and statistical averaging techniques are folded into the ordering of measurements of skin color data taken with a spectrophotometer, the analysis of facial shape based on computational landmarks and the collection of iris photographs. Attending to the historicity of FDP facial renderings, I bring into focus how race comes about as a consequence of temporal folds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we take two forensic technologies used to generate facial renditions of suspects, forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) and facial composite drawing, to think through innovation in policing. Comparing more mundane, taken-for-granted approaches of facial composite drawing with 'high-tech' facial renditions generated using DNA traces, we complicate the value of technological innovation in the criminal investigation. Drawing on participant observations conducted with the Dutch police, forensic genetic laboratories and interviews with investigators and geneticists, we detail some of the technicalities behind the making of faces using these technologies, and show the differences in how the technologies are perceived and applied in policing. With our comparison, we show that although facial composite drawing is often quickly dismissed as being subjective and unreliable, the practice holds important lessons for FDP, in particular FDP's promise of producing a photographic likeness of a suspect. With that, we demonstrate that besides introducing 'new' things, innovation may also be located in more mundane and taken-for-granted technologies such as facial composite drawing. We conclude by suggesting that police and technology developers alike take existing technologies and practices more seriously, redirecting the focus of innovation towards the affordances of the mundane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]