Abstract

COSTA, Susana. A justiça em laboratório. Aná. Psicológica [online]. 2002, vol.20, n.3, pp.311-329. ISSN 0870-8231.

Forensic science intends to assist Law and justice in becoming more scientific and therefore more accurate. A recent manifestation of this purpose is the use of identification by means of genetic profiles. The adoption of this technique oponed new possibilities in the domain of individual identification but also shoed problems of practical order that can make its use controversial and be in the origin of judicial abuses and errors, and therefore threaten the basic principles of citizenship and democratic life. The obstacles to the fulfilment of the promises opened by a technique, that could solve many of the problems of the judicial milieu, namely the adequacy between crime and sentence, are numerous. A basic subject is the standardization of these techniques, generally considered as a guarantee of accuracy and stability, and offers the possibility of flexible use of these techniques. But the standardization of these techniques also creates, the problem of the possibility of the standardization of law pactice. This study intents to identify the forces and fragilities of this technique, trying to understand, simultaneously, the tension between a global forensic science and Law that remains local.

Keywords : Forensic science; justice; identification by genetic profiles.

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