Blood, Powder, and Residue: How Crime Labs Translate Evidence into Proof

This is a book about what forensic scientists do and how they do it, at least in the USA. It is a serious socialogical research study of the interactions between "criminalists" (an unfortunate US word) and those they interact with and serve - police, state officials and so on. I found it an extremely well written volume which, if anything, emphasises the non-lab aspects of forensic work such as report production, safety and procedure protocols, and so on. Do not expect to find details of lots of individual criminal cases, or indeed of the mostly very modern methods used in forensic labs - these are almost taken for granted and mentioned in passing. An extremely interesting book by a social scientist about the laboratory science and scientists in an area crucial for our modern society.

If you are interested in this book because you suspect that the various CSI shows on television are complete buncombe, congratulations. The author confirms your suspicions in her introduction. Unfortunately, it is my sad duty to warn you that this book is not a very interesting read. Although it does contain some scattered information, most of it concerns office business of the “criminalists,” such as how they are often ordered to appear in court but don’t testify, and they do a lot of complaining.Dr. Beth Bechky, PhD. announces her occupation as “an organizational ethnographer,” but for all her success in that field (whatever that is), she is a poor stylist, and her writing is at the opposite end of the literary spectrum from popular writers such as Michael Lewis or Bill Bryson. A typical sentence of hers reads, “Their symbolic position as champions of science and accuracy entwines with their practical function as captive experts whose outputs are oriented toward and consumed by criminal justice. Sorting out how to live within the ambiguity of these three intersecting.”Would you be eager to trudge through an entire book of such prolix blague? Dr. Bechky is an academic (the “Seymour Milstein Professor of Ethics and Corporate Governance and Strategy” at NYU), and she writes like one. Her only other book listed for sale here at Amazon is  Qualitative Organizational Research Volume 3 . This book is written in the style of a thesis or funding proposal, and it is not just dull, it meanders about, and there is an annoying amount of repetition.For example, on page 38 she points out that the firearms examiners (“captive experts”), “are gun enthusiasts; they not only have expertise with firearms, but they love guns.” This is about as remarkable as learning that a mechanic loves cars, but then, on page 39 we again read that, “Goddard calls himself a ‘gun nut,’ and the history of the field is populated by many similarly enthusiastic gun users.” The firearms experts eventually ask her to “go study another department.” Or, as Dr. Bechky explains the situation, “The firearms examiners’ feelings of resentment and powerlessness about their position in the laboratory spilled over, and they took them out on me, one person over whom they had some control.”But she had written (page 55), “Firearms examiners feel the inside of the barrel of the gun to sense a blockage,“ which makes no sense unless the gun is a howitzer, so perhaps she had walked in in during an embarrassing moment for the captive criminalist? You figure it out.If you assume that by reading this book, you’ll get the inside story of how a crime lab really operates, be warned that there are many pages spent on such things as, “When the DA’s office wanted MCCL’s firearms examiners to help perform a function test on a baton that had been used in a crime.” She typically neglects to say what type of baton is being tested (majorette’s baton or that used by a symphony conductor?), but a page is spent discussing how the “functionality” of the baton could be tested. The book contains no examples of actual crime solving.The book concludes with Dr. Bechky’s suggestion that, “Exploring structural solutions to the problem of captivity, an alternative plan might be to make forensic scientists independent officers of the court.”It doesn’t take much reading about the criminalists being “captive experts” to make you want to free yourself from being a captive reader. Qualitative Organizational Research Volume 3

A rare and fascinating behind the scenes look at a real crime lab. Renowned ethnographer Beth Bechky spends 18 months studying what really happens in the high stakes work of a forensics lab. A vivid and timely account.

This book illustrates the time and effort that expert witnesses extert on behalf of making their evidence understandable to the lay members of the potential jury. Less the flash of insight that leads to solving the case and more the painstaking process of documenting the conclusion the expert wants the jury to draw from the data coming from their lab. Spoiler alert: the author's favorite crime show is Bones.

I tried to read this book but found it dry and repetitive. I seldom abandon a book but I quit this one. Disappointing