Helena Machado, Susana de Noronha (2026) Speculative facial governance: DNA-to-face systems in contemporary crime control, The British Journal of Criminology; azag078.
Abstract: This article develops the concept of speculative facial governance to analyze how DNA-to-face systems organize suspicion in contemporary crime control. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies and visual criminology, it examines how computationally rendered faces become consequential across forensic, commercial and policing settings, whether or not they are judged credible or enter working case flows. Analyzing three public-facing cases, the article asks how such systems work gain traction as investigative leads, promissory infrastructures and possible future forensic instruments. It develops the concepts of aesthetic evidence, biometric fictions and operational plausibility to show how probabilistic inferences are translated into persuasive visual forms that render suspicion thinkable, credible or contestable under conditions of uncertainty.
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