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Book Review: The Genetic Imaginary: DNA in the Canadian Criminal Justice System

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorJonathan Finn
Published date01 August 2006
Date01 August 2006
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/1362480606065913
Subject MatterArticles
390
Theoretical Criminology 10(3)
Neil Gerlach
The Genetic Imaginary: DNA in the Canadian Criminal Justice System
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. 253 pp. $65 (cloth), $29.95
(pbk). ISBN 0–8020–8572–5.
• Reviewed by Jonathan Finn, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
DOI: 10.1177/1362480606065913
In The Genetic Imaginary: DNA in the Canadian Criminal Justice System, Neil
Gerlach addresses the development of DNA testing and banking within the
Canadian criminal justice system from key court cases and policy documents in
the early 1990s through to the establishment of the National DNA Data Bank
in 2000. Gerlach concludes that DNA testing and banking in Canada reflect a
larger shift in criminal justice away from an emphasis on individual rights
towards increased state control and power over citizens’ bodies (p. 219).
Gerlach opens the text by pointing to the emergence of a ‘genetic imaginary’
in contemporary society. He defines this as ‘a set of social concepts for thinking
and speaking about the civilization of the gene and its future directions’ (p. 5).
From here he outlines the key conceptual and theoretical framework for the
text and, drawing from risk analysis, introduces the concept of biogovernance.
For Gerlach, biogovernance ‘arises from the intersection of risk management
and biotechnology to produce techniques of state management of biotechno-
logical risks’ (p. 18). The author situates biogovernance as the product of a
specific governmental rationality characteristic of late modernity. Gerlach’s aim
is to address DNA testing and banking as they have been incorporated into
Canadian criminal justice through the project of biogovernance.
Despite the text’s title, the concept of the genetic imaginary receives little
explicit attention in the book. Instead, Gerlach’s main emphasis is bio-
governance. He identifies five social processes which characterize biogover-
nance and which serve as the main sites of analysis in the text: privatization,
which refers to the centrality of private...

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