Race, Ethnicity, Biotechnology and the Law

Potentiality and challenges for law enforcement in the digital age

  • Andras L. Pap Hungarian Academy of Sciences
  • Eszter Kovács Szitkay Eötvös Loránd Research Network (formerly Hungarian Academy of Sciences) Centre for Social Sciences Institute for Legal Studies/ Ludovika University of Public Service, Doctoral School of Law Enforcement, Budapest, Hungary
Keywords: profiling, biotechnology, race, ethnicity, law

Abstract

The authors, working a project mapping how law conceptualizes and operationalizes race, ethnicity and nationality, provide an assessment of the triadic relationship between law, law enforcement practices and science. The article begins by providing an overview of the obstacles, challenges and controversies in the legal institutionalization and operationalization of ethnic/racial/national group affiliation. Subsequently, the article turns to the assessment of how “objective” criteria, data and constructions provided by science and biotechnology translate into the legal discourse and more specifically law enforcement practice in the digital age. The case study in the final section of the article provides an overview of how suspect description and the datafication is ethnicizied in Hungarian digital law enforcement registries.

Author Biography

Eszter Kovács Szitkay, Eötvös Loránd Research Network (formerly Hungarian Academy of Sciences) Centre for Social Sciences Institute for Legal Studies/ Ludovika University of Public Service, Doctoral School of Law Enforcement, Budapest, Hungary

Eszter Kovacs Szitkay is a Junior Research Fellow at the (formerly Hungarian Academy of
Sciences) Centre for Social Sciences Institute for Legal Studies and a Doctoral Candidate at
Ludovika University of Public Service, Doctoral School of Law Enforcement in Budapest, Hungary.
Her research interest focuses on access to justice, ethno-racial legislation and minority rights.

Published
2022-12-08
How to Cite
Pap, A., & Kovács Szitkay, E. (2022). Race, Ethnicity, Biotechnology and the Law. European Law Enforcement Research Bulletin, (6), 169-177. Retrieved from http://bulletin.cepol.europa.eu/index.php/bulletin/article/view/539
Issue
No 6 (2023): Special Conference Edition
Section
Conference Contribution
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