Investigating identification disparities in forensic anthropology casework

Abstract

Forensic anthropology is shifting to reflect on the impact of its practices within the criminal justice context in important ways. Here, we contribute to this essential work by examining how decedent demographics as well as estimations of biological profile components are related to identification trends in forensic anthropology cases. The study uses data from more than 1,200 identified and unidentified forensic anthropology cases from three agencies (together representing a nation-wide sample). We found the following: i) multivariate analyses indicated that decedent sex, age, and race and/or ethnicity are not related to case identification rates in the pooled United States sample, ii) when identification rate differences do occur, they appear to be smaller effects, more agency-specific, and/or related to the context of a particular agency, iii) for the agency-specific sample with available data, there was no consistent evidence for a discrepancy in the duration of an identification investigation based on a decedent's sex, age, or race and/or ethnicity, iv) forensic anthropological estimations of sex, age, and ancestry can improve the odds of identification for decedents, although these are small effects, and v) reporting an ancestry estimation does not appear to impact decedent race representation among resolved unidentified person cases. Although previous studies have identified demographic discrepancies in other areas of the criminal justice system, the results presented here suggest that decedent demographic estimation practices by forensic anthropologists in general do not appear to be related to discrepancies in identification trends, but more research is needed to examine whether these findings hold. Contextual factors and practices specific to each investigative agency likely contribute to identification trends.