Brana Hardway: Post #3

Albuquerque Journal 12/8/09
"DNA Tests Too Big For State To Do Without"
This article discusses how vital DNA testing has become for prosecuting criminals and also in deciding who is innocent. Recently New Mexico's State Department of Public Safety crime lab lost its accreditation and so DNA testing has temporarily stopped. The FBI requires that a crime lab be accredited in order for its DNA testing to be legitimate. Since DNA testing is so important in deciding criminal matters that with this halt in testing, 124 cases in New Mexico have been backed up and placed on hold until testing can resume, when the lab becomes accredited again.
This article relates to social control because it shows how integrated formal social control has become in our society. Some aspects of our life cannot function without the interference of this control, take our justice system for example as illustrated in this article. DNA testing is such an intense form of control because it enables the state and other agents of control to know every minuet detail of our biological structure and so can heavily control and keep track of us. Now our blood can be traced and detected and used by all agencies for several different reasons and purposes. When such a crucial regulatory mechanism is suspended, agents of social control stop activities until that control can be exerted again. It just goes to show that in order to be an operating modern society, we must become subservient to social control. It also proves that our legal system is so intertwined with extreme measures of social control.