The DNA Database Con

Tuesday, 9th March 2010

What the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee gives with one hand:

"The current situation of indefinite retention of the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted is impossible to defend in light of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights and unacceptable in principle," the committee says in a report published on 8 March 2010. [Emphasis added]

It takes away with the other:

Although the committee does not want a return to the pre-2004 situation of DNA being collected only on charging and not on arrest, it says that it should be easier for those wrongly arrested or who have volunteered their DNA to get their records removed from the database.

Sigh. So it's the storing and not the collecting that is unacceptable? Half a pie is better than no pie, I suppose.

As for the crime-solving utility of DNA (in England and Wales)? Not so useful after all. Just 0.3% of solved crimes depend, even partially, upon the use of stored DNA profiles. Not nothing! But not much either. Of course this figure might be higher if there was a compulsory, unavoidable database wouldn't it? (This is not an argument for any such expansion.) So, it seems that although the authorities will continue to insist that all this is vital it really, actually, is not.

[Thanks to Big Brother Watch for the tip]

Filed under: Britain (737 more articles) , Civil liberties (52 more articles) , Crime (260 more articles)

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Ruairidh

March 9th, 2010 9:11pm Report this comment

Be fair. This % represents 3666 crimes that would not be solved by other means and fails to record circa 30000 other crimes where the DNA provides further evidence against someone already a suspect who may not otherwise be convicted.

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