Over 50,000 "innocent" DNA profiles on database
01 January 2003
Last September's judicial review of the 2001 Criminal Justice and Police Act's amendments to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, ruled that the retention of DNA samples is "necessary in a democratic society".
In October the Labour MP, Harry Cohen, asked in parliament how many individuals have personal data relating to fingerprints or DNA stored on national police computers and what percentage of these records relate to individuals who are not criminals and are not suspected of any criminality. Of the 1,884,450 DNA profiles maintained on the database 55,032 "profiles were marked as acquitted". These were taken from "all those charged with or informed they will be reported for a recordable offence, but against whom the prosecution was not proceeded with or those who were subsequently acquitted by the courts."
Last January the Home Office announced that it would take DNA samples from 13,000 prisoners and mentally disordered offenders who had been convicted prior to the database's introduction. They will be added to the profiles already on record. The Home Office will have the power to take the samples without consent and all such prisoners and patients will have the samples taken prior to their release from prison or hospital care. John Denham, a Home Office minister, said that:"DNA profiles of a minority of prisoners and mentally disordered offenders are not on the database. We are addressing that."
In February one of the scientists who co-discovered the DNA double helix, James Watson, told the BBC that everybody in Europe and the United States should have their genetic fingerprints entered into an international database (see also, Statewatch vol 12 nos 2 & 5). This would, he claimed, enable law enforcement agencies to fight crime and terrorism. Arguing that Europe and the USA could produce such a database "cheaply and easily", Watson dismissed civil liberties concerns as "irrational". He went on to advocate a policy of eugenics, suggesting that "stupidity" is a genetic disease that could be "identified" and "corrected". Such ideas were popular in nazi Germany, where hundreds of thousands of physically and mentally handicapped people ("the feeble-minded") were murdered. In response to his question on fingerprints Cohen was told that the number of prints on the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) was 5,213,106 at October 2002. Unlike DNA samples, "if a prosecution is not proceeded with or a person is acquitted by the courts, the fingerprint is weeded from NAFIS once the result is recorded on the Police National Computer."
Hansard 15.10.02, 16.1.03; Independent 3.2.03