Prisoners' DNA samples entered into database
01 January 2004
The DNA profiles of 730 prisoners from three penal establishments in France were integrated into the Fichier national automatisédes empreintes génétiques (FNAEG, the French national DNA database) in February. The database is managed by the scientific and technical police division that is based in Ecully, near Lyon in the Rhône region. Between 19 and 26 February 2003, the police and gendarmerie collected saliva samples from prisoners at Oermingen (Bas-Rhin) and Montmedy (Meuse), as well as the penitentiary at Draguignan (Var). A similar operation took place in October 2003 at four penal establishments, when 1,300 detainees in the prisons of Loos-Lés-Lille (Nord), Bordeaux-Gradignan (Gironde), Neuvec and Munet (Dordogne) had samples taken. After the first DNA samples were taken, Evelyne Sire-Marin, the president of the Syndicate de la Magistrature (Magistrates Union), said:
this measure is imposed on people who are in prison, who find it impossible to refuse anything, under the threat of additional punishment. To fulfil [Interior minister] Sarkozy's goal of registering 400,000 people into the database, they are taking advantage of the situation in which some people find themselves.
Sire-Marin was also critical of the negative effects this may have on the rehabilitation of offenders, and on those convicted of petty crimes, arguing that: "The fact of having been suspected of stealing a mobile phone when someone was 17, may follow them throughout their life, possibly preventing them from finding work or employment". She added that former offenders may be sought out and investigated whenever a "crime is committed near to their workplace".
The Interior Ministry stressed that to be a useful law enforcement tool, the FNAEG must be fed plenty of information. On 1 September 2003, it held 7,000 DNA profiles, drawn from three categories: DNA samples found at crime scenes; DNA samples of people who have been convicted or have been suspected of crimes; and those of people who have gone missing, subject to approval by their family. On forty occasions, the profiles allowed investigators to establish links between different events (identical samples found on the scenes of different offences), or between an event and a person. Bernard Manzoni, main commissar and attaché to the head of the laboratory service that runs the database stressed the need to ensure that police and gendarmerie officers get into the habit of regularly taking DNA samples from suspects and entering them in the database, for which training and information campaigns aimed at officers are underway. He also looks to "reduce the gap from the British", whose DNA database holds the profiles of 2 million people. To support its case in favour of the FNAEG, the Interior ministry mentions the case of a woman who was raped and killed in Montpellier in 1993, whose murderer was found when his DNA profile was entered into the FNAEG when he was sentenced for rape in 1999.
The FNAEG was established in 1998, as part of a law to prevent and punish sexual offences although its scope was expanded in November 2001 by the Loi de securité quotidienne (LSQ) to include serious crimes against people and property (such as murder and terrorism), before it was extended even further, to include almost any crime, including theft, by the Loi sur la sécurité intérieure (LSI, internal security law) on 18 March 2003 (see Statewatch vol 12 no 6). The LSI also extended the registration of DNA profiles in the FNAEG, previously for people who had been sentenced, to anyone who was suspected, or was the object of investigations in relation to a criminal offence. The DNA profiles of suspects who were acquitted or had been investigated without charges being pressed against them would previously have been destroyed after they were used during inquiries. After the LSI was passed, the police are allowed to hold suspects' DNA profiles in the FNAEG for 40 years. The LSI also punished the refusal by