The Guardian reports today that the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) is advising its members to continue adding the DNA profiles of innocent individuals to the DNA database, notwithstanding the decision of the European Court of Human Rights that to do so is unlawful.
In a letter leaked to the paper, Acpo says that senior officers should carry on as before, until new Home Office guidelines are issued in 2010:
“Until that time, the current retention policy on fingerprints and DNA remains unchanged.
”Individuals who consider they fall within the ruling in the S and Marper case should await the full response to the ruling by the government prior to seeking advice and/or action from the police service in order to address their personal issue on the matter.
“Acpo strongly advise that decisions to remove records should not be based on [the government's] proposed changes. It is therefore vitally important that any applications for removals of records should be considered against current legislation.”
In a Parliamentary answer last October, the Home Office minister, Alan Campbell, revealed that DNA profiles of 857, 000 individuals without criminal convictions were then recorded on the database. Very probably, given the rate at which records are being added, there are now around a million.
This is nothing short of a national scandal. The Government should issue its guidelines immediately and Acpo should implement them without delay.
I am a life-long Tory.
I see no reasonable cause to challenge the retention of DNA on the database.
It might help to apprehend future offenders as well as identify dead or unconscious victims of crime.
The cons seem very small. The police will have my DNA on record – well they are welcome to it.
By the way, I am opposed to ID cards – you may see hat as inconsistent, I don’t.
There is an intellectually respectable argument for retaining the DNA of every citizen, although I happen to disagree with it. The present system,however, where DNA is taken in the course of an investigation and then retained, whether or not the individual is guilty of an offence, seems to me morally indefensible.
David I’m delighted to see that you disagree with the arguments for retaining DNA. It seems to me that anybody who agrees with the policy has a fundamental lack of understanding of the relationship between government and its electorate in that the former exists to serve the latter although governments since 1997 have done their damndest to reverse roles.
I worry that police and Juries place too much reliance on DNA evidence since it is capable of leading to false conclusions (for myriad reasons) which may focus investigations in the wrong direction never mind the possibilities for cross contamination resulting from poor treatment/storage of exibits.
What precisely is retained? If it is actual DNA material I can appreciate the dangers of cross contamination or even deliberate evidence planting. Then I see a problem.
Are we sure that this is so? Surely the DNA would not be discounted as belonging to a non-offender unless an actual test had been effected? If it is the test itself that is kept, not the physical sample, then I still see no problem.
I have never seen clarification of this point.
Retention of the DNA of innocent people changes the relationship between the citizen and the state.
The police have no business bothering law-abiding citizens (which contrary to what certain sections of the press would have you believe, the vast majority of us are)
If you have committed no crime then they have no right to keep your DNA on the off-chance that you might sometime commit a crime.
It is an invasion of privacy that has already been eroded by other such intrusions such as mass use of CCTV.
We ought to remember that most of us will commit no serious crime in our lifetime and for the state to hold huge records on us is disproportionate.
Also, given government’s serial failures to keep any sort of database secure I would think it perfectly obvious why we ought not to trust them with our DNA.
Stored D.N.A. could just as easily prove innocence as it could guilt, so what is the harm in keeping it?
As for the D.N.A. of an “innocent” person being stored; because there may not be sufficient evidence prove guilt, in spite of D.N.A. proof, it does not necessarily mean that a person leaving a court with a “Not Guilty” (there are only two decisions a court may reach, guilty or not guilty) verdict, or a police station without being charged, is in fact innocent. Often all it means is that there was insufficient evidence to convict or charge on that occasion.
The standard of proof is extremely high and the Crown Prosecution insist on a (highly subjective) 60/40 chance of success before pursuing a prosecution.
The European Court’s decision will be one more nail in the coffin of what passes for justice in this country when it is implemented. We are ruled by unelected intellectual idiots in Europe.
David
You are the MP. So, what is the answer to the question I put in my last ? [Aug. 8 at 9.01]
Do they store records of DNA or physical DNA?
http://www.npia.police.uk/en/9817.htm
Thank you David.
So, nor DNA is retained at all. What is retained is a digitised profile.
So, no cross-contamination, inadvertent or deliberate is possible.
No “tissue” belonging to a member of the public is retained illegally.
It is really dangerous to embark on such a crusade without the evident facts.
You may care to read the furore about fingerprinting, from evidential value to retention that took place so many years ago and ask if your view point is not just a tad Victorian?
http://ridgesandfurrows.homestead.com/early_pioneers.html
I didn’t suggest that DNA was physically retained; it doesn’t need to be. The records are in digital form.
My point is that DNA records relating to innocent individuals are presently being retained by the authorities without those individuals’ consent. This has been adjudged an infringement of their human rights. The authorities consequently ought not to retain them.
It’s a straightforward point, which I fear, with respect, you’re missing.
Diolch. Nine cases are being sent from the ECHR to the U.K government who are rather stupidly employing delaying tactics in the hope it will blow over. It won’t. Compensation for these cases (one of which reads like a horror story, implicating the Hertfordshire, Sussex and North Wales Heddlu) will be astronomical. One complainant has already told me that he wants open, transparent and verifiable deletion. New Scotland Yard delenda est.
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