Innocent until proven naughty

Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain's most senior police forensics expert.

Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.

'If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,' said Pugh. 'You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won't. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.'

Pugh admitted that the deeply controversial suggestion raised issues of parental consent, potential stigmatisation and the role of teachers in identifying future offenders, but said society needed an open, mature discussion on how best to tackle crime before it took place. There are currently 4.5 million genetic samples on the UK database - the largest in Europe - but police believe more are required to reduce crime further. 'The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people,' Pugh told The Observer. However, he said the notion of universal sampling - everyone being forced to give their genetic samples to the database - is currently prohibited by cost and logistics.

Civil liberty groups condemned his comments last night by likening them to an excerpt from a 'science fiction novel'. One teaching union warned that it was a step towards a 'police state'.

And, on this issue, I agree 100%. It is bad enough that adults are having their details permanently stored on this database, simply because they were once arrested, regardless of whether they actually committed the crime, or whether they were ever convicted of anything. The notion that children below the age of criminal responsibility should have their DNA taken and kept forever for crimes that they might commit in the future is downright sinister. As, indeed, is the idea that adults who have never had so much as a parking ticket could nonetheless have their DNA kept on a database, simply because when they were seven or eight years old someone decided that they might one day become a criminal.

I say "someone" because it's not made clear who will actually be taking the decision. Will all children who are sent to the headmistress now be swabbed as a matter of course? I assume not, but it would be interesting to know who, if Gary Pugh ever gets his way, will decide that a child is a potential "threat to society", and on what basis they will make this decision.

Pugh says that "we have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society". Well, I would have thought that the answer to this question could be determined with greater accuracy by paying attention to those teenagers who are actually convicted of committing crimes. Surely proven fact is a better indicator of a tendency to commit crime, than even the most well-informed speculation? I would also point out that Pugh is not simply interesting in "finding out" which children are more likely to commit crime as adults, but he is also interested in forcibly taking their DNA, with or without the consent of their parents, and keeping it on a database for the remainder of their lives. There's rather a big difference between that, and simply "finding out".

I do not have any great objection to convicted criminals being obliged to provide DNA samples, but it is a severe violation of our civil liberties to compel the rest of us to do so. This does not cease to be the case, simply because doing so assists the police in solving crimes. It is quite clear that at least some senior police officers want, ultimately, to see the establishment of a compulsory nationwide DNA database, even if they regard the costs or logistical problems as being too great to allow such a programme to be implemented at present. The gradual growth of the database, the gradual increase in the types of people who can be forced to give up their DNA, and the consequent gradual acceptance of compulsory DNA testing, can only serve to hasten the day when all of us are ordered to submit to such testing by the state. As I have noted several times before, that is a day that I for one hope never to see.

As a final thought, it occurs to me that many people homeschool their children - as many as 100,000 British children are educated in this manner. Clearly, the agents of the state have far fewer opportunities to observe these children on a day-to-day basis, and are consequently far less able to identify potential evildoers among this group - the next Shipman could be out there, for Heaven's sake! I wonder what kind of (no doubt authoritarian) measures Pugh and his ilk would like to see put in place, to root out any potential criminals from among the ranks of the home educated?

More database fun

Thousands of DNA samples taken from criminals have been filed under the names of innocent people, it was revealed yesterday.

There are 550,000 false, misspelt or incorrect names on the Government's vast DNA database, which contains more than 4million samples.

That means one in every eight records is thought to be inaccurate.

[...]

Most alarming is the revelation that many criminals are using other people's names if they are caught.

Home Office Minister Meg Hillier gave the example of somebody who was arrested, and gave their sister's name.

"That data would be on the database," she told MPs.

Politicians are worried that people could be charged with crimes they have not committed if DNA belonging to a criminal who gave their name later turned up at a crime scene.

It was stressed that innocent people could provide an authentic sample of their own DNA to prove it did not match.

However, they would still be forced to undergo the stress and humiliation of a criminal investigation.

Presumably, the police could easily verify someone's identity, simply by searching them. After all, they managed it when they arrested Euan Blair.

But, in over half a million cases, they simply haven't bothered, but have stored the DNA, without knowing for sure whether it actually belongs to the person they think it does.

And some among us want to give these idiots a database containing the DNA of every man, woman, and child in this country! Still, we shouldn't be too worried: on the basis of this showing, the Plods would struggle to organise a piss-up in a brewery, let alone a DDR-style police state...

Hat-tip: House of Dumb

The subtle advance of the police state

The government has rejected demands for the introduction of a compulsory national DNA database, on the grounds that such a database "would raise significant practical and ethical issues". Senior police officers have also declared that they remain unconvinced of the need for such a database.

Of course, this is good news. The idea of compelling every British citizen to provide the police with a sample of their DNA, to be kept on file in perpetuity, is deeply sinister in itself, is a huge violation of our privacy and freedom, and is particularly unnerving when you consider the rather cavalier attitude that the government has shown towards the security of our personal records. Besides which, I think that a slippery slope argument is valid here: give the police a database of all our DNA, and it will make it that bit easier for the advocates of compulsory ID cards, and other authoritarian measures, to persuade the public to accept them.

But the news that the government will not (yet) be imposing a nationwide DNA database masks the very worrying fact that the police already have a vast DNA database. Because whenever anyone is arrested, the police take their DNA - and keep it. In 2001 the law was changed to allow the police to keep the DNA of people who had been acquitted, and they now have a database containing DNA samples from approximately 4 million people, hundreds of thousands of whom have never been convicted of any criminal offence. Per head of population, this is by far the largest such database in the world.

Other manifestations of a burgeoning police state are all around us, most notably the government's plan to force us all to carry ID cards, which the Home Office minister Liam Byrne assures us "will soon become part of the fabric of British life" and "another great British institution without which modern life...would be quite unthinkable". I don't know about you, but I don't find that possibility to be all that alluring. But that's the way the future is looking: databases and ID cards for all.