In the news

At the end of 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the permanent retention of cellular material and DNA profiles from innocent individuals in the National DNA database is in violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (see previous news). The ECHR described the practice of keeping permanent records of suspects in the DNA database for England and Wales as “blanket and indiscriminate”, as they do not distinguish between convicted criminals and innocent people. This contrasts with the database for Scotland, which was deemed “fair and proportionate”, where profiles are destroyed if a person is neither charged nor convicted, and are only retained for up to five years in the case of adults charged with violent or sexual offences.

 

Nearly five months on, and the UK Government has launched its proposals on how to comply with this ruling (see BBC news). These include: retaining indefinitely all DNA profiles of anyone convicted of an offence; destroying all cellular samples once a digital DNA fingerprint has been taken; retaining the profiles of unconvicted suspects for six years, or 12 years in the special case of those arrested for violent or sexual crimes; and removing the DNA profile for children when they turn 18.

 

Unsurprisingly the proposals have met with fierce opposition from all sides. Whilst some fear that the new proposals will significantly affect the ability of the police to fight crime, stating that a DNA database is of no threat to law abiding citizens (see commentary in The Guardian), others believe that the Government has not gone far enough, citing potential future misuse and abuse of the data and arguing that retention of DNA profiles from innocent people for up to 12 years is unjustified and infringes personal privacy (see Liberty).

 

Comment: According to the Home Office, the UK’s DNA database is the largest of any country, containing profiles of over 5% of the population. However, whilst no one doubts the importance of DNA evidence in forensics, the number of crimes that have been entirely solved as a direct result of this database is unclear. The question is therefore one of proportionality – achieving a fair and proportionate balance of protecting the rights of citizens, who are assumed to be innocent until proven guilty, against the needs of the criminal justice system.

 

In its 2007 report, The forensic use of bioinformation: ethical issues, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics recommended that “the law in England, Wales and Northern Ireland should be brought into line with that in Scotland… the retention of profiles and samples can be justified as proportionate only for those who have been convicted. In all other cases, samples should be destroyed and the resulting profiles deleted from the National DNA Database.” It is unclear why the Government has chosen to ignore this suggestion.