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Well today’s news headlines brings up that thorny old subject on our ‘freedoms’ or even our ‘Human Rights’.
It appears that the Police have amassed a database of something around 3 1/2 million samples of people’s DNA. This is apparently the largest database in the world and is growing at (some say) an alarming pace.
They collect samples from just about everybody that they come into contact with – not only criminals; but also witnesses to a crime, those who haven’t been charged (or convicted) of a crime; those who were just questioned but found to be completely uninvolved with any offence; and of course voluntarily donated samples for say elimination purposes.
Once collected there is no right to have your DNA record deleted from the database and indeed the Police as a matter of practice refuse to remove DNA records.
To date the DNA database has been solely responsible for solving literally thousands of crimes from murder to rape, from burglaries and thefts to assaults and other violent crimes. Every day more and more criminals are apprehended when their DNA is found to match samples taken from the scene of their crime.
The ‘human rights’ and ‘civil liberties’ lobbies are up in arms over this collection of data and they claim that this storage of information of ”innocent” people is a gross infringement of their personal freedoms etc etc.
What do you think about it? Is it a necessary weapon in the fight against crime or an attack on your personal liberty?????
I think it,s a brilliant idea. If you,ve got nothing to hide then why not? I,d have no problems atall with the police having my dna on record or my fingerprints. If it helps to solve crimes, like rape, murder etc, then good on them.
So long as they dont start asking for sperm samples I should be safe… 8)
I dont believe DNA should be taken and stored, without the person’s express permission, certainly in the cases of witnesses to crimes or people that have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
DNA isnt foolproof. Let’s say someone’s a suspect in something. Let’s say their innocent, but their DNA’s checked, and it shows that theirs a 50,000-1 chance they didnt do it.
That numbers not conclusive, and a conviction wouldent be secured with such a small number, but if no one else is ever found for the crime, then the finger of suspicion would continue to fall on this person.
We’ll get Drivel on with his catchphrase “if you havent done anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about etc etc etc, blah blah blah”. That wouldent cut the mustard with the person whos been wrongly accused though.
Safeguards would have to be place.For information Mr B I believe that DNA ”matches” are in the order of millions :1 and in some cases billions :1 and not mere thousands :1.
If a so-called ”match” is only in the order of thousands :1 then it is discarded as not being close enough unless there is other really compelling evidence in support.
In essence therefore, if a DNA ”match” shows that the person ”did it” – i.e. their unique genetic fingerprint has been matched to say a semen sample taken from a rape victim – then they have no convincing way to deny having done it.
Thank you for that information Mr P.
Just bump my figure of 50,000 up to the millions then.
The same example. Someone’s a suspect. Their DNA shows a million to one chance against. They could be innocent, a million to one number would mean they were totally under suspicion though. If no one else was ever found for the crime they would continue to be Prime Suspect though?Im not against this idea though. It it helps to solve brutal crimes, and give families some closure, and victims some justice I’d be all for it.
I dont believe someone should have their DNA taken unless they are a suspect in a crime though.Interesting. It appears that a number of these ”matches” are from people who have had their DNA sample taken (and which has subsequently been matched against forensic crime scene samples) where they have NEVER been convicted of a criminal offence.
In other words they were either lucky enough, clever enough, not to be caught by ”conventional” means.
If samples are only taken from convicted criminals, then there is perhaps the possibility that an unconvicted criminal will go on getting away with their criminality.
Would this justify the taking and holding of samples as at present or should the practice cease on the grounds of restricting a person’s privacy?
i personally dont see anything wrong with a DNA database but…… it should not be taken and recorded with out your permission i thinkthis is where people will feel violated whether or not they have anything to hide.
xx
@Bad Manners wrote:
Thank you for that information Mr P.
Just bump my figure of 50,000 up to the millions then.
The same example. Someone’s a suspect. Their DNA shows a million to one chance against. They could be innocent, a million to one number would mean they were totally under suspicion though. If no one else was ever found for the crime they would continue to be Prime Suspect though?Im not against this idea though. It it helps to solve brutal crimes, and give families some closure, and victims some justice I’d be all for it.
I dont believe someone should have their DNA taken unless they are a suspect in a crime though.Mr B
You must be the defence lawyers dream
“But he could be innocent”- if you’re DNA comes up (and it’s more like 1 in several million, not a million), as PB suggests, in a rape case then you are guilty of at least having had sex with the person
Defence lawyers play on peoples guilt of convicting people i.e. placing doubt, however minimal that he may be innocent and suggesting “its not foolproof” is a good way of influecning the layman when it comes to conviction (which is why so many rape cases are found innocent)
Having served on a jury in a robbery case, where it was so cut and dried (fingerprints, shoe prints, alibis who refused to testify in defence, eye witness accounts, identity parades etc) it was a farce, we STILL had 2 jurors who said “but there’s a one in a million chance it wasn’t him so I can’t find him guilty”- luckily the other 10 saw sense and he was found guilty (at which point we also found out about his 65 other offences!)
Nothing is ever 100% foolproof- you cannot guarrantee I am not a Martian but it is highly unlikely.
DNA records are simply the greatest leap in crime detection since the fingerprint and we should have 60,000,000 DNA records (one for each of us) on a database now
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