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The mother of murdered model Sally Ann Bowman is campaigning for a national UK DNA database.
The killer of her daughter was eventually caught after he was arrested and swabbed for a seperate crime. 79 unsolved rape and murder and manslaughter cases have been solved as a result of people being arrested for other misdemeanours, swabbed and then matched to the crime.
Human Rights Group Liberty, and the Tories do not want DNA kept – they want it wiped for people arrested but who have not committed any crime. Labour wish to keep the DNA for 6 years.
Now, I’m law abiding, never been arrested or swabbed or finger printed as I can behave myself.
The vast majority of the population are like me – able to behave themselves.
So I would love to make it compulsory for the DNA of everyone in this country with permanent or temporary residency status to be swabbed and their DNA kept.
Why? It would help solve crime an awful lot quicker, potentially saving millions of pounds in police hours.
It would act as a deterrent to some people, thereby reducing crime.
Now I know there will still be some that will commit crime regardless of the deterrent, but surely if the vast majority of the population are law abiding, they will want to live in a low crime country. For me, having my DNA stored on a database is a small price to pay if it reduces crime, saves money and catches criminals a lot quicker and makes the streets safer for all.
Some will say this will make our country a total nanny state – big brother evrywhere. I would just call it using advances in science to make our streets safer. Common sense really.
Thoughts?
Ive considered this, i think in general the priciple is a good one but, the problem is that although this may have a small impact regarding criminal capture the downside is that this will give government information on even those innocent of any crime…all well and good you might assume, yes on the face of it. In light of the ever increasing incompetence by these government workers and the security forces, i am of the opinion that the court of human rights made the right decision when deciding they breach the human rights charter, i say this because not only is there potential for incompetence ie ..losing data etc, there also will be people who will be in a position to use this information to the detriment of anyone on the database…this for instance might occur with the leaking of personal information/ samples to corperate bodies who have been known to pay for such information…. I agree that those guilty and convicted should be put on the database but, only following conviction and not prior…
In an ideal world without those who are quite happy to sell their souls to the devil, it could be accepted as a necassery step to safeguard society against the criminal… having said that….in an ideal world we would not feel the need to transgress… :?i think its a good idea in some respects but the sytem like so many is open to abuse ……..However if the data base was set up it could also be used as an aid to identify peoples remains when other techniques fail .
@gazlan wrote:
Ive considered this, i think in general the priciple is a good one but, the problem is that although this may have a small impact regarding criminal capture the downside is that this will give government information on even those innocent of any crime…all well and good you might assume, yes on the face of it. In light of the ever increasing incompetence by these government workers and the security forces, i am of the opinion that the court of human rights made the right decision when deciding they breach the human rights charter, i say this because not only is there potential for incompetence ie ..losing data etc, there also will be people who will be in a position to use this information to the detriment of anyone on the database…this for instance might occur with the leaking of personal information/ samples to corperate bodies who have been known to pay for such information…. I agree that those guilty and convicted should be put on the database but, only following conviction and not prior…
In an ideal world without those who are quite happy to sell their souls to the devil, it could be accepted as a necassery step to safeguard society against the criminal… having said that….in an ideal world we would not feel the need to transgress… :?Gazlan, I see your point but exactly what good would stolen DNA be to anyone other than the police? Scientists maybe but have you seen DNA readings? Totally useless to the untrained eye. A series of lines like a graph.
The Passport Office hold details on your height, looks, distinguishing marks etc. Why does no one protest about passports? Is it because the ultimate aim of a passport is to allow an individual to travel – mainly for holiday and therefore pleasure?
Pleasure – yes, as long as the reason for holding one’s personal data is an acceptable palliative to selfish human nature then it’s ok.
But! Holding personal data for the sake of deterring crime and increasing the crime clean up rate – well that’s not palliative.
Is it because a person cannot be certain that they will not commit a crime in the future? Commit a crime for which they want to get away with but might not be able to do so because of the DNA database?
A DNA database will help solve some of the more heinous crimes (not all, I’m aware of that) such as rape and murder – crimes which involve contact where the perpetrator will undoubtedly leave a trace of themselves.
Peter Sutcliffe, Denis Neilson, Robert Black et al – were all serial murderers. DNA wasn’t around when they were killing but it is now and IMHO, a DNA database would probably prevent future would be serial killers like them from committing the crime more than once.
And perhaps the thought of being almost immediately apprehended might stop some (not all) from committing a crime in the first place.
If you have nothing to hide then there should be no objection, surely?
Science has advanced and brought a new crime fighting tool, a bit like fingerprinting, so it’s about time we used it.
As far as I am concerned, it is a breach of my human rights not to have such a database. In not doing so, the government and the police are failing in their duty to take every measure possible to protect me and the British public from crime and criminals.
@peggy wrote:
i think its a good idea in some respects but the sytem like so many is open to abuse ……..However if the data base was set up it could also be used as an aid to identify peoples remains when other techniques fail .
I agree Peggy every deceased person does have a right to be identified not only so that they can rest in peace but that their immediate family know where they are.
DNA was( and still is I believe) used in Bosnian/ Herzegovia Genocide. Hundreds of people were identified using DNA and clothing to identify the majority of corpses found in the mass graves.
If this DNA database was to be compulsory then I would have no problem with it. I have nothing to hide. If I can be married for 27yrs and not kill my husband, it probably is pretty safe to say I will not murder anyone now :lol: .
If it was volountary, although again I have nothing to hide, I’m not sure if I would feel I need to go on it as I am a law abiding citizen, so would feel I don’t need to go on it. If however I was in the situation where I fitted a description of somone who did comit a crime then I would happily give my DNA to be eliminated.Its difficult to imagine who might use this data, i can imagine that certain information within the data will be accompanied with other personal information…the data could be used by insurance and perhaps private medical companies, perhaps even employers to get detailed information which otherwise will be protected by data protection…it wasnt to long ago the government were warned about their medical records data breaching certain acts….The fact the data may be coded means very little, companies have a huge flow of capital which ensures they have people to do the job… i did come across this article you might find of some relevance , as i pointed out, the principle itself is honourable……
“DNA’s Dirty Little Secret”: A forensic tool renowned for exonerating the innocent may actually be putting them in prison
Washington Monthly has used the notable “cold hit” case of John Puckett as a starting point for a remarkably significant, researched, extended piece on the use of DNA in court cases. An extract to show the quality:
Typically, law enforcement and prosecutors rely on FBI estimates for the rarity of a given DNA profile—a figure can be as remote as one in many trillions when investigators have all thirteen markers to work with. In Puckett’s case, where there were only five and a half markers available, the San Francisco crime lab put the figure at one in 1.1 million—still remote enough to erase any reasonable doubt of his guilt. The problem is that, according to most scientists, this statistic is only relevant when DNA material is used to link a crime directly to a suspect identified through eyewitness testimony or other evidence. In cases where a suspect is found by searching through large databases, the chances of accidentally hitting on the wrong person are orders of magnitude higher.The reasons for this aren’t difficult to grasp: consider what happens when you take a DNA profile that has a rarity of one in a million and run it through a database that contains a million people; chances are you’ll get a coincidental match. Given this fact, the two leading scientific bodies that have studied the issue—the National Research Council and the FBI’s DNA advisory board—have recommended that law enforcement and prosecutors calculate the probability of a coincidental match differently in cold-hit cases. In particular, they recommend multiplying the FBI’s rarity statistic by the number of profiles in the database, to arrive at a figure known as the Database Match Probability. When this formula is applied to Puckett’s case (where a profile with a rarity of one in 1.1 million was run through a database of 338,000 offenders) the chances of a coincidental match climb to one in three.
Such coincidental matches are more than a theoretical possibility, as Chicago police can attest. In 2004, detectives investigating a string of robberies on the city’s North Side found some skin cells that the culprit had left behind at one crime scene, which contained six DNA markers. When they ran this profile against Illinois’s offender database, they found it matched a woman named Diane Myers. There was just one problem: when the burglaries in question were committed, Myers was already in jail, serving time on drug charges.
Indeed, the little information that has come to light about the actual rate of coincidental matches in offender databases suggests the chances of hitting on the wrong person may be even higher than the Database Match Probability suggests. In 2005… an Arizona state employee named Kathryn Troyer had run a series of tests on the state’s DNA database, which at the time included 65,000 profiles, and found multiple people with nine or more identical markers. If you believe the FBI’s rarity statistics, this was all but impossible—the chances of any two people in the general population sharing that many markers was supposed to be about one in 750 million, while the Database Match Probability for a nine-marker match in a system the size of Arizona’s is roughly one in 11,000.
(Emphasis added.)
It’s technical stuff admittedly, but that’s just what convicts people for things they may not have done. If you’re interested in this subject, the article is really a “must read”.
The piece is also covered by the security consultant blogging as Mass Private I, who highlights the attempts of law enforcement to suppress information about flaws in statistics rather than share it as they should – which is significant, and terrible, as juries thinking the numbers mean something very different to the truth can wind up convicting the defendant.
This finds support in another useful piece about the Washington Monthly essay over at Rants of a Public Defender; after pointing out the significant shortcomings of legal defence teams in relation to DNA evidence, she rightly concludes,
They don’t want us poking around too much and investigating the truth of their scientific claims. They don’t want to do the hard work to get at the right results; they just want the quick, dirty, and easy answers, evidently without concern for whether those answers are the right ones. Once again, when science and law enforcement come together, scientific integrity inevitably takes the back seat…
We have got to fight against the criminal justice system’s reluctance to get at the best evidence. We have got to break the hold that DNA evidence has over us. Otherwise, we’ll never get to the truth of it.nothing is 100 % full proof getting a dna hit on a database alone dosent prove guilt ……the dna would be used in conjunction with other evidence ……ie blood types , witness statements ect ect ………as for the use of dna in bosnia yes florrie you are correct in some cases it proved a very good means to gaining identity however as the data base does not hold everyones dna many bodies from the mass graves are still awaiting identification ,some of these bodies belong to british mercs if the data base was up and running these bodies could be bought home to there familys .
Even if the data base throws up a wrong hit and it eliminates someone from an inquiry it is still of use is it not?
and of corse the irony of this situation is if you are a convict , rapist or child molestor youre body remians will be found and returned , yet if youre a law abiding citizen youre dna will not be held and youre remains will be unudentified.
The dead are dead…they have no worries nor suffer, unlike that of someone suffering at the hands of injustice
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