First, supporters of the DNA database (and supporters of its extension to the entire population) do not acknowledge the possibility of error and abuse. When it is pointed out that there could be error and abuse, they tend to just brush it aside. This is just plain wrong.

Second, supporters conflate DNA matches at crime scenes with solved crimes. Furthermore, we do not know how many crimes have been solved as a result of retaining DNA from innocent people. Also, despite the DNA database doubling in size, the chances of ‘detecting’ a crime have not increased.

Third, as usual we are talking about snazzy technological quick-’fixes’ rather than more humdrum solutions such as better training. Saward makes no mention of attrition on her website, nor in her articles. An extended DNA database will make little to no difference to the two thirds of cases not proceeding beyond investigation stage. What matters to victims (and cases) is being taken seriously (for example) and their allegations being properly recorded.

Even in this latter example there is a chance for coincidental matches of course, but it does mean that the police have had to select someone as a suspect with real evidential backing first.

The kind of situation you envisage could occur in a situation where DNA evidence is used but not recorded. The presence of DNA evidence should not be treated as a clear sign of guilt, this is the kind of thing that get’s evaluated by a court.

Robin – I don’t think it is the case that DNA will lead to more miscarriages of justice and it certainly isn’t my position that we should treat DNA evidence as a 100% indicator of guilt. The existence of a DNA database has little bearing on how the DNA evidence will actually be evaluated.

What this woman wants to do – alongside the rest of the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade – is to change the law to make it so that those charged have to prove their innocence. The very fact of charging them is to be taken as a proof of their guilt. She will dress it up in all sorts of verbiage and double think, but that is what the effect would be.

1 Victims have rights; wrongly-convicted defendants are victims just as much as the victims of the original crime. Anyone for criminal liability for those responsible for wrongful convictions?

2 DNA evidence is not 100% reliable. Public perception – which feeds into jury perception – is that it is 100% reliable. If DNA databases are to be held, the public must understand that the more DNA evidence is relied upon, the more miscarriages of justice – in both directions – will occur. Yet a major rationale for those advocating universal DNA databases is that it is 100% reliable. As our Transatlantic cousins say – go figure.

3. Battery acid. It is apparently believed that acids/alkalis will remove DNA evidence (google the words: rape dna acid – and read the Sun’s story (ignore their scientific illiteracy)) . In most rapes identification, or even penetration, are not the issue – consent is. Do we really want those where DNA is relevant being as horrific as the Tottenham one?

But what of my example of your DNA being the only DNA on a person (by some chance, but we’re talking hypotheticals here) that has been murdered despite you only having bumped in to them. You go in to a station going on about “how you’ve never seen this person” and other things, you’re already on a denial track and there’s DNA to supposedly tie you to that person. I’m not going to suggest the police are negligent in their jobs, and DNA is obviusly supposed to be used as a supportive evidence rather than absolute proof, but let’s not imagine for a second we don’t live in a society where convictions are brought simply to make a statement to the public, there are enough examples of this without DNA databases having existed, let alone when they do and give the authorities an easy way to pick a suspect.

douglas – Most government agencies have databases of some sort at the moment, and almost all need them simply to go about their day to day business, joined up or not would have mattered little in the case of the Honour killings you mentioned.

With regard to inaccuracy , the two point’s I’d like to make here are first that the consequence of inaccuracy largely depends on what uses a particular agency is allowed to put that data to. An inaccuracy at the CPS for example can cause someone to be wrongly labelled as a criminal when performing a background check, an inaccuracy on the electoral register means you’ll get a few letters intended for someone else.

The second point is that inaccurate data is usually inaccurate because it is out of date rather than being incorrect. The most common cause of inaccuracy is that people don’t inform agencies of changes of address. A more joined up approach to data is likely to ensure data is generally more accurate not less accurate.

With regard to DNA evidence, the example you provided could simply be avoided at the point making the check again at the point you are brought in. A DNA check at that point against the example on a file would likely indicate that the data held against you is inaccurate. dc2 might get away, but that would have been the exact same outcome had the DNA database not existed.

The final point on what other information can be gleaned from DNA records, I’m not sure that much information can be extracted from a genetic profile in the format the police use to store it, but I’m not 100% sure on that point.

More generally, it may indeed be true that with technological change our ideas of liberty and privacy have become unsustainable. If that is putting it too strongly, another formulation might be to say that the particular set of circumstances which, after 1945, led the State to a tender attitude towards citizens no longer apply.

One bulwark of privacy and liberty against the State has been the sheer volume of information which an intrusive State, such as the Soviet Union and its satellites were, has to process. This bulwark is disintegrating, as the Chinese are anxious to exploit.

We have recently had cases where finding someone so that you can apply ‘honour based violence’ to them has been effected through existing databases. In other words the database has been accessed by insiders and passed onwards for what I would consider an evil purpose.

You can certainly throw the book at anyone you catch doing that, and you should, However the risk of data falling into the wrong hands, is too big a risk to take, I think.

We are walking into an era of ‘joined up government’ where simple things like name, address and NINO will be available to many agencies, with other data attached as relevant. That is enough to create a chaos of insider trading, for want of a better term.

It is also not well enough understood that a fair percentage of the data held will be, in fact wrong. It is the nature of the beast.

My name is douglas clark (dc).

Lets assume the tick tock state you want. The state takes a sample of my DNA and attaches it somewhere, somehow to my record. Frankly, if you’ve ever seen a DNA signature, you, nor I, would have the slightest hope of challenging it’s validity. It is unintelligible to a layman.

Here lies the first issue. It is entirely probable that an entry error could have my record carrying the DNA sample of dc2. All my life. And vice versa.

Not a problem you say. Well it is. If dc2, whose record has my DNA attached to it, commits a crime where forensic evidence comes in to play, and given an all encompasing database that is searched on DNA alone, it is me that will be in the frame for his crime. Not him.

Whilst they, hopefully, eliminate me from there enquiries, time passes. dc2 – the putative guilty party – could have used that time to emigrate or name change or do a quick bit of identity theft.

What I am saying here is that a few full blown failures of your tick tock state will take it into utter and complete disrepute. And these failures are likely to exist in the earliest years of it’s availability.

Secondly, we are at early stage of understanding all that DNA can tell us. But we do know already about propensities for genetically inherited conditions. What the state gathers for criminal purposes, it will lease-lend for health issues, educational issues, etc, etc. See ‘joined up government’ above.

You are, in my opinion, sleepwalking into a world you haven’t actually realised in your own mind. It is a world of quotas and targets, budgets and entitlements based exclusively on government criteria, or whatever fear they can generate in the citizens. Personally, I’m getting a bit bored with being the ‘frightened citizen’.

Just so we’re clear, I don’t think in general that people here are opposed to DNA being used as a supportive measure in bringing a conviction against people, just that such data is stored.

It was said very clearly and well in the commons, if you find a DNA sample at a crime you keep the sample, that way when you take a DNA sample from someone arrested for a crime and you cross check it against a database of samples (not checking samples against a database of our DNA) you can solve unsolved cases. Keeping the DNA beyond that point is irrelevant as you’ve made every check you can.

To keep DNA on a database is to presume guilt or the likelihood of guilt, it is to enable intrinsically personal data to be put in to a situation which is potentially unsecure and…this is worst of all..it gives too much legitimacy to DNA as a form of evidence. If some woman was raped and murdered and we were all on a DNA database, and I happened to have bumped in to her on the street, I would suddenly be a suspect with supposedly strong evidence linking me to her. It’s this level of presumption that has to be avoided to ensure the legitimacy of charges brought.

Anyway, I don’t dislike her stance…she’s free to have that opinion, it’s just that to claim criminals have too many rights is to claim that rats have too many rights, it’s disproportionate to reality.

How about this for a case..

I think that rape is wrong and that those who commit it should be brought to justice. I believe that if there is a justifiable means of assisting the police in bringing criminals to justice then the police should use it. Do you think that criminals should not be brought to justice?

The debate here is about whether the means (a DNA Database in this case) are justifiable and I think the challenge for those who think that this method is not justified is to demonstrate that it could in someway be used to harm our freedoms in future.

I don’t think that Jill Saward is holding a 22 year old grudge and I think it’s unjustified to portray her as someone who is making a political stand simply for revenge.

That can take many forms, from vendetta to forgiveness.

What the rest of us have a right to is to make moral judgments about the appropriateness of different forms of closure.

If Saward – or anyone else – feels that forgiveness is inappropriate, they need to make their case.

I think I can guess which point this is.

Firstly, standing for victims of crime is not the same as being part of the hang em and flog em brigade. The original poster seems to be building up a bit of a straw woman, but that’s by the by.

The Future Governments/Infrastructure of repression argument often crops up in relation to government databases. But in order to make such an argument it is necessary to prove that a future government could abuse this information, those who argue against government databases need to make this case. Ditto for loss/theft of such data, a case needs to be made here that the data can be put forward for malicious purposes.

Jill Saward argues that a DNA database will increase detection of crime, that is a good thing. “Future governments might abuse it” is not enough of a counterargument without a clear demonstration of how they might do this.

Unity – I think it’s fair to point out that plenty of other crimes have been solved thanks to DNA evidence, I agree with your point on right to silence though.

I’m glad there will, potentially, be some real debate..no matter how small.

The key error in suggesting that sticking everyone on a DNA database will prevent/deter rape is that DNA only of use in a rape case if the identity of the attacker is not known to the victim or there is some dispute over whether intercourse took place.

In a majority of cases, the identity of the assailant in known to the woman and the pivotal issue isn’t whether intercourse took place but whether the woman consented, so DNA evidence makes no difference at all – not that’s necessarily Saward’s most illiberal ‘policy’ – try this one for size…

http://www.trueliberty.org.uk/policy/policy.htm

Some people will argue that I am making dangerous suggestions in calling for the law to be rebalanced to take account of the needs of victims as well as defendants. But what I am suggesting should not lead to unfair trials.

Why is that right more important than a victim’s right to see their attacker punished?

There’s seemingly a parallel universe somewhere in which removing the right to silence, outright, doesn’t lead to an unfair trial…???

That last comment in particular is rather interesting and more than a little Freudian in tone…