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United King­dom

DNA pro­files on a print-out

The data­base has helped solve 32,200 crimes — 0.7% of all crime

The DNA of inno­cent peo­ple arrested in Eng­land and Wales should be held for no longer than six years, min­is­ters are expected to say.

Last year the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights ruled it was unlaw­ful to keep indef­i­nitely the pro­files of inno­cent people.

The United King­dom has the world’s biggest DNA database.

Police say retain­ing sam­ples has helped solve crimes. Human rights groups say the pro­posed change is not enough.

There are no reli­able fig­ures on how many crimes have been solved because some­one cleared of one offence has been later linked to another solely through the unique genetic fin­ger­print obtained from their DNA.

One recent gov­ern­ment fig­ure sug­gests that less than 1% of all recorded crime is solved with the database’s help — although most police inves­ti­ga­tions do not involve DNA at all.

‘Unfin­ished research’

The Euro­pean Court rul­ing last year said the sys­tem in Eng­land and Wales breached basic rights because it allowed police to retain indef­i­nitely the DNA sam­ples of any­one arrested in an inves­ti­ga­tion, even if they were later nei­ther charged nor convicted.

North­ern Ireland’s DNA data­base is admin­is­tered sep­a­rately but fol­lows the same model and is there­fore, in prac­tice, also in breach of the Euro­pean Court’s judgment.

Scotland’s part of the data­base was given the all clear because police delete DNA pro­files of most peo­ple who are not con­victed. In all four parts of the UK, police take DNA swabs from sus­pects shortly after their arrest.

Liberty’s Shami Chakrabarti: The data­base is “way out of proportion”

The Home Office has already deleted the pro­files of chil­dren under 10 years old to com­ply with the Euro­pean Court’s rul­ing, but has been con­sid­er­ing how to deal with the rest of the esti­mated one mil­lion sam­ples from peo­ple who have not been convicted.

Ear­lier this year it pro­posed time lim­its of six or 12 years depend­ing on the nature of the crime for which a sus­pect had been arrested.

These fig­ures were drawn from research by the Jill Dando Insti­tute of Crime Science.

Its direc­tor sub­se­quently accused the Home Office of bas­ing the pro­pos­als on unfin­ished research which did not prove the case for any par­tic­u­lar time limit.

Fun­da­men­tal principles

The pro­pos­als being out­lined later on Wednes­day are expected to dis­count the 12 year fig­ure and pro­pose dif­fer­ent rules for the under-18s.

But the Equal­ity and Human Rights Com­mis­sion said such a pro­posal would not meet require­ments set by the court rul­ing that data should be held only when there were “clear, jus­ti­fi­able rea­sons” for doing so.

NATIONAL DNA DATABASE
* Pro­files: 5.9m
* Indi­vid­u­als: 5.1m
* Esti­mated pro­por­tion of repli­cate pro­files: 14%
* Esti­mate for peo­ple nei­ther charged nor con­victed: 20%
* Crimes solved with database’s help: 32,200 (0.68% of all crime)
* Pro­files removed March-Oct 2009: 255
Source: Home Office/Parliamentary questions

The shadow home sec­re­tary, Chris Grayling, told BBC Radio 4’s Today pro­gramme a future Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment would adopt the sys­tem in place in Scot­land, where DNA sam­ples are kept for no longer than five years and in rel­a­tively minor cases destroyed at the end of the inquiry.

He added: “What I don’t think we should be doing is say­ing to absolutely every­body who is pulled into a police sta­tion for any rea­son, ‘Your DNA will be taken and it will be stored indef­i­nitely,’ as is the case at the moment, or indeed will be stored for up to six years as the gov­ern­ment appear to be proposing’.

“One of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is that you’re inno­cent until proven guilty and I think this actu­ally rather under­mines that principle.”

For­mer detec­tive Hamish Brown says the DNA data­base is an impor­tant tool

Julie Bindel, from the cam­paign group Jus­tice for Women, told Today she under­stood the fears of dis­crim­i­na­tion against those whose DNA pro­files are kept — but the needs of vic­tims also had to be considered.

“It may be that we need to think about a national data­base,” she said.

“It’s some­thing that we feel uncom­fort­able with, but so many crimes have been solved by DNA and so many crimes have also been solved by acquit­ting those who have been falsely accused — some of the worst mis­car­riages of justice.

“And I think for women par­tic­u­larly who’ve been raped and who don’t get jus­tice we have to bal­ance their rights against the rights of those who don’t like the idea of hav­ing their DNA on record.”

Shami Chakrabarti, direc­tor of the cam­paign group Lib­erty, told BBC News: “The gov­ern­ment has been stock­pil­ing the DNA of com­pletely inno­cent peo­ple includ­ing chil­dren and the more inno­cent DNA you keep the greater the risk of acci­dent, error and abuse.”

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