Cases were brought by two men whose DNA had been taken by the police but who had never been convicted. Michael Marper was charged with harassing his partner but the case was later dropped. He had no previous convictions. The other man was a minor when he was charged with attempted robbery but was acquitted in court. In both cases the police refused to destroy fingerprints and DNA samples taken when they were in custody. The cases cited breaches of Human Rights Act Articles 8 (right to private life) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination) but were thrown out by the House of Lords here. The ECHR found on the contrary that keeping the information breached the Human Rights Act and 'could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society'. The government was very disappointed with the ruling but has to comply with it. However they are risking further challenges by their proposals which include deleting profiles of those arrested but not convicted after 6 years, extended to 12 years in the case of those arrested for serious violent or sexual crimes. The Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker made the rather extraordinary comment (unless he has been misquoted!): 'What we have found is that by keeping that DNA, people do go on to commit crime (sic) or their DNA is found at another crime scene'.
It is worth reciting a bit of legal history here. It was actually not until 2001 (about the time of the start of our government's erosion of civil liberties in response to the terrorist threat) that the law was changed to allow retention of samples of those found innocent. And not until 2003 that the police were allowed to take DNA and fingerprints without consent from anyone arrested for a recordable offence. Clearly a balance has to be struck somewhere but if you were arrested for a theft you did not commit and the case was dropped the next day, would you be happy for your DNA to be retained on the police computer?
But it is also true at the same time that murderers and rapists have been caught by DNA samples taken from previous scenes. The killer of Sally Anne Bowman was identified because police later took a sample from him after a pub brawl. A earlier DNA sample from Steve Wright, the Ipswich multi-murderer, helped identify him too, but this was from an earlier theft conviction so would still have been kept lawfully under the ECHR ruling.
There has been quite a lot of commentary on this as to how many years there should be retention etc but I think a couple of points have been missed. The first is that the government plans anyway to have a compulsory national database with biometric detail by stealth. It's called id cards. Of course we are assured that it's not intended for criminal investigations but equally one of the government's arguments for it is in the fight to identify terrorists. We also all know how legislation is used and/or amended for purposes not originally intended: CCTV cameras and wheelie bins come to mind. The other point is that an individual's DNA sample is related to the DNA of close family members. Home Office statistics say that the 33% of men and 10% of women under the age of 35 have a non-motoring criminal offence. The likelihood is that 80% of us are closely related to someone who has committed a crime if we have not committed one ourselves. So for these two reasons arguments about how long if at all we should retaining the DNA of the innocent may well be irrelevant.
The next question is how reliable is DNA testing. The answer seems to be very reliable indeed as long as the correct comparisons are made (I won't attempt to go into the science but there have certainly been cases where this has not happened) and of course we all know mistakes are made with retention, processing and handling of data , especially where government agencies become directly involved......
It is worth reciting a bit of legal history here. It was actually not until 2001 (about the time of the start of our government's erosion of civil liberties in response to the terrorist threat) that the law was changed to allow retention of samples of those found innocent. And not until 2003 that the police were allowed to take DNA and fingerprints without consent from anyone arrested for a recordable offence. Clearly a balance has to be struck somewhere but if you were arrested for a theft you did not commit and the case was dropped the next day, would you be happy for your DNA to be retained on the police computer?
But it is also true at the same time that murderers and rapists have been caught by DNA samples taken from previous scenes. The killer of Sally Anne Bowman was identified because police later took a sample from him after a pub brawl. A earlier DNA sample from Steve Wright, the Ipswich multi-murderer, helped identify him too, but this was from an earlier theft conviction so would still have been kept lawfully under the ECHR ruling.
There has been quite a lot of commentary on this as to how many years there should be retention etc but I think a couple of points have been missed. The first is that the government plans anyway to have a compulsory national database with biometric detail by stealth. It's called id cards. Of course we are assured that it's not intended for criminal investigations but equally one of the government's arguments for it is in the fight to identify terrorists. We also all know how legislation is used and/or amended for purposes not originally intended: CCTV cameras and wheelie bins come to mind. The other point is that an individual's DNA sample is related to the DNA of close family members. Home Office statistics say that the 33% of men and 10% of women under the age of 35 have a non-motoring criminal offence. The likelihood is that 80% of us are closely related to someone who has committed a crime if we have not committed one ourselves. So for these two reasons arguments about how long if at all we should retaining the DNA of the innocent may well be irrelevant.
The next question is how reliable is DNA testing. The answer seems to be very reliable indeed as long as the correct comparisons are made (I won't attempt to go into the science but there have certainly been cases where this has not happened) and of course we all know mistakes are made with retention, processing and handling of data , especially where government agencies become directly involved......
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