DNA Database Being Illegally Added To
The European Court of Human Rights may have ruled it illegal to hold DNA profiles of innocent people on the national database, but that hasn’t stopped the Home Office:
More than 90,000 innocent people have been added to the national DNA database since a landmark human rights ruling that keeping indefinitely the profiles of unconvicted suspects was illegal, according to new figures.
The disclosure comes as the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is pressing the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to withdraw guidance to chief constables to carry on collecting DNA profiles of innocent people. It says it will take enforcement action if the chief constables fail to act.
Liberal Democrat research, based on parliamentary answers, shows that 433, 752 profiles have been added to the DNA database since the ruling by the European court of human rights in Strasbourg on 5 December last year – the equivalent of 1,480 a day.
It’s unthinkable that ACPO – a for-profit advisory body should have the power to be able to instruct chief constables to defy the court’s ruling, and heartening that the EHRC has decided to do something about it:
The EHRC has given ACPO 28 days to confirm that the advice to chief constables will be withdrawn and replaced by advice that complies with the law. If ACPO fails to do this, the commission will consider taking formal enforcement action.
The Home Office repeatedly insists on the importance of the database, yet over the last year the number of detections as a result of matches to it fell, whilst its cost doubled to £4.2 million. It pointedly doesn’t comment on why, under those circumstances, there is a need to breach human rights law by continuing to store profiles of innocent people.
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Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Yes, it’s fantastic that the DNA profiles of the innocent will have to be deleted. But… after 6 years. Where’s the justice in that? IS someone more likely to commit a crime in the first six years after they were arrested for… oh yea, not committing a crime – in the eyes of the law, they were innocent in the first place.
However, that’s not the end of the story. This ruling (as far as I know) doesn’t include the requirement to delete PNC records, which will still show that an individual was arrested, and that no action was taken against them.
OK – I suppose you could argue that this is fair enough, it shows that no action was taken against the individual; but it still leaves the innocent person ‘tainted’ with a PNC record. We’ve all seen the consequences of this when it comes to applications to emigrate and the ludicrous, almost automatic disclosure of any and all soft information on CRB checks. This whole mess needs proper attention, and wholescale reform.