Liberty has dismissed new Government proposals for the DNA database as ‘inadequate’ and called for the UK to comply with last December’s European Court of Human Rights judgment and remove innocents from the DNA database.
Anna Fairclough, Legal Officer for Liberty, said:
“The Government is fond of justifying its retention of innocents’ DNA with the trite phrase: ‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’. The interest in our DNA clinic shows that those affected do not agree. They have done no wrong and they deeply resent their DNA profiles being held alongside those of murderers and rapists.”
Forty percent of Britain’s criminals are not on the database but hundreds of thousands of innocent people are. The National DNA database is one of the largest in the world, holding 4.5 million profiles - this includes around 300,000 children and approximately 850,000 innocent people who have never been charged or cautioned.
Contact: Mairi Clare Rodgers on 020 7378 3656 or 07973 831 128 Notes to Editors
The first DNA clinic will be held in Hackney on 25 September.
An estimated 37% of black men and 77% of young black men had records on the DNA Database in 2006. There were 3.8 times more arrests of black people per head of population than of white people in 2007/08.
Liberty agrees that a carefully managed DNA database can be a valuable crime detection tool. However, repeated legislative changes have rolled out retention policy by stealth so that anyone arrested for even very minor offences can have their DNA held for the rest of their lives, even if they have been mistakenly arrested. DNA is relevant only to a small number of serious offences, mainly involving sexual assault or violence. Liberty believes that the correct and proportionate approach to the National DNA Database would be based on allowing retention of DNA for those convicted or cautioned for these types of serious offence. This approach is the one adopted in Scotland and many other EU and comparable states.
Government proposals would mean that hundreds of thousands of DNA profiles of innocent people would be kept on the national DNA database for up to 12 years despite the European Court of Human Rights ruling that the "blanket and indiscriminate" retention of suspects' DNA is unlawful. Read Liberty’s response to the Home Office’s Consultation ‘Keeping the Right People on the DNA database’ here:
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/pdfs/policy-09/liberty-s-response-to-dna-database-consultation.pdf S & Marper v United Kingdom, heard in the European Court of Human Rights on 27 February 2008, establishes that the automatic retention of DNA samples, profiles and fingerprints from those who are not convicted of any offence is a breach of the right to a private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
