We have a new Supreme Court judgment, almost exactly ten years since the law was changed, on 11 May 2001, to permit the police to hold forever the DNA of everyone arrested, irrespective of their guilt. One of the most pernicious consequences of this policy has been the massive over-representation of black people on the DNA database, since they are much more likely than white people to be arrested, although no more likely to be convicted.
Everyone must remember the uncompromising judgment of the European Court of
Human Rights in December 2008, which condemned the ‘blanket and indiscriminate’
UK retention policy as a violation of
the right to respect for private life, and put powerful pressure on the
government to implement a new regime.
A new draft scheme is currently making its way through Parliament in the Protection of Freedoms Bill, and might get through by autumn this year. Against that background, today the Supreme Court has now declared unlawful the police continuing to retain the DNA of everyone arrested, subject only to a very narrow test which permits destruction of retained DNA in ‘exceptional circumstances’ (for example when it turns out that no offence was committed – by anyone – or the arrest was unlawful).
However, because of the draft legislation in Parliament, the court declined to order the police to implement a lawful scheme, at least until Parliament has had a reasonable time to pass the Bill currently before it. So although the declaration of illegality is welcome, the judgment will make little practical difference for the hundreds of thousands of people whose DNA is - admittedly - unlawfully retained, who will have to wait even longer to compel the police to destroy it.
So we wait now, to see whether the Protection of Freedoms Bill becomes law in its current form. If not, there will no doubt be a queue of aggrieved innocents seeking to secure the destruction of their DNA through further litigation.
I for one sincerely hope that indefinite, discriminatory DNA retention policy – already in its death throes – can finally be put to sleep.
A new draft scheme is currently making its way through Parliament in the Protection of Freedoms Bill, and might get through by autumn this year. Against that background, today the Supreme Court has now declared unlawful the police continuing to retain the DNA of everyone arrested, subject only to a very narrow test which permits destruction of retained DNA in ‘exceptional circumstances’ (for example when it turns out that no offence was committed – by anyone – or the arrest was unlawful).
However, because of the draft legislation in Parliament, the court declined to order the police to implement a lawful scheme, at least until Parliament has had a reasonable time to pass the Bill currently before it. So although the declaration of illegality is welcome, the judgment will make little practical difference for the hundreds of thousands of people whose DNA is - admittedly - unlawfully retained, who will have to wait even longer to compel the police to destroy it.
So we wait now, to see whether the Protection of Freedoms Bill becomes law in its current form. If not, there will no doubt be a queue of aggrieved innocents seeking to secure the destruction of their DNA through further litigation.
I for one sincerely hope that indefinite, discriminatory DNA retention policy – already in its death throes – can finally be put to sleep.
