One Case is Not a Justification

Just as one case is not a justification for vigilantism, so too is one case not a justification for a national DNA database. Never mind, Sandra Laville tries to justify it anyway.

Since Colette Aram was snatched off the street and murdered 26 years ago, her mother, Jacqui Kirkby, has waited to see justice. Were it not for the DNA database and the retention of samples taken from those arrested for minor offences she would still be waiting.

Advances in DNA profiling, including the development of low-copy DNA, were not enough to catch Paul Hutchinson for the murder of Aram in 1983. He had never been arrested for a criminal offence and as such his details were not on the database to provide a match when police finally obtained a full profile of the killer through low-copy DNA last year.

It was only a familial link – provided via the DNA swab taken from a relative of Hutchinson following their arrest for a minor offence, that led detectives to the man who has evaded justice for nearly three decades.

Yes, all very well, but that it makes things easier for the police is not a justification for having us all on a database and it is not a justification for keeping DNA for those not charged or subsequently acquitted.

Campaigners against the retention of profiles for any length of time of those arrested would perhaps argue the image above is an emotive one, best not advanced in the debate at the heart of the controversy over the UK’s DNA database; the balance between the need for society to protect the privacy of its subjects while also maintaining their security.

Um, that’s because it is an emotive image and it is best not to advance it in this debate. The balance should always be in the interests of the privacy of the majority – the innocent majority who would otherwise be lifelong suspects.

But ask any police officer charged with informing a mother that their child’s naked body has been found lifeless in a field and they would say that murder and its aftermath are always an emotional business.

Indeed. However, it goes with the territory and keeping innocent peoples’ DNA is disproportionate and unjustified. And, in English law we are innocent until proven guilty – therefore once that innocence is demonstrated or charges dropped, there is no need to retain any DNA samples, no matter how much it might help the police in their fishing expiditions, no matter how much it might help to solve a cold case.

It is the position of Liberty and other campaigners such as Genewatch UK that DNA samples of those arrested for but not convicted of offences should be removed from the database as soon as a decision not to charge is taken.

Quite correctly.

They reject the government’s proposal in the crime and security bill that the DNA of suspects should be kept for six years and then removed.

Quite correctly.

But it would not be difficult to argue that their position, had it been policy, would have left Hutchinson at large for another two decades, if not until the day he died.

So it would. However, the capture of one murderer, desirable though that is, does not justify treating innocent people as lifelong suspects, much less the whole population as the database fans would like.

One solved case does not a summer make. If Ms Laville thinks it’s such a jolly fine idea, let her lead by example and trot down to the local nick and proffer her DNA.

Senior police officers sit in their offices across the country and seem baffled by the ferocity of the arguments over the DNA database.

That’s because they are authoritarian arseholes who would like to treat us all as suspects and believe that people who object clearly have something to hide.

They see the rows of numbers that fill the database detailing the profiles of 4.5 million people as a tool in their armoury, something as essential as fingerprinting.

And so it is – where those are profiles of guilty people. There is no justification for it to contain profiles of innocent people.

They admit they are not good at getting their message across and believe the agenda has been seized by civil liberties campaigners whose proposals police say would lead to fewer serious crimes, such as murder and rape, being solved.

Oh, they are getting their message across alright. That message being that they are authoritarian arseholes who would treat us all as suspects. That the civil liberties campaigners have seized the argument is a good thing, not a bad one.

Perhaps the likes of Jacqui Kirkby would have something to say on the subject. But she has never been asked.

No. Perhaps not. When the victims start to campaign for changes in the law based upon their case, we get bad results. The issue of law and order must be dispassionate, detached, impartial and balanced in favour of the innocent.