Police DNA database to be rolled back in Britain

The British government will remove the genetic profiles of an estimated one million innocent people from the National DNA Database, following pressure from civil society organizations and a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.

The move is also due in part to last year's UK election, which ushered in a new government that, unusually for Britain, involves a coalition between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. The coalition agreement included an historic commitment to reduce the size of Britain's National DNA Database, based on a shared concern between the parties that the previous New Labour government had significantly eroded civil liberties.

Controversial changes to the law under Tony Blair's premiership had allowed a massive expansion of the database, by allowing the police to collect DNA routinely on arrest for any 'recordable' offence, from anyone aged ten or older, and to retain all data to age 100, regardless of whether the individual is convicted or even charged with an offence. In 2008, this legislation was found to breach the European Convention on Human Rights.

Examples of people who ended up on the DNA database as a result of these laws include: a 12-year old-schoolboy arrested for allegedly stealing a pack of Pokemon cards; a grandmother arrested for failing to return a football kicked into her garden; a ten-year-old victim of bullying; a 14-year-old girl arrested for allegedly pinging another girl's bra; a 13-year-old who hit a police car with a snowball; a computer techie wrongly accused of being a terrorist; a former BBC executive; a famous comedian; and two Conservative MPs. More than a third of black men and 3 out of 4 young black men (aged 15 to 35) are estimated to have ended up with a record on the DNA database.

Home Office data shows that despite the DNA database ballooning in size, no more crimes were solved.

The Coalition Government has now published its Protection of Freedoms Bill, which will remove the million records of innocent people from the forensic DNA database. The Bill applies to England and Wales and will bring in rules for storage of computerized DNA profiles and fingerprints similar to those already in force in Scotland. It will require the deletion of most innocent people's DNA records and fingerprints at the end of an investigation, but will allow some records from persons not convicted of alleged serious offences to be retained for three to five years. All convicted adults will have their DNA profiles and fingerprints retained to age 100, but children convicted of a single minor offence will have their records deleted after five years.

Northern Ireland will make its own decision on DNA and fingerprints at a later date because policing powers have now been devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Importantly, the Bill also recognizes the sensitivity of genetic information contained in the DNA samples collected by the police - which are currently stored indefinitely in the laboratories which analyse them. It requires these to be destroyed not later than six months after they have been collected.

GeneWatch UK has broadly welcomed the Bill. This will be the first time that any government has acted to roll back a DNA database and to restrict the data that is retained. This is a significant step forward for all the people who spoke out about the unnecessary retention of their DNA, including those who went to court. The proposals on DNA and fingerprints will benefit large numbers of innocent people and are a workable compromise between the need to protect their rights and to minimize the risk that a very small number of people, usually arrested for alleged serious violent or sexual offences against a partner, later commit a stranger rape which they are linked to solely by their DNA. This situation has applied to only a handful of rape cases - and no murders - in the ten years since the law was changed to allow innocent people's DNA records to be retained.

Although the Bill is an important step forward, GeneWatch UK would also like to see some amendments to it.

The most important omission from the Bill is that police records - created at the same time that DNA and fingerprints are collected - will not be deleted. These records contain the name, age and ethnic appearance of the individual and details of their arrest. They used to be kept for 42 days after a person had been acquitted or charges against them dropped, but are now retained to age 100. So-called 'non-conviction information' can be released to employers as part of a criminal record check or during a visa application. This means that people who have merely been arrested could continue to be refused jobs or visas or suffer discrimination from the police, who also gain direct access to these records on the street. For example, British travelers who have been arrested are no longer eligible to use the US visa waiver scheme and must apply for a copy of their police record of arrest and send it with their visa application to the US embassy as part of an expensive and time-consuming process. Holidays and business travel can therefore be disrupted merely as a result of having been arrested.

Other problems with the Bill include the lack of a time limit on the retention of data from adults convicted of minor offences or given police cautions (a sanction that is based on admission of guilt but does not require attendance at a court). There are many examples of people with old cautions for minor offences such as stealing sweets as a child being refused a job, sometimes decades later. As it stands, the Bill would allow police records, DNA profiles and fingerprints taken from such people to be retained to age 100, although it does introduce some new restrictions on what can be revealed to potential employers.

There is also provision in the Bill for people's DNA and fingerprint records to be retained indefinitely (via repeated two-year extensions) for reasons of 'national security'. Tighter restrictions are needed here to prevent unjustifiable retention of individuals' data in such circumstances.

It is important to be aware that the Bill does not restrict the collection of DNA, only its retention. However, in practice, routine collection of DNA, particularly from children, is likely to decline as collecting samples and analyzing them costs money which will be wasted if they are not relevant to an investigation and have to be destroyed at a later date.

GeneWatch UK will be working with others to try to improve the Bill and ensure that those with records on the DNA database have a say in the final outcome.

For more information on the Protection of Freedoms Bill and its progress through the UK Parliament see: http://www.genewatch.org/sub-566498

Helen Wallace, PhD, is director of GeneWatch UK.