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The Government’s decision to retain for six years the DNA profiles of innocent people on a database supposed to be made up of convicted criminals is perverse. Why six years? This figure has apparently been arrived at by examining the likely reoffending patterns of criminals; yet the people involved are not convicted (although the distinction between guilt and innocence often seems lost on this Government). The announcement has been made following a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that the indefinite retention of nearly one million DNA samples taken from people arrested but never convicted, or even charged in many cases, was a breach of the human rights convention.
In response, the Government initially decided that profiles should be held for 12 years. That ran into criticism, and now ministers have opted for six years. But how is it any more justified to retain the DNA (or fingerprints, for that matter) of innocent people for six rather than 12 years? An alternative approach would be to encourage chief police officers to exercise the discretion they already possess to remove the profiles of people subsequently found to have committed no crime, as happened in the case of Damian Green MP.
The current, irrational system operates only in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and nowhere else in the world. In Scotland, DNA is destroyed if there is no conviction, save in a small number of cases where profiles can be saved for up to five years. This is far more proportionate and more likely to help, rather than hinder, police work, since if you are looking for a needle in a haystack it does not make sense simply to have a larger haystack. The Government would be better advised to adopt the Scottish system for the whole of the UK, than to create a national DNA database by stealth.
