What Hampshire thinks of the National DNA database (From Daily Echo)

What Hampshire thinks of the National DNA database

2:25pm Monday 22nd February 2010 in

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A USEFUL crime-fighting tool or an invasion of our privacy? It’s the burning question behind the highly controversial issue of the national DNA database since it came into being in 1995.

Police across the UK use it in the fight against crime, claiming it has helped solved some 30,000 crimes and matched some 600,000 people to crime scenes in the past 15 years.

Last year the database led detectives to David Lace – the real killer of former Southampton gas board clerk Teresa de Simone behind the Tom Tackle pub in December 1979. A few months earlier Sean Hodgson, the man wrongly convicted and jailed for 27 years for the crime, was freed following the discovery of DNA evidence.

While earlier this month Isle of Wight resident Keith Davison was convicted of a brutal stranger rape on a young girl which he carried out some 18 years ago.

Detectives say it was only the profile of his daughter – cautioned but not convicted over an assault – which led to his capture.

Davison’s conviction comes as a specialist team of Hampshire detectives have reopened the case files of 3,000 unsolved sex attacks and rapes. Their determination to solve the crimes has been renewed by possible changes to the governing of the DNA database which police say could result in 850,000 profiles being removed.

But opponents strongly argue its validity, claiming it’s turning us into “a nation of suspects” and the country into a “database state”.

Their argument has been strengthened following a landmark decision at the European Court of Human Rights two years ago, which ruled it was unlawful and a breach of privacy.

As a result, the Government is now considering introducing new rules about how long a person’s DNA profile can be stored – something the police fear could seriously hamper crime detection.

The Home Office is considering removing any adult who has been arrested but never convicted after a period of six years and any child arrested but not convicted after three.

Convicted children could have their DNA removed after five years unless they commit serious offences again while a second sample, taken from any suspect at the time of arrest, could be destroyed instead of being frozen in a lab as it currently is.

But while opposing groups remain far apart on their views both for and against, what do the residents of Hampshire really think about the future of a database which already contains the profiles of some five million people?

A Daily Echo survey of 1,000 people across the county (see below) found 69 per cent agreed with the principle of the database.

Some 65 per cent said they would also be happy to have their DNA profiles placed on there indefinitely. The most common reason they said, was that they simply had nothing to hide.

But those against vehemently objected to their privacy being invaded and raised fears they could wrongly be ‘framed’ for a crime they hadn’t committed.

Chris Hughes OBE, chairman of the National DNA Ethics Group – an independent body which advises the Government – said far more debate is needed on an issue that is not well understood by many.

“How well it performs is not properly researched. Nearly 90 per cent of rapists and murderers are already on the database, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t help detect others.

“My impression is that the public is very ambivalent about it. I think there is a fundamental deficit in public understanding and would welcome a sustained debate on the issue so people can really get a feel for it.”

The case for

Det Supt Jason Hogg, Head of Major Crime

IT’S important to understand that the national DNA database is not a database of guilty people – but people who happen to be on there because of the rules that exist at the moment. Checking on there is just a tool we use as part of an investigation.

The database is a list of people convicted, cautioned or arrested concerning a recordable offence or people who have happily given their DNA with consent during a mass screening.

Just because your DNA is found at a crime scene, it doesn’t mean you will be charged or that you committed that crime. Some people think they could be falsely found guilty but I know of no case where that has happened.

In any UK court you cannot be convicted on the basis of DNA alone. There has to be other evidence to prove you committed a crime.

Take for example the Hannah Foster murder inquiry – the DNA was the highest match we could get and therefore a pillar of the case, but there was lots of other overwhelming evidence such as CCTV, false accounts he gave to his wife and the fact Maninder Pal Singh Kohli fled which together helped prove to a jury that he was the person responsible.

Why would you worry about your sample being on there? In any investigation if your profile matched a crime scene then the police would want to talk to you – that doesn’t mean you would be convicted. DNA is not judge and jury – you have to provide enough evidence to the CPS (Criminal Prosecution Service) to enable it to get to a court where a judge and jury would put everything together.

“A scientist would never say it’s impossible for two people’s DNA to match but so far there has never been anyone found in the world other than identical twins or triplets whose profiles are the same. Any other match is more than highly unlikely – it’s never happened.

The database exists purely for the reason it was introduced. I can’t imagine any UK Government ever allowing it to be used for anything else – they wouldn’t ever be elected to power for a start. It’s no different to fingerprints and maybe in 100 years people will feel the same way about the database as they do now about fingerprints, but at the moment this remains a relatively new thing.

In the past seven years it has had its successes in Hampshire. In 2003 Robert Sergeant was sentenced to four and a half years for serious indecent assaults in Liphook in 1983; in 2005 Daniel Alderson was jailed for six years for a serious sex attack on a teenage girl in Havant in 1992 and a second attack on a child in 1997; In 2006 Michael Cooper was given four and a half years for the attempted rape of a dog walker in 1992; in 2007 Neil Hunt was jailed for the rape of a woman in 1990 in Over Wallop and in 2008 Derek Young was convicted of three knifepoint sex attacks between 1973 and 1994.

He later killed himself in prison.

All those people were not on the database – they were found by either using familial techniques, resubmitted samples to generate DNA profiles or they were arrested in connection with minor offences and we got a hit.

Earlier this month Keith Davison, from the Isle of Wight, was convicted of an horrific stranger rape in Ryde in August 1990.

He attacked a 24- year-old woman from behind, pulled his Tshirt over her head and dragged her into an alley. Now 18 years on, we have brought him before a court where he has been convicted.

We traced him using familial techniques after his daughter was arrested and cautioned over a minor assault.

If we hadn’t taken her DNA, Davison would still be walking free.

If you meet survivors of these types of crimes quite often you see that their lives are changed forever and they never get over such a trauma.

Thanks to such developments, even years afterwards we are bringing people to justice. It’s difficult for anyone to argue that this is not a good thing.

The case against

DR. Ian Thomas, Southampton Co-ordinator for NO2ID

EXPANDING the DNA database to include more than a million innocent people has not helped solve more crimes.

DNA is a very useful tool in criminal investigations, but the focus needs to be on gathering DNA from crime scenes to establish who was there and to eliminate people from enquiries.

Establishing profiles of millions of innocent people, the official figures show, makes no contribution at all.

In fact the DNA database isn’t particularly good at securing convictions as only one in 16 of the 0.36 per cent of cases where DNA was used, were people actually sent to prison because of the DNA database.

Or, put another way only 1 in 5,000 prisoners are in prison thanks to the DNA database.

Ministers have been asked repeatedly in parliamentary questions to reveal the number of crimes that have been detected or solved as a result of the retention of innocent people on the database and on each occasion they have replied that this data is not available.

What is going on there? The Government is trying to say it’s a wonderful thing – surely it must have the numbers to back up its case?

The police themselves have said it could affect people’s chances of employment if their details are stored on the database.

As most crimes are committed by repeat offenders you might want a small database containing those people – but good normal police forensic work could also do this.

What the police certainly don’t need is a huge database of innocent people.

The notion that we should all be on there, is I believe, held by a small minority; even the police and the Government don’t want this to happen.

It would make the system less and less effective, as the more people there are listed on it, the higher will be the chance of it throwing up several people with a matching profile.

The figures reveal that even today, with only a few per cent of the population on the database, one in three searches generate multiple matches. And the likelihood of multiple matches can only go up, if the number of people having their profile put on the database increases.

It’s important to work from the crime to the culprit, not to treat the entire population as suspects. Including more innocent people will only lead to more people being labelled a suspect when they are, in fact, innocent.

Another issue is that our DNA, our most intimate information, is being taken and then kept in private laboratories.

But who owns it and how can we control what it is used for in the future?

I, and NO2ID, advocate the model adopted by the Scottish Government in which a DNA database is run on a needto- keep basis. Only those who have committed the most serious offences like rape and murder have their profiles retained and that seems perfectly sensible.

It puts the human being and their rights at the centre of the issue. There really needs to be a strong reason for the Government to interfere and I firmly believe there is no case for innocent people to have their DNA put into the database.

Examination of the statistics show that the Home Office is either deliberately misleading the public or fails to understand its own figures.

And then, when the figures don’t stand up they resort to emotive individual cases.

It transpires that in even these cases the people would have been caught without the help of the database! So why does the Government continue to insist on retaining innocent people’s DNA?

Those who say they have nothing to fear from being included indefinitely on such a database, most believe there are never any miscarriages of justice, no one has ever been framed, there are no corrupt people within local or national government, that computers never fail and nobody ever makes mistakes when inputting data into a computer system.

There is a responsibility in a democracy for people to question what we are being told. We can’t stop questioning.

What Hampshire thinks

Do you agree with the DNA database?

Yes: 69%
No: 31%

Would you be happy for your DNA to be stored indefinitely on a DNA database?

Yes: 65%
No: 35%

Why would you? Why wouldn’t you?

Nothing to hide - 50%
Improve national security - 10%
Help the police solve serious crime quickly and accurately - 40%
Privacy (right to remain anonymous) - 56%
Fear of being framed for something you didn’t do - 13%
Fear of information getting into the wrong hands - 40%
Based on a poll of 1,000 people across Hampshire. February 2010

Additional reporting by Laura Chase, Kelly Biddlecombe and Philip Savage