The Home Office believes the DNA profiles of innocent people should be kept for 12 years for those arrested but not convicted of sexual, terrorism-related or serious violent offences, and six years for other crimes.
However it has emerged today that the logic behind these timings was based on incomplete research.
On the Today Programme this morning, Gloria Laycock, Director of the Jill Dando Institute for Crime Science – from whose research the figures were derived, admitted that they were under pressure from the Home Office to produce a result and hence the research was incomplete, saying:
"we did our best to try and produce some in a terribly tiny timeframe, using data we were not given direct access to…We should have just said 'you might as well just stick your finger in the air and think of a number'."
This is a further embarassment to the government after the European Court ruled that it was unlawful to indefinitely retain profiles of innocent people.
Now it appears that the Government are deliberately foot-dragging on this issue because they don’t want to accept the consequences of having lost this case.
The DNA of innocent people shouldn’t be retained on any database. The Court has so ruled. The Government should now accept it.
By Alex Deane