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The DNA myth continues

Two points of interest on DNA retention emerged from the House of Commons yesterday. 

The first, alerted to us by the masterful blogger Dizzy, was the answer to the following parliamentary question by John Robertson, Labour MP for Glasgow North West:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department in how many convictions for criminal offences evidence from the National DNA database played a material part in (a) 2005, (b) 2006, (c) 2007, (d) 2008 and (e) 2009.

The response from the Home Office is as follows:

Total DNA-related detections

Total recorded crime

2005-06

40,309

5,555,172

2006-07

41,148

5,427,558

2007-08

33,034

4,951,173

2008-09

32,209

4,702,468

As Dizzy rightly points out, this means that in the past few years, DNA evidence has played a part in just over half of one percent of crimes solved in the UK. While it would be very difficult to achieve, Big Brother Watch would love to know how many of those half a percent were from the DNA profiles of those never convicted of any crime – it is unlikely to be very many at all.

Which makes the second point of interest all the more relevant. As reported by Public Service, yesterday during evidence given to a committee considering the Crime and Security Bill, President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Hugh Orde, said that:

"The retention of DNA is of critical value to serious crime investigation.

"From a professional police perspective, just because someone is not convicted of an offence, there are still very good professional reasons for why we need that information when dealing with serious crime."

Sadly, Hugh, the figures just don't stack up. Just like our Home Secretary, he's going to have to do much better if they are to continue ignoring the ruling of the ECHR and retaining the DNA of innocent people. 

By Dylan Sharpe

- – UPDATE – -

A commenter on this post has pointed us to this document from GeneWatch, which is a fantastic summary of the arguments against the retention of innocent DNA.

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Big Brother Watch Posted in DNA database
  • NO CHARGE NO DNA

    If you want to read the definitive explanation of why retention of innocent peoples DNA is NOT necessary follow the link.
    http://www.genewatch.org/uploads/f03c6d66a9b354535738483c1c3d49e4/GWsub_Jan10.doc

  • http://profile.typepad.com/alexdeane Alex Deane

    That’s a great document – thanks very much for the link

  • guy herbert

    The figures are interesting, too, for the spin that the Home Office has put into this answer. It is terrifically difficult for an MP to get a straight answer to a parliamentary question, for some reason.
    My comment on Dizzy’s original post (the reference is to the full table he reproduces):
    It is worse than that. Many statements from the Home Office can be guaranteed to be so misleading that if you or I made them to the police we would be charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice
    Note they say ” Detections of crimes in which a DNA match was available” not “Detections of crimes in which a DNA match led to the suspect”. The justification for a national database relies on detections by DNA – where a suspect was unknown until turned up by DNA matching. Detections where a DNA match was available includes all those cases where a crime scene sample contingently did match. But if the suspect were arrested for other significant reasons, in connection with a particular crime or otherwise his DNA would be matched anyway, and they are counting all those cases too. If you have a suspect already and his DNA matches, then of course *conviction* or *clear-up by admission* is vastly more likely. So this misleads by exaggerating the impact of the database.
    Note also another deception in these figures. The second column “additional detections” *does not* mean additional matches. It means crimes admitted by suspects who have been the subject of a match and are therefore much more likely to be convicted (and, more important, to believe they are). Exploiting ‘taking into consideration’ has long been a way for police to boost conviction rates, and even if they have no realistic chance of linking a suspect to another crime after a DNA match for one, one match will be highly persuasive for getting admissions.

  • guy herbert

    I copied my own mis-speak there, too: For “to boost conviction rates” read “to boost clear-up rates”.

  • http://www.genewatch.org A fan of Bigbrotherwatch

    Thank you to Alex Deane for complimenting me on the Genewatch doc. link I provided, if your readers found the Genewatch document of interest or use maybe they would consider making a donation to Genewatch UK this would be greatly appreciated. There is a lot more work to be done to combat Government and Police (ACPO a Ltd company) miss information.