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The NDNAD |
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THE UK POLICE NATIONAL DNA DATABASE or NDNAD The background to the NDNAD: The National DNA Database was set up in 1995, initially to store the profiles of those convicted of crimes. Acts of Parliament in 2001 and 2004 gradually extended police powers to take and keep DNA samples from anyone arrested on suspicion of committing a ‘recordable’ offence (which means most offences) - even if they were released without charge or acquitted by a court. Since this legislation, there has been a rapid expansion of NDNAD to its current level of more than 4.2m profiles. Until 1998, a child aged 10-14 was presumed ‘doli incapax’ – that is, not to have sufficient maturity to be guilty of a crime. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 removed that presumption. Now, any child in England and Wales aged 10 or over can be arrested on suspicion of a criminal offence. In Scotland, the age is 8 (although in practice young children will be dealt with through the Scottish panel system rather than the judicial system). The policy of retaining the DNA profiles of people who have not been convicted or cautioned for any offence has caused huge controversy, particularly where children and young teenagers are concerned. No other country in Europe criminalises children at such a young age; no other country in the world has such an extensive DNA database While there are general concerns about DNA retention that apply to everyone, adult or child, children’s DNA retention on NDNAD raises extra difficulties over and above those relating to the adult population.
General concerns about retention of DNA profiles It reverses the burden of proof: the DNA of law-abiding people can be found at a crime scene for any number of reasons, but if a match is made, they may have to justify it in order to prove their innocence. DNA reveals other information about us: DNA retention is an invasion of personal privacy. DNA can show that someone’s parentage is not as they believed, or that they are susceptible to various illnesses – information that can be misused by companies or employers. Genewatch UK has found that samples have been used without consent for controversial research projects that attempt to predict ethnicity or to identify relatives. The Forensic Science Service is not a government department: the FSS - the body operating the National DNA Database - was made into a government-owned company in 2005 and the government is currently considering plans to privatise it fully. This raises questions about future security and use of DNA profiles. For more detailed information on these and other concerns, we strongly recommend that you visit the Genewatch website.
Children, Arrest and the NDNAD How many children are on the NDNAD? It has been very difficult to obtain accurate figures from the Home Office, particularly for the numbers of children on NDNAD who have been arrested but not charged or reprimanded/warned. The figures we have been given - and our concerns about their accuracy - are explained here.
What are the specific objections to putting children’s profiles on NDNAD? The ‘target culture’ effect The police are under enormous pressure to meet targets for the number of people they arrest. There have been many complaints, including from the police themselves, that this ‘target culture’ is leading to increased arrests for trivial reasons. Children are particularly vulnerable to arrest for petty crime, and figures show that the rate of arrest of 10-17-year-olds is rising disproportionately. So, too, is the number of arrests that do not lead to any further action. Click here for more detailed information.
The presence of a child’s DNA profile on NDNAD makes it more likely that s/he will be rearrested at a later date It has been common knowledge for many years that early exposure to the criminal justice system is harmful and counter-productive for children. It is for this reason that the system of reprimands and final warnings was developed, the idea being that children would only be taken to court for the most serious offences or where opportunities to change their behaviour had failed. Significant recent research has demonstrated that it is not only contact with the courts that is problematic; contact with the police also increases the likelihood that a child will not simply ‘grow out of’ petty delinquency. The Edinburgh ‘Study of Youth Transitions and Crime’ has followed the progress over ten years of 4,000 young people who started secondary school in Edinburgh in the autumn of 1998. This excerpt from one of the research reports explains the dangers: Young people who were caught by the police were more likely to persist in their offending than those who offended at a similar level but who were not caught. This fits with early findings from the Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development (Farrington, 1977; Farrington, Osborn and West, 1978). These findings support the view that youth crime can be contained by avoiding the punishment and hence stigmatization of young people during their formative years. This fits with Moffitt’s (1993) theory that much youth crime is committed by adolescence-limited offenders who will grow out of crime if they are not damaged by interventions from the criminal justice system. Particularly striking is the finding from the Edinburgh Study that the chances that a young person will stop offending altogether are sharply reduced by contact with the police. This does not of course mean that the police and the children’s hearing system should not intervene: some offenders have deep-seated problems that will not recede as they reach maturity; and serious offending has to be dealt with regardless of the consequences for the individuals involved. Nevertheless, these findings support the view that a policy of increased intervention by the juvenile justice system is unlikely to lead to a reduction in youth offending. (David J.Smith: Social exclusion and early desistance from crime) We have already detailed the rising child arrest rate, and the focus on low-level crime. Rather than increasing the likelihood that children come into conflict with the police, we should concentrate on ways of reducing child arrests.
The potential effects of the information-sharing agenda Increasing amounts of information about children are being collected and shared between agencies, including assessments that purport to show whether a child is ‘at risk’ of becoming a criminal. Several systems already exist to hold this data and information about the ‘diversionary’ schemes on which the child has been placed. This whole policy is extremely controversial, and many leading academics disagree that likely criminality can be predicted from data such as family income and housing, or even from low-level delinquency. The Government plans to introduce a national index, Contactpoint, to hold details of each child’s contact with services. They also plan a second database to hold in-depth personal assessments, called eCAFs, of every child receiving services over and above basic medical care and education – an estimated 50% of the child population. The purpose is to allow agencies, including the police, to share data about the child. ARCH is concerned that if the police are able to match a child’s DNA to a crime scene, the fact that the child also appears on Contactpoint as being involved in a ‘diversionary’ scheme, or that an eCAF assesses the child as potentially delinquent, will create assumptions about the likelihood of guilt.
The need for children to be able to make mistakes As the Edinburgh study has underlined, the majority of children go through periods of challenging and difficult behaviour, especially during their teens. Many new offences have been created in the last decade, and the abolition of ‘doli incapax’ has allowed even relatively young children to be held criminally responsible for misjudgements, for testing boundaries and for behaviour that would once have been described as ‘being naughty’. It is important that children can reinvent themselves upon reaching adulthood, leaving their mistakes behind. The current policy of retaining children’s DNA on arrest risks locking them into the criminal justice system for the rest of their lives. ARCH believes that children’s DNA should not be taken on arrest, nor when a child is reprimanded or given a final warning. We recognise that there may be circumstances that justify retention of a child’s DNA profile on NDNAD, but it should be left to a court, when a child is convicted of a specified serious offence, to weigh up the evidence and decide whether public interest justifies retention. top of page ¦ NDNAD II ¦ download .pdf |
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