ARCH is a children’s rights organisation based on human rights instruments, with a particular focus on children’s civil liberties and on issues arising from the development of e-government and the expansion of Information Technology.

We regret that we are not qualified to answer all of the questions set out in the consultation, but we hope that this submission about matters relating to children and young people will be helpful to the Working Party.

We do not know how many young people aged 10-17 with entries on the National DNA Database are without any criminal record.

In January 2006, the Home Office indicated to Grant Shapps MP that:

"On 1st December 2005, there were 24,168 persons under the age of 18 on the National DNA Database who had been arrested and had a DNA sample taken but who had subsequently not been charged or cautioned for any offence."

At that stage it was believed that fewer than 140,000 DNA profiles on NDNAD related to people (of all ages) who had not been charged or cautioned; however, a series of answers to parliamentary questions in December 2006 showed that this figure was a serious underestimate. Over 0.5 million entries on NDNAD did not have a corresponding entry on the Police National Computer, and a further 0.6 million entries related to:

"young persons under 18 who have a formal warning or reprimand recorded on PNC; persons who have been charged with a recordable offence where proceedings are on-going; and persons who have been arrested for a recordable offence but no further action was taken."

At our request, Grant Shapps tabled questions to establish how many profiles on NDNAD related to under-18s who had not been (a) charged with an offence (b) convicted of an offence. The Home Office declined to answer the questions on the grounds that:

"Updated information could be obtained only at disproportionate cost by cross-searching approximately three million records retained for such persons on the PNC."

We have discussed the matter with the Children’s Commissioners for England and Wales, and understand that it is being pursued with the Home Office. We still have no reliable figures for the number of unconvicted young people on NDNAD, but on the basis of the Home Office figures for juvenile arrests and disposals in 2004 and 2005, we believe that it is likely to be considerably higher than 24,000.

Final arrest data will be published later in 2007, but provisional figures indicate that 348,000 (or 24%) of all arrests in 2005 were of 10-17s.

118,900 10-17s received reprimands (69%) or final warnings (31%)

96,300 were convicted in the courts

Thus in total there were 215,200 disposals, and 132,800 arrests did not lead to any disposal.

The 2004 figures are remarkably similar to the 2005 figures above, when 330,800 arrests led to 195,500 disposals. 135,300 arrests did not lead to disposal.

We hope that these statistics explain our doubts about the original figure cited as 24,000, and our concern that recent, accurate figures have not yet been made available by the Home Office.

We believe that it is entirely wrong to retain the DNA of children and young people who have not had any action taken against them, or who have been acquitted by a court.

If a young person’s DNA is found at a crime scene and matched to an entry on NDNAD, the onus is then upon that young person to provide justification. Although this is equally true of adults, developments in information-sharing about under-18s aggravate the possibility of injustice, as we will set out below.

The purpose of the reprimand/final warning scheme is to prevent young people from entering the youth justice system for low-level, often first, offences. The scheme is administered by the police at the police station and is not a finding of guilt in law. There must be some evidence linking the young person to the offence, and they must admit guilt. However, there remains a danger that s/he may make admissions, or waive the right to legal advice that could indicate a valid defence, because s/he is anxious to get the matter dealt with swiftly.

A growing body of research demonstrates the importance of keeping children out of the youth justice system for all but the most serious offences. The most significant study, ‘Youth Transitions and Crime’, has found that the greater the involvement a young person has with youth justice, the less likely it is that s/he will have spontaneously stopped offending by the age of 17. The researchers believe that the principal reasons for this are that (a) a young person in regular contact with the police and youth justice system develops a criminal self-identity and (b) the police tend to target those young people already known to them.

In our view, taking and retaining the DNA samples of 10-17s who receive reprimands and final warnings defeats the purpose of the scheme because it increases the likelihood of further contact with the police and risks ‘locking in’ young people to the criminal justice system, rather than providing them with an opportunity to change their behaviour before they are faced with more serious consequences.

There is a growing belief within government, youth justice and social care agencies that certain factors in a child’s life are predictive of future criminal offending, and that it is possible to ‘target’ such children from a young age – possibly from before birth.

A wide range of diversionary schemes now exists, alongside assessment tools that purport to identify children thought to be ‘at risk’ of becoming criminals. This policy is highly controversial. David Farrington, Professor of Criminology at Cambridge University, has conducted research for the Home Office that demonstrates the effectiveness of focussing resources on deprived communities, but he describes as ‘fanciful’ the idea that criminality in individual children can be predicted.

More recently, the government has favoured the research of Leon Feinstein, Reader in the Economics of Education at the Institute of Education, who maintains that individual children can be identified as potential offenders via early screening for certain risk factors.

All of the various schemes and interventions require that information about children and their families is shared amongst the practitioners with whom they have contact. Data is stored on a range of systems which the government intends will be linked by the children’s Information Sharing Index, to which the police will have access.

We are profoundly concerned that whenever a positive DNA match is made, the police will access other information held on the child, including assessments of potential criminality, and that this will create a set of assumptions that will influence police attitudes, including the likelihood of guilt.

The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 provides the following rehabilitation periods for young people under 18:

Sentence:

<6 months prison: 3.5 years

6-30 months: 5 years

Most other court disposals: 1-2.5 years

We believe that DNA profiles should only be retained on NDNAD in line with the above rehabilitation periods.

ARCH is concerned that the retention of young people’s DNA profiles in any but the most serious cases creates a number of risks, particularly at a time when the police are focussing on ‘volume’ crime and low-level youth offending.

We believe that the combined effect of information-sharing and predictions of criminality may lead to unjustified suspicion when a young person’s DNA is found at a crime scene, which goes against the whole principle of minimising the contact between young people and the youth justice system.

We are concerned that those who are entirely innocent may find themselves in the position of having to justify their actions, and that they will be more readily targeted by the police. This can only lead to anger and alienation on the part of young people, which increases the future likelihood of their committing offences.

In our opinion:

DNA samples should be taken from young people only when they have been charged with an offence, and the profile deleted from NDNAD in the event of acquittal.

Samples should not be taken upon arrest, nor should they be taken from those deemed suitable for the reprimand/final warning scheme.

Profiles should be deleted from NDNAD in line with the provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.

 

30^th January 2007

Terri Dowty

Director