As I wrote in a blogpost below, British citizens won a major victory yesterday when the Home Office announced that its plan to keep the DNA profiles of those arrested – but never convicted of a crime – for between six and 12 years had been dropped from the policing and crime bill.
This news, which we had all been waiting for since the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2008 against the British government's policy of indefinitely retaining DNA samples taken from individuals that had not been convicted of any offence, was greeted with much relief and satisfaction by civil liberties campaigners such as ourselves.
However as this story from South Tyrone demonstrates, the DNA database has created a legacy which will be difficult to erase quickly.
According to the report, the police in Northern Ireland hold genetic samples belonging to around 400 young people aged 17 and under from the South Tyrone area on their DNA database.
A PSNI spokesman responded to the story saying:
"The DNA database has proven to be a very valuable tool in the fight against crime...PSNI policy is to retain DNA profiles obtained from all persons falling within the terms of the relevant legislation.
"It is important that people understand that it is not a criminal record to which public authorities and others have access and there are considerable safeguards in place to govern how DNA information can be used."
The fact remains that government announcements will often take quite some time to percolate down to individual police forces. Indeed, that it has taken over 12 months since the European Court ruled - with Acpo explicitly telling its officers to ignore the ruling in the interim - shows that we may be waiting a while yet before the DNA of innocents is finally removed from record.
I highlight the story from South Tyrone this morning to again reinforce our opposition to the DNA database. Most if not all of the 400 children on this database will not have committed a crime and their presence on the database means they are tested as criminals before some of them can even walk or talk.
By Dylan Sharpe
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