Do you think it is right that your DNA is taken and stored when you are arrested....?

Question

Then released without charge?

I was arrested simply as a matter of course, but because of that I had dna swabs taken & fingerprints etc.

I was then let off WITHOUT charge as everyone knew i would be. now I have never committed ANY crime or EVER been in trouble with the law before yet my DNA is now on record.

If I was charges I could understand but come on.........

To everyone who states you have nothing to hide if you plan to do nothing wrong, let me tell you there are a hell of a lot of BENT coppers out there and if they want to get anyone off the streets, all they need to do is follow you and pick up one of your cigarette ends and drop it at the scene of a crime.

Then cos they have your DNA you are FUKCED cos you cant prove anything else. DNA is paramount evidence which cannot be argued.

Answer 1

No, of course its not.

It's just the government's attempt to build a DNA database by stealth. You can arrest anyone on any pretext, gain their DNA, and release them.

And who said if you'd done nothing wrong, you had nothing to fear? And for those who argue differently, remember the protestor arrested at theLabour Conference under anti-terror legislation that the government promised 'would never be mis-used'?

And for those who say that DNA evidence is irrefutable, it is, assuming there is some other link with the crime - but most DNA prosecutions rely upon what is known as the 'prosecutor's fallacy', ie:

We start with a thought experiment. I have a big bowl with one thousand balls, some of them made of wood, some of them made of plastic. I know that 100% of the wooden balls are white, and only 1% of the plastic balls are white, the others being red. Now I pull a ball out at random, and observe that it is actually white. Given this information, how likely is it that the ball I pulled out is made of wood? Is it 99%? No! Maybe the bowl contains only 10 wooden and 990 plastic balls. Without that information (the a priori probability), we cannot make any statement. In this thought experiment, you should think of the wooden balls as "accused is guilty", the plastic balls as "accused is innocent", and the white balls as "the evidence is observed".

The fallacy lies in the fact that the a priori probability of guilt is not taken into account. If this probability is small, then the only effect of the presented evidence is to increase that probability somewhat, but not necessarily dramatically. (In the earlier example of a 10 million city, the presented evidence raises the a priori probability of guilt of 1 in 10 million to an a posteriori probability of guilt of 1 in 10.)

The prosecutor's fallacy is therefore no fallacy if the a priori odds of guilt are assumed to be 1:1. In an Bayesian approach to personal probabilities, where probabilities represent degrees of belief of reasonable persons, this assumption can be justified as follows: a completely unbiased person, without having been shown any evidence and without any prior knowledge, will estimate the a priori odds of guilt as 1:1.

In this picture then, the fallacy consists in the fact that the prosecutor claims an absolutely low probability of innocence, without mentioning that the information he conveniently omitted would have led to a different estimate.

In legal terms, the prosecutor is operating in terms of a presumption of guilt, as he is obliged to, but which is contrary to the jurors' obligatory presumption of innocence whereby a person is assumed to be innocent unless found guilty. A more reasonable value for the prior odds of guilt might be a value estimated from the overall frequency of the given crime in the general population.

Answer 2

Tell the Birmingham 6 and the Guildford 4 they had nothing to worry about because they were innocent.
When the database was first set up, duplicates were turning up; since it undermined the project they were deleted.
I don't know if that has been put right since it was exposed. But it means if your DNA matches that of someone who commits a serious crime, you will be charged and you will have to prove you are innocent.

The fact is that 'unlikely' and 'impossible' are not the same thing. It is unlikely that our DNA profiles are identical, but not impossible.
And as long as duplicates are deleted to protect the reputation of the system, it is possible for serious miscarriages of justice to take place without the innocent person having a chance of proving their innocence.

Can you prove where you were and what you were doing one sunday night 6 years ago, for example?

Answer 3

In my experience the only people who have anything to worry about and who would definitely object to their DNA/fingerprints being kept on the police database, are those people who are up to no good and who continually make life a misery for their victims. I do, however, think people that have been arrested and then released without charge, or even been charged and sent to court and then been found 'not guilty' by the court, should have the option of having their DNA/fingerprints destroyed (in their presence) if required.

I have seen too much suffering of totally innocent people at the hands of these criminals, so anything that could help the police to track down the perpetrators of crime, bring them to court and where they hopefully get their just desserts, if found guilty, has, in my opinion, got to be a bonus. If that means keeping information on the police database (the innocent and the guilty), then it definitely has the thumbs up from me. The police have a very difficult job to do and many many hours of paperwork which, in turn is keeping them at their desks instead of out on the beat. I welcome any technology that can make their job easier, thus being able to spend more time out there catching the real criminals. I am sure anyone who has been a victim of cime would agree ! ! !

Answer 4

I agree with some of the others if you did not do anything wrong then what are you worried about. If it helps taking DNA swabs to keep sex offenders off the streets I am all for it. Think of the kids it could be saving. Just because you were not charged your DNA & fingerprints were not destroyed like that one guy said they are put on file.That is the reason they do this is for the data bank so it will alwys be on file. When your rap sheet is ran it will also show you were arrested but not charged.

Answer 5

No it is not right, and in my view it is an infringement of a persons human rights and should be refused as a matter of principle.
Seek advice, and see if the matter can be taken to the European Court of Justice as you will not receive justice under what is really a "Norman" system of justice over here.
To refuse to give a DNA sample may result in being put into custody but we are living in a time when ordinary people are being persecuted simply because of laws that have been brought in by politicians who are nothing more than warmongers.
They created the situation and innocent people are paying the price for their ineptitude, unless we stand up and be counted now we will soon reach a point of no return.

Answer 6

While it is unfair for crooked cops and you to have your DNA on file..... its highly unlikely if you were not charged they are going to pull your sample out of a hat and try to frame you, UNLESS you are involved in a specific case, and they need it or you've done something to piss them off. Which then I hope their a$$es get locked up.
But the way I look at it is, a lot of people get their dna taken and commit crimes even when dismissed or aquitted or convicted and it helps put away a lot of people especially rapists.

So its kinda the big picture man

Answer 7

No your DNA is as much a part of you as your eye ball or leg so taking your DNA for some traffic violation or some other minor transgression is wrong and yet another example of authority over stepping its bounds and infringing on your human rights. If you are under suspicion for some violent crime rape, assault, murder or a hate crime then yeah why not? If you did the crime then it will tell the authorities so and you can be locked away where you belong. If you didn't do it then it can/will exonerate you.

Answer 8

Balancing the rights of individual citizens against the protection of all of us I think we should all have our DNA taken at birth.
If one has done nothing to be ashamed of then one need not fear identification.

Think of the serious crimes that would be solved and/or avoided if this was to be the case.
I life saved is worth the loss of personal confidentiality?

Answer 9

Same thing happened to me but a while ago. I was devastated and the police did hear what I think about them. They said the DNA taken is for your own protection in case you are false accused again as they can charge the person who did that to you. In that case, yes... I believe it can help.

Answer 10

I think once convicted would be the right thing to do. In reality most people are fingerprinted when charged and not convicted currently. This is just another technical means of tracking "would be criminals". DNA is far more exact than fingerprinting. I would not read too much into it. I would be more interested on how this information is stored and used after the fact.