Police forces in much of the UK could be forced to destroy the DNA details of hundreds of thousands of people with no criminal convictions, after a court ruled today that keeping them breaches human rights.
The European court of human rights in Strasbourg said that keeping innocent people’s DNA records on a criminal register breached article eight of the Human Rights Convention, covering the right to respect for private and family life.
The decision was welcomed by civil liberties campaigners, but the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said she was “disappointed”. Police chiefs warned that destroying DNA details would make it harder to investigate many crimes.
The European court said that keeping DNA material from those who were “entitled to the presumption of innocence” as they had never been convicted of an offence, carried “the risk of stigmatisation”.
Attacking the “blanket and indiscriminate nature” of the power to retain data, the judges said protections offered by article eight “would be unacceptably weakened if the use of modern scientific techniques in the criminal justice system were allowed at any cost and without carefully balancing the potential benefits of the extensive use of such techniques against important private-life interests”.
The decision could oblige the government to order the destruction of DNA data belonging to those without criminal convictions among the approximately 4.4m records on the England, Wales and Northern Ireland database.
Scotland already destroys DNA samples taken during criminal investigations from people, who are eventually not charged or who are later acquitted.
The decision follows a lengthy legal challenge by two British men. Michael Marper, 45, was arrested in March 2001 and charged with harassing his partner, but the case was later dropped.
Separately, a 19-year-old named in court only as “S” was arrested and charged with attempted robbery in January 2001, when he was 12, but he was cleared five months later.
The men, both from Sheffield, asked that their fingerprints, DNA samples and profiles be destroyed. South Yorkshire police refused, saying the details would be retained “to aid criminal investigation”.
They applied to the European court after their case was turned down by the House of Lords, which ruled that keeping the information did not breach human rights.
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group, Liberty, which helped fund the case, said parliament should be allowed to debate new DNA database rules.
“This is one of the most strongly-worded judgments that Liberty has ever seen from the court of human rights,” she said, arguing that the court had ensured “the privacy protection of innocent people that the British government has shamefully failed to deliver”.
Smith, however, said existing laws would remain in place while ministers considered the judgment.
“DNA and fingerprinting is vital to the fight against crime, providing the police with more than 3,500 matches a month, and I am disappointed by the European court of human rights’ decision,” she said.
“The government mounted a robust defence before the court and I strongly believe DNA and fingerprints play an invaluable role in fighting crime and bringing people to justice.”
Chris Sims, the chief constable of Staffordshire police, who speaks on forensics for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said the ruling would have a “profound impact” on policing.
Analysis of 200,000 DNA samples retained on the database between 2001 and 2005, which would have to be destroyed under today’s ruling, showed that 8,500 profiles had been linked to crime scenes, among them 114 murders and 116 rapes, said Sims.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk, December 4 2008