Musings and Snippets from a recently retired JP. I served for 31 years, mostly in west London. I was Chairman of my Bench for some years, and a member of the National Bench Chairmen's Forum All cases are based on real ones, but anonymised and composited. All opinions are those of one or more individuals. JPs swear to enforce the law of the land, whether or not they approve of it. Nothing on here constitutes legal advice.
Friday, June 27, 2008
DNA
There has been plenty of controversy over the Police practice of taking DNA samples from everyone who is arrested, whether or not that arrest results in a charge. I too feel a bit uncomfortable about it, and certainly few other countries go anywhere near as far as we do in the UK.
However, it is a fact that many crimes have been solved by DNA technology, and I saw one last year, when a man was charged with violent rape of a stranger. After the incident, several years ago, he got clean away. Until, that is, he was picked up for a trivial theft, the computers cross-matched the samples, and that was that.
Does that justify the backdoor building of a population-wide DNA database? It's not an easy one to answer.
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