What the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee gives with one hand:
It takes away with the other:“The current situation of indefinite retention of the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted is impossible to defend in light of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights and unacceptable in principle,” the committee says in a report published on 8 March 2010. [Emphasis added]
Sigh. So it’s the storing and not the collecting that is unacceptable? Half a pie is better than no pie, I suppose.Although the committee does not want a return to the pre-2004 situation of DNA being collected only on charging and not on arrest, it says that it should be easier for those wrongly arrested or who have volunteered their DNA to get their records removed from the database.
As for the crime-solving utility of DNA (in England and Wales)? Not so useful after all.
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