A senior judge appears to have forgotten his pills and has begun talking cobblers.
The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said.
Lord Justice Sedley told BBC News the current England and Wales database, which holds DNA from crime suspects and scenes, was “indefensible”.
He added it would be fairer to include “everybody, guilty or innocent” on it.
Sedley LJ says it is unfair for those who have fallen into the hands of the police at some time have their DNA on record, but those who don’t have run-ins with the Old Bill are absent from the database.
Oh dear. Where do we start?
Compulsory registration will require, presumably, so form of coercion. What if I don’t want to give a swab? Will I be convicted of a criminal offence. If so, where, pray tell, would be the victim of said “crime”?
What my Lord Sedley is arguing is it is wrong for those who have passed through police hands but are innocent/acquitted to remain on the database. Fair point, perhaps, so why does he say that the only option is to expand the database to cover the whole population (and more)? One could argue the prison population probably contains a handful of wrongly convicted people, so instead everyone should spend some time in the slammer, just to be “fair”. Surely instead he should be arguing for tighter controls over how “innocent” DNA is held?
I know this will bring out of the woodwork the “if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to hide” brigade. Yet:
(a) If I’ve done nothing wrong, why do I have to prove my innocence? I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to work.
(b) I’m sure there were plenty of Jews, homosexuals, immigrants in Germany in 1933 who felt they’d done nothing wrong. The point is, who decides what is worth hiding and when? As Professor Stephen Bain says in the same article:
“The DNA genie can’t be put back in the bottle. If the information about you is exposed due to illegal or perhaps even legalised use of the database, in a way that is not currently anticipated, then it’s a very difficult situation.”
One last thing: aren’t the judiciary supposed to be the final safeguard of our freedoms in the legal system? Is the time getting closer when I should be buying that remote cottage in the Highlands and stocking up on ammunition?
