DNA Evidence Is No Panacea for Solving Crimes: Huge Backlogs, Inept Testing and Corruption Stand in the Way

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted July 16, 2009.

"In many jurisdictions, the task of re-evaluating that many cases is so daunting that authorities have declined to conduct broad audits, despite evidence that analysts have committed errors or engaged in fraudulent practices."

DNA Laws Keep Passing Across the Country

But even fresh scandals over the country's overstretched forensics labs have not deterred lawmakers from passing new laws demanding DNA collection from a growing pool of individuals.

In 2003, the Bush administration announced a dramatic expansion of the federal DNA database to include juvenile federal offenders as well as noncitizens arrested for felonies. Suddenly, the federal government would have the power to collect -- and store permanently -- DNA samples from any person arrested for any crime -- whether or not they were ever convicted.

"DNA is to the 21st century what fingerprinting was to the 20th," Assistant U.S. Attorney General Deborah Daniels said at the time. "The widespread use of DNA evidence is the future of law enforcement in this country."

DNA-collection advocates like to compare it to the age-old practice of fingerprinting. But Larry Frankel, state legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, argues, collecting DNA is, by leaps and bounds, a far more sweeping technology.

"A fingerprint is used to establish the identity of a person. A DNA sample, on the other hand, has the potential to be used not only to establish identity, but also to learn about a person's genetic makeup, family relationships, predisposition for certain diseases and medical conditions," he said. "A DNA sample, and the tests that can be conducted using it, can reveal a range of private information that many reasonable people would consider, and want to keep, confidential."

Such privacy concerns have long been expressed -- and not just by the ACLU. In fact, in 2005, Alec Jeffreys, the British scientist who invented DNA fingerprinting, gave an interview with the New Scientist in which he shared his thoughts on the expansion of DNA databases. (The DNA database was pioneered in the U.K.) "As a geneticist, I would greatly value the potential enormous power of the database for research," Jeffreys said. "But it's a gross infringement of civil liberties."

Jeffrys should know. In Britain he has witnessed the massive expansion of DNA collection -- a project so vast, it has turned the U.K. into what some describe as "a nation of suspects."

The database contains more than 4.5 million profiles, and since 2004, according to the BBC, "the data of everyone arrested for a recordable offense -- all but the most minor offenses -- has remained on the system regardless of their age, the seriousness of their alleged offense and whether or not they were prosecuted."

According to the European Court of Human Rights, this has inevitably included innocent people, even children as young as 10. (In December 2008, the court ruled that Britain had breached international law in its overzealous collection of DNA.)

In Frankel's opinion, this is the direction the U.S. is headed. The federal U.S. database is already the largest in the world. "I remember the first time I saw one of these DNA bills," he said. "I just knew this was a slippery slope -- its just going to keep expanding and expanding and expanding. This is really an attempt to get DNA on everybody."

If this sounds conspiratorial, consider this February article from the New York Times: "Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent."

Harry Levine, a professor of sociology at City University of New York, told the Times that the expansion is only the latest move in a long trend of widening the net for DNA collection.

"Over time, more and more crimes of decreasing severity have been added to the database. Cops and prosecutors like it because it gives everybody more information and creates a new suspect pool."

In fact, expanded DNA collection will more likely ramp up samples taken among populations already disproportionately caught up in the criminal justice system -- something that has been seen dramatically in the U.K.

The Times reports:

"As in Britain, expanding genetic sampling in the United States could exacerbate racial disparities in the criminal justice system, according to Hank Greely, a Stanford University Law School professor who studies the intersection of genetics, policing and race.

Mr. Greely estimated that African Americans, who are about 12 percent of the national population, make up 40 percent of the DNA profiles in the federal database, reflective of their prison population.

He also expects Latinos, who are about 13 percent of the population and committed 40 percent of last year's federal offenses -- nearly half of them immigration crimes -- to dominate DNA databases."

See more stories tagged with: bush administration, fbi, privacy, aclu, dna, economic crisis, rape kits, chicago tribune, propublica, dna databases, codis, ndis, dna backlog, larry frankel, alec jeffreys, gordon thomas honeywell g

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer and editor of Rights & Liberties Special Coverage. Follow her on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/LilianaSegura

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