‘The Commission is to be congratulated for giving people a say about the recent massive expansion of the Database’, said Dr Helen Wallace, Director of GeneWatch UK. ‘Keeping people's DNA indefinitely allows the Government unprecedented powers to implement surveillance on ordinary citizens and
their relatives’.

Millions of innocent criminalised

England now has one of the largest DNA databases in the world with an estimated one million people currently profiled on it who have never been found guilty of any offence, 100,000 of whom are children.

'The National DNA Database has expanded rapidly following two changes in the  law made in 2001 and 2003. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, DNA is now taken on arrest without consent from anyone aged ten or above who is taken to a police station, and kept until after their death. This has not improved the likelihood of detecting a crime using DNA,' Dr Wallace said.

Ethnic minorities and those with a mental health problem are massively over represented on the database and are unfairly stigmatised as a result.

Mental health patients caught in survellance net

Health experts have condemned the numbers of mental patients that are increasingly getting caught up in the surveillance net when seeking health care.  Commentators say that the use of the Database to profile  innocent law abiding citizens rather than preventing crime is borne out in the numbers of innocent black currently people on the system. 

‘People who have suffered with mental illness and are vulnerable have often times come in contact with the police through no fault of their own and because of this are now on the database, it is not helpful, in fact it is just another way of discriminating  against a vulnerable group.

 Vunerable groups victimised

This should not be happening, and does nothing for public confidence. I welcome this report saying that they DNA should be removed,' Jackie Mclean, manager of Omincare community services told Black Mental Health UK.

Currently 57% of all innocent DNA taken in London is from people of African Caribbean origin, human rights groups are clear that the racial bias in the way DNA has been taken means that this social injustice will have its greatest impact among minority communities.

Statistics show that 77% of young black men are currently profiled on this database, even though this group are less likely to commit a crime than their white counterparts.  Also 27% of the entire black population are currently on the database compared to 6% of the white population.

‘I know many people especially young black men have been picked up by the police and in order just to get out of the police station they have agreed to a caution.  Alot of them would be horrified to know that they are down as criminals on a national database,' Jackie Mclean, manager of Omincare community services told Black Mental Health UK.

Life sentence

DNA  is currently taken by anyone arrested by the police, regardless of whether they are charged or convicted . It then remains on the database for 100 years.

The dangers of bad science have also fuelled fears for the millions of innocent citizens caught up in the surveillance net.

‘DNA evidence is not foolproof and as the DNA database gets bigger, the number of false matches is expected to increase. The British Academy of Forensic Sciences has noted that, there have, and will be, mistakes, chance matches and false matches with close relatives are made even more likely where profiles are incomplete.  Links will be established all the time between the scene and innocent individuals, leading to false inferences; · It would render every member of the population vulnerable to attack, by for example having their DNA planted at a crime scene,' Dr Wallace said.

Sinister research 

Todays announcement by the Governments, Human Genetics Commission  that extensive reforms are needed to assure the public that the DNA, which is a unique to every individual will not be abused has been a long time coming commentators say.

Information secured through a House of Commons freedom information request on the database shows that up to May of this year the Home Office has approved 25 applications for research using DNA profiles from the databse, without the consent of those involved, many of whom have never been charged or convicted of any offence.

"For nearly a decade, the Home Office has been secretly approving controversial research projects using profiles from the DNA database. The 25 projects that have been approved by ministers include some sinister explorations into ethnic profiling' Liberal Democrat MP, Jenny Willott said.

‘Interestingly enough, the police, many of whose officers have added themselves to the database rejected a request for their DNA samples to be used in a research project,' Willott added.

Making it clear that the Home Office and the police can ‘no longer be trusted', with the database the Human Genetics Commission has recommended an independent body be  set up to manage the database in future.

Calls to protect the innocent

They say all innocent people have their DNA removed from the database and ethnicity should no longer be recorded when DNA is taken.  The HGC also state that the Police should from now on have clear explanations as to why DNA is being taken.

‘We welcome these recommendation, and hope that they will be fully implemented so that we can see an end to this system that has been criminalsing black communities by stealth,' Matilda MacAttram, director of Black Mental Health UK said.

Coming fast on the heels of a Westminster symposium organised by BMH UK on the database the HGC recommendations echo the calls made by the panel of experts last week.

Commenting on this report shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: ‘The Government should take heed of these findings. Currently the DNA database targets the innocent but not all the guilty.

David Howarth, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "There must be better ways of catching criminals than spending millions of pounds of taxpayers' money adding innocent people to the DNA database. Public confidence has been shattered by the Government's Orwellian attempts to create a national DNA database by stealth."