Robin Wilton's esoterica

Lord Justice Sedley, an appeals court judge, has apparently recommended that all UK citizens should have their DNA recorded in a national database "for the absolutely rigorously restricted purpose of crime detection and prevention".

There are currently said to be 4 million entries in the existing national DNA database; according to the judge, the current system is "unjustifiable and biased against racial minorities". He also says: "We have a situation where if you happen to have been in the hands of the police then your DNA is on permanent  record. If you haven't, it isn't".

I think this gets to the nub of the main issue: the key phrase, to my mind, is "in the hands of". Under the current system, DNA samples can be taken from individuals whether or not it is believed they have comitted a crime: for instance, witnesses to a crime may be required to provide a sample; people arrested but not charged are recorded; people charged and found innocent are recorded; it is said to be 'almost impossible' to have your DNA removed from the database once it's in there, even if you are proved to be entirely innocent.

I agree with the judge that the database doesn't contain the right records, but in my view it should contain fewer, rather than more. To add the whole population, simply on the off-chance that their record might subsequently support a hypothetical prosecution, is completely disproportionate.

By almost direct analogy: the jail system is not 'unjustifiable' because it discriminates between those people who have committed a crime and those who have not: that is exactly its purpose. A jail system would be unjustifiable if it failed to discriminate between people who have been convicted of a crime and those who have not. And that is the unfairness in the current DNA database.

It also seems to me that the judge is ill-advised to advocate a universal database on the basis that it would be "for the absolutely rigorously restricted purpose of crime detection and prevention". First, I try to imagine the use of DNA records for crime prevention without imagining the total collapse of the presumption of innocence... and I find that very difficult. Second, I try to imagine a nationally (and presumably under some circumstances internationally) accessible DNA database of 60 million entries with an 'absolutely rigorously restricted purpose', and I find that even more difficult.

This also has a bearing on the judge's reasoning about racial bias. As I read it, his argument is that "where there is ethnic profiling going on, this means that disproprtionate numbers of ethnic minorities get onto the database". To me, this speaks of a problem of policy control: first, is there a justifiable case for ethnic profiling in the first place, and second, wouldn't the problem he describes be solved if the records of those not convicted had to be deleted from the database. That is the system in operation in Scotland.

Others have raised the question of whether the judge's proposal would be practical. I am tempted to say "if the government considers it is practical to have a national identity database (including facial and fingerprint biometrics, it ought to consider it practical to have a national DNA database... even if not quite yet".

I am relieved to read that Gordon Brown's spokesman cited bureaucratic, logistical and civil liberties concerns when asked if the government planned to extend the DNA database in this way.

08:50, July 2007, Newark, CA. Hotel lift-lobby.

"Made any money yet?"

It was an odd question to hear from a complete stranger, not least because I'd only just finished breakfast - alone. Perhaps it indicated a set of preconceptions about me. If it did, I had no reciprocal set... though a strong whiff of vodka breath provided an initial clue.

He wasn't a happy man. It emerged that he was back in the Bay Area just for the weekend, to check up on what his kids had done to the house in his absence - and apparently the findings weren't good.

"How old are your kids?", I asked, visualising a classic teen 'home alone' toga party.

"34", he said. "They're twins. I can't even tell one from the other."

He got out of the lift at that point. The question of what destruction the twins had wrought remains unanswered - as does the question of whether he was simply seeing double...