Innocent until proven guilty...except we can take your DNA

“F.B.I. and States Vastly Expand DNA Databases”

Published by the New York Times on April 18^th 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/us/19DNA.html?_r=1&hp

In an effort to more easily find perpetrators of violent crimes the F.B.I. had decided to expand the database of DNA. Some states are already collecting DNA samples from minors, people convicted of misdemeanors and even persons who have been arrested and not yet convicted. Firstly, minors are supposed to have more protection under the law, for example, you cannot print the name of a minor who has been arrested in a newspaper.

Second, people who have not been convicted of a crime are supposed to be “innocent until proven guilty,” obviously conducting DNA swabs does not uphold this. This practice could erode away the strong parts of our legal system: the rights of the individual.

The article starts off by listing mostly negatives of this program, as would be expected of the Times. But, the bias of this article becomes most clear when the F.BI.’s perspective is finally addressed. This is more than half way through the article, after most people reading will have formed an opinion. ‘“I’ve watched women go from mug-book to mug-book looking for the man who raped her,’ said the Denver district attorney.” Especially for women that is a hard-hitting and emotional statement that at the beginning of the article may have had a different effect.

Yet, the question of efficiency still comes to mind. How much do these extra entries help? They expect the number of entries to go “from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 17-fold increase. F.B.I. officials say they expect DNA processing backlogs — which now stand at more than 500,000 cases — to increase.” Besides backlogs and the never ending problem of the slow speed of government I believe studies should be done to determine if a person arrested by the police is much more likely to commit another crime than anyone else. Surely, there is not much difference between the probability of a person committing a violent crime if they were wrongly arrested once or if they weren’t.

If their goal is simply to increase the database in number and not by people likely to commit crimes, a more efficient way of doing it would be to put everyone’s DNA on file when they’re born. Politically, it could actually be an easier sell. It does not infringe upon the “innocent until proven guilty” idea, and it treats everyone equally. Of course there would still be the pesky issue of privacy, but since that president was created by an extremely activist court, it might hold less merit up against the notion of a much safer society.