The Even Greater Scandal

This is bad enough, of course:

Despite widespread opposition, the Home Office announced today plans to retain innocents DNA for six years. Innocent 16 and 17 years olds arrested for a serious crime will be treated the same as adults. All other children arrested but not convicted of any offence will have their profiles held for 3 years.

Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, said:

“It seems the Government still refuses to separate the innocent and the guilty and maintains a blanket approach to DNA retention. This grudgingly modified policy creates a repeat collision course with the Courts and Ministers look stubborn rather than effective or fair.

"Nobody disputes the value of DNA and anyone arrested can have a sample taken and compared to crime scenes. But stockpiling the intimate profiles of millions of innocent people is an unnecessary recipe for error and abuse. Politicians need to show us that they care about the presumption of innocence and not just when MPs expenses are being discussed.”

In December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights found Britain’s DNA retention regime – under which millions of innocent profiles are held – to be a disproportionate interference with personal privacy rights under Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention.

But the even greater scandal is that, as with the ruling out of convictions on anonymous evidence alone, it took the ECHR, whether the Court or the Convention, to strike down so flagrant an infringement of our own age-old traditions.