DNA Retention: Advantages and Disadvantages for DNA Collection
During the last decade, DNA samples have become a popular tool of criminologists to find and prove the criminal behavior of an individual. The FBI collected DNA in its agency since 1990 (Siegal et al 2000). The FBI professionals suppose that DNA analysis allows finding a partially individual and there is no other individual in the United States other than the person who could have left the blood or hair follicles at the scene of a crime. Similar practices are introduced by the UK police which collects the DNA of Juveniles involved in crime. The proposed methods have advantages and opportunities for police and law enforcement agencies to find a criminal and prove his guilt, but these practices violate the privacy and constitutional rights of an individual.
The main advantage of DNA collection is that it allows creating a large database and finding a person in a short period of time. In the USA, the states have DNA databases, keeping known samples from violent criminals who are imprisoned or who are being released from jail, and those agencies share their databases with the FBI Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP) server. The advantage of this approach is that a violent criminal who rapes or kills will be found immediately despite his geographic location. In some states, it is not required to get samples, because every convicted juvenile and criminal gives blood and saliva samples upon entering jail, which is DNA typed (Fisher 2000).
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The data about DNA is stored in the state’s computerized criminal justice servers. DNA data is a part of the FBI’s NCIC records; so the FBI centrally kept DNA data for those states for which it now holds other criminal data, and, for those states for which it does not hold such data, Researchers suppose that increasing number of DNA samples will help criminal justice system to direct queries to the proper record system (Bowers, 1995).
The advantage of the DNA database and the international database is that it will help countries to control criminal behavior and identify a person. The issue of prior conviction constitutes possible cause for law enforcement to get court orders to do blood tests on perhaps dozens or even hundreds of people. The police force should have determined through their examination that there is some touchable connection between an individual and an incident before they can get a warrant to search a person’s property—and, by extension, his or her fingerprints or body fluid. In this situation, the DVA database will help to simplify this process and find a person without his permission to search blood (Fisher 2000).
The facts against the DNA database and retaining the DNA for other juveniles who were never charged or convicted of an offense are that DNA tests are not perfect and trustworthy. Despite great changes in science and forensic science, there are a lot of errors and mistakes in DNA tests. Retaining the DNA for other juveniles who were never charged or convicted of an offense can lead to terrible outcomes: a conviction and imprisonment of an innocent person.
Also, any investigation can damage and ruin a reputation of an innocent accused in a crime. Regardless of how good or bad the DNA evidence is in any criminal case, the use of ever more sophisticated scientific methods in the name of justice raises large troubling issues: If there is a scientific technique for extracting data about an individual from his body, when is it lawful to use that technique, and when does use that technique constitute an abuse of Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unwarranted search and seizure, and Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate oneself (Bowers, 1995).
The second problem is that retaining the DNA for juveniles who were never charged or convicted of an offense will lead to an increased number of criminal cases aimed to protect the privacy rights and freedoms of individuals. The questions will be connected with such issues as How much and what kind of data is kept about U.S. people? It is apparent that some individuals are in jail because of bad investigations done in the name of criminal justice: bad laboratory trials exculpatory evidence suspended from a defendant because of social and political pressure to gain convictions; and criminal evidence that is far from certain, but which has been protected convincingly by criminal justice professionals. More appalling than these casual actions by professionals of the criminal justice system are instances of willful falsification of evidence (Fisher 2000).