Taking DNA samples from people arrested, but not convicted of a crime, has the potential to make our already unfair justice system even less fair. Before we expand the preconviction DNA dragnet, we should think hard about what that means in a racially biased system. Currently, 26 states and federal law enforcement permit pre-conviction DNA collection. However, our recent national conversation about stop and frisk policies should make us cautious. African-Americans already constitute roughly 40 percent of the federal DNA database, the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), reflecting racial disparities in convictions and sentences. Collecting DNA from people prior to conviction will likewise reflect the racial disparities in arrests that plague our justice system.
There is an increasing demand nationwide to archive DNA samples from not only convicted criminals, including misdemeanor offenders, but persons arrested for a crime. Advocates praise the ability of DNA to identify the guilty and exonerate the innocent. They cite cases of serial rapists, such as Anthony Dias in Washington, who might have been caught sooner, if only a DNA sample was available. Heroically, the Innocence Project used DNA testing to help exonerate James Bain, who had spent 35 years in prison, wrongfully convicted of kidnapping, burglary, and rape. Opponents, however, argue that collecting DNA violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure. Moreover, it is difficult to protect against unforeseen abuse of DNA profiles, even if the DNA evidence is destroyed. But there is another reason why taking DNA samples from the arrested poses an ethical challenge.
Racial profiling tactics, such as stop and frisk policies, unfairly increase arrests. Recently, the NYPD's stop and frisk policy has come under intense scrutiny by civil liberties unions, civil rights activists, and cultural critics. As the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) reported, in the first three months of 2012, the NYPD stopped 177,140 blacks and Latinos -- and only 18,387 whites. The NYCLU report reproduces the results of Ian Ayres' 2008 report on the LAPD. Even though the stop and frisk rate is higher for black and Latino populations than whites, the hit rate, or the rate at which contraband is found on a suspect, is actually lower. Yet, while the hit rate is lower, the absolute value of hits, and arrests, increases. Racial profiling creates criminals in the name of stopping them.
Taking DNA from persons arrested due to such unfair practices introduces a new chilling possibility. Unlike other forensic databases, as Helen Wallace of GeneWatch UK has noted, the DNA profiles of a person's relatives may be inferred statistically. In a racially biased justice system, this essentially results in the police surveillance of an entire race. This is a lesson we should learn from the UK's National DNA database, which is the world's oldest. By the same rationale as U.S. DNA database advocates, the UK instituted a policy to take pre-conviction DNA samples. By 2008, the UK House of Commons estimated that DNA had been archived of 27 percent of the entire black population, 42 percent of the male black population, and 77 percent of young black men. Comparatively, the database retained DNA from only 6 percent of the white population.
What happens when a criminal database overrepresents one population? Security officials deduce that this population constitutes a dangerous population in need of further surveillance. Sociologists Robin Williams and Paul Johnson call this effect a 'circuit of surveillance.' This is why we should not confuse the neutrality of DNA as a hereditary material with the neutrality of those who collect, process, and interpret it.
Some, such as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance suggest that DNA testing is color blind. This is wrong. In fact, technologies have been specifically designed to 'read' race from DNA for the purposes of forensics. Duana Fullwiley, a Professor of Anthropology at Stanford, has written on race, DNA, and forensics, specifically the use of DNAWitness to apprehend Derrick Todd Lee, an African-American man, for murder and rape in Louisiana in 2004. DNAWitness compares unknown crime scene samples with a panel of markers known as Ancestry Informative Markers (or AIMs) in order to narrow a suspect pool by continental ancestry. Far from Vance's claim that DNA testing technology is color blind, the extension of genetic ancestry testing into forensics is precisely the type of dragnet application that interests many forensic scientists. If blacks and Latinos are disproportionately arrested, then they will be disproportionately represented in the criminal DNA database -- and they will suffer the risk of false incrimination. Though many might object that DNA is extremely reliable, racial disparities in legal resources to challenge sophisticated scientific evidence cannot be minimized.
We should not expand our DNA databases to include people who have not been convicted of a crime. Clearly, the intentions of advocates are noble. However, our system is already deeply flawed. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, reminds us that more black men are incarcerated today than were enslaved in 1850. Loic Wacquant found that the rate of incarceration of blacks in the U.S. is even higher than the rate in South Africa during the anti-apartheid struggle -- and that was 10 years ago. Taking DNA from people who have not even been convicted has the potential to make this already unfair system even less fair.
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Example:
Persons in custody and subsequently ordered released at hearing. The judge has placed no condition on the release, but the individual is not permitted to walk out of the courtroom. The individual remains in the custody of the sheriff and is taken to be "processed out."
The sheriff wants a swab - the individual may assert his right to refuse. The sheriff's leverages his request for the swab against the individuals desire for release. Outside the presence of the courtroom, the sheriff routinely violates the judges order to release. An illegal coercion of the swab to enlarge the DNA database.
Example:
Individuals pulled over for a traffic violation are subject to arbitrary arrest on trumped up accusations. The arrested individual is then offered release without any charges filed in exchange for a voluntary swab donation to the sheriff.
This has become an illegal bluffing operaton. The arrest and so-called charges are baseless. The sheriff will not actually bring the custody to arraignment.
Police agencies operating in Orange County and Los Angeles County use the power of arrest for extortion of the individual's "voluntary" contribution to their DNA database. This tactic works well with youth and immigrants and those without resources for legal representation. Youth and poverty are systematically criminalized.
Sure, poor minority groups are going to be over-represented in the database, and are less likely to have a numerate defense, but the problem is even bigger than that.
How so?
Without other evidence, a random DNA match is worthless.
Lets be clear, this article is only saying DNA testing is another way to racially profile but since racial profiling has been around much longer than DNA testing, Im not seeing the causal relationship.
If you doubt Im wrong, outline the piece and see how the major points flow. This is not logical.
BTW- I would like to hear a good case for your point since there is something unsettling about a DNA database but I just cant think of one way that could adversely effect innocent people.
Fraud is a Job for the Police ! And Debtors, should not receive the same type of Societal Stigmatization, as Seventeenth Century New England Animists ! Credit is Speculation, like Gambling. (Or Prostitution ? ) Credit Records and Bill Collectors, should not follow People like Hungry Wolves ! Is Capitalism Freedom and Opportunity ? Or is It Indentured Servitude !
The police have legally-restricted powers to arrest, and even with the best intentions mistakes are made.
Your eye/hair color, photograph and height are recorded on your driver's license - legitimately - to identify you.
It's a big step to go from the list of properties stored in the database of the DMV to including a genetic profile, especially of lazy cops are just going to try to claim they can solve crimes by running random samples against it.
It's also a great method of ruling you out as a perpetrator. No match, nothing to do with you.
It's a terrible way to trawl for suspects. Even if only 1:100,000 people match a sample at the scene of a crime, that's 3,300 Americans. Not brilliant odds for a correct identification of a perpetrator.
http://www.wisegeek.com/can-your-dna-change-during-your-life.htm
What is the analogy with fingerprint databases? There are large classes of individuals who are routinely fingerprinted - security clearances, government workers, workers dealing with children?