It’s predictable, I suppose, but no sooner had two serial killers (Steve Wright, Mark Dixie) been convicted than the top cops’ ‘executive committee’ in Scotland (i capi dei tutti capi), ACPOS, called for DNA samples to be taken from everyone arrested, not just those convicted, and kept on the national DNA database for ever [1]. This is currently the law in England, which is handy as cops can arrest you for anything – ‘obstruction’ is a useful catch-all used regularly against political protesters – then drag you to the copshop, take your DNA for the database, then shove you out of the door again uncharged. Result. In Scotland, though, samples taken from arrestees can only be stored if the person is subsequently charged with a crime. That’s not great, from a freedom viewpoint, but was a measure passed by the McNewLabour administration back in 2007[2]. Still, at least the cops have to go through the legal aggro of filling out paperwork and launching a formal prosecution before they can keep your DNA on file, which is a disincentive if their mighty and continual whingeing about “paperwork” is to be believed. Of course, ACPOS argues that a DNA database would enable such serial killers to be caught earlier, because both Dixie and Wright were nabbed after DNA matching of samples taken from them when they were previously arrested for unrelated crimes. This argument begs two points, one minor, one major:
- DNA matching is not the only, or even the main way, of catching and convicting perps. As numerous crime novels, TV series, true crime stories, and TV crime programmes, make plain time and again, most perps are nicked through ‘old-fashioned’ policing. Cops managed to nick killers long before DNA matching came along, and often the only reason they didn’t nick them in time (such as in the Yorkshire Ripper case) was sheer bloody incompetence and stupidity.
- There is no item of information about a person that a cop would not consider to be ‘relevant to the investigation’.
The second is more disturbing. Yesterday it was mass fingerprinting, today it’s DNA, tomorrow it’ll be retinal scans, the day after it’ll be real-time 24/7 information on your whereabouts. The gathering of any item of personal information can be justified on the grounds of helping to prevent and/or solve crimes, and in the case of murder to save victims’ lives. This emotional blackmail is obvious and crude, and crudely exploitative of those who have been murder victims and their families and friends. It taps into people’s fears and insecurity, and if the ‘nothing to fear, nothing to hide’ principle is widely accepted, as seems to be the case in England, the blackmail is hard to argue against. The logical conclusion of the principle, though, is a world of ‘Total Information Awareness’, which is currently vividly and frighteningly illustrated in the near-future drama The Last Enemy on BBC1, where the State has complete knowledge of all individuals in real time. Or, if you want to be really dystopian and fascistic, a Judge Dredd world where cops are the law, and can search your home and ransack your life at will.
The Scottish government, to its credit, has resisted some of the more authoritarian measures being implemented in the nascent police state south of the Border, and polls of the Scottish population regularly show a greater concern for civil freedoms, and cynicism towards the Security State, than is to be found amongst the Sasannaich. It would be depressing if it were to accede to ACPOS demands as that would set a highly unwelcome precedent, that any information about anyone, crime suspect or innocent, is fair game to gather and keep. Accepting that principle would be highly dangerous for freedom in Ingerlan’s civilised neighbour.
[1] Call for DNA retention law change, BBC News Scotland, 23/2/08
[2] New powers to store suspects’ DNA, BBC News Scotland, 1/1/07
