Innocent people's DNA profiles won't be deleted after all, minister admits

The DNA of more than one million innocent people will not be wiped from police records, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
By Christopher Hope, and Robert Winnett
The Telegraph
Jul. 26, 2011

Instead the police will retain DNA profiles in anonymised form, leaving open the possibility of connecting them up with people's names, ministers have admitted.

The admission appears to break a Coalition commitment to delete all innocent profiles, apart from those accused of violent or sex crimes, from police databases.

Civil liberties groups accused the Government of a “disgraceful U-turn” and a “breach of promise” to destroy innocent people’s DNA.

It is the latest in a list of about-turns by the Government on key pledges, such as the selling off tracts of forest, axing free school milk for some children and capping welfare handouts for all claimants at £26,000 a year.

Currently, in England and Wales, the DNA profiles of everyone arrested for a recordable offence are retained by the police, regardless of whether they were charged or convicted.

This has meant that the police’s national DNA database holds more than five million profiles, including one million people with no criminal conviction.

Experts say storing the DNA of innocent people gave them an unfair “presumption of guilt” in the eyes of the police. [...]

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