Responses to those who say ID records are a Good thing

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kelly-Marie Blundell on November 29, 2009 at 13:10

I will say, with friends in the police, they present a reasonable argument that when dealing with scenes of crime where malicious murder has been committed, the concept of a national ID base seems logical to catch the perpetrators.

I usually cite the man who was arrested from alleged burglary even though he had Parkinsons and a 24 hour carer. Mistakes are made. DNA is not a reasonable individual characteristic.

I also point out that targets by police and public services that are responsive to demographics mean that this would significantly influence arrests and prosecutions made. There would relevant proportion of the population arrested, investigated and prosecuted but this may not be all or representative of the criminals, in fear of pressure groups and other miscellany.

Permalink Reply by David Turner on November 29, 2009 at 17:23

Kelly-Marie Blundell said: "I usually cite the man who was arrested from alleged burglary even though he had Parkinsons and a 24 hour carer. Mistakes are made. DNA is not a reasonable individual characteristic.I also point out that targets by police and public services that are responsive to demographics mean that this would significantly influence arrests and prosecutions made. There would relevant proportion of the population arrested, investigated and prosecuted but this may not be all or representative of the criminals, in fear of pressure groups and other miscellany."

Kelly-Marie two things

1) You said "Mistakes are made." Well of course, as we well know, this is a property of any system of Justice - it is w hy we have appeal courts. The burden of proof 'beyond reasonable doubt' clealry implies that absolute certainty of guilt is not required for conviction. Judicial proof is not like a Mathematical proof, that can argued and rigourously determined one way or another. It depends upon witness statements and human interpretation of events and circumstances. Finding my DNA on your person does not prove that I have committed a crime against you but does require me to provide a reasonable explanation of how it got there. There could be a conspiracy among the witnesses who attest that I did in fact do the crime in question. We have to accept that justice and court procedure is imperfect and that some innocent people will be punished. There is an important balance to be struck between the number of unsafe convictions and the number of guilty criminals who get off when brought to trial. What do you suggest it should be? I don't think that the number of unsafe convictions should be higher than 5% and I would hope that the number of guilty defendents found not guilty is not greater than 25% but it is very difficult to determine either of these figures or to find any relationship between them. It would, I think, be a useful Research Project for some Social Scientist.

2) "DNA is not a reasonable individual characteristic", this is surely wrong and to assert without quoting any evidence is dangerous. DNA is considered by forensic scientists to be a far better identification than finger prints. The theoretical risk of a coincidental match is 1 in 100 billion unless the individual whose DNA matches a forensic sample has a twin. It is of course also lower if the individual is related to the person who left the forensic sample. With DNA you can look for matches (based on sequence or on numbers of small repeating units of DNA sequence) at many different locations on the person's genome; one or two (even three) aren't enough to be confident that the suspect is the right one, but thirteen sites are used. A match at all thirteen is rare enough that a prosecutor or a jury can be very confident ("beyond a reasonable doubt") that the right person is accused.

Permalink Reply by Kelly-Marie Blundell on November 29, 2009 at 18:31

David,

1,
Well of course, as we well know, this is a property of any system of Justice - it is w hy we have appeal courts. The burden of proof 'beyond reasonable doubt' clealry implies that absolute certainty of guilt is not required for conviction. Judicial proof is not like a Mathematical proof, that can argued and rigourously determined one way or another.
You seem to contradict yourself here. The premise of "beyond reasonable doubt" is as objective as a jury can strive to be as human beings. If it cannot be argued rigourously either way then there is little point in having courts at all? It is not mathematical proof, but at the same time neither is DNA evidence.

I am not striving to suggest that the court system is by any way perfect, and there will always be a percentage of wrongful convictions (and I know PhD students studying demographics of wrongful convictions!). However, with regards to DNA evidence, myths in representation mean people tend to think DNA is infallible. Papers by Professor Alan Jamieson and related scholars attest to the issues with DNA. There is also the issue with the state of the DNA when it is obtained. In a lot of cases the cells have degraded to such a degree that only mitochondrial DNA can be obtained, which means this cannot be distinguished from immediate family and further relations issues. This may not matter if there was not a significant human element to our trials. Evidence suggests people are more likely to acquit rapists where they feel the girl was acting promiscously, and I fear with frequent admissal of DNA evidence people will see this as, as you put it, mathematical proof of guilt.

I will, for various reasons, decline to engage in a definition and subsequent elenchus of Justice though!

The argument for DNA holds a lot of sway with members of police services, Daily Mail reading middle classes who's fear of crime far outweighs any experience of crime, and the paranoia created by lax media.

2,
Panorama among other National News. Google Scholar produces a variety of articles, legal and medical, on the misidentification of offenders with DNA. Yes, I admit it is rare, and perhaps my wording was incorrect, DNA may be a defining characteristic of a person, but mistakes *are* made. When taken into account with recording errors, the chances of being wrongly arrested increase manifold.

In addition to this, also take into account that if you arrested for certain crimes it will have a significant effect on your life. A man accused of rape, whether tried or even arrested, will have significant difficulties holding a job with vulnerable people. This is not fair, but sadly part of the society we live in.

I understand how DNA is collected and measured, and as I outlined above, a full DNA sample is not always obtained making measurements difficult when used in relation to criminal justice. Combined with public perceptions of DNA this makes maintaining a DNA database a bad thing.

Permalink Reply by James Baker on December 1, 2009 at 19:27

DNA evidence is used in a tiny fraction of cases, yes of course it can be useful, but it can still be usefull without a database of innocent people. You can still match crime scene DNA samples to those of suspects for instance without the databse. Keeping a database of people convicted of serious crimes or crimes of a sexual nature seems sensible though. Becuase they are convicted of a crime society removes some of their rights to protect it'self.

Permalink Reply by Kelly-Marie Blundell on December 2, 2009 at 20:07

James Elsdon-Baker said:

DNA evidence is used in a tiny fraction of cases, yes of course it can be useful, but it can still be usefull without a database of innocent people. You can still match crime scene DNA samples to those of suspects for instance without the databse. Keeping a database of people convicted of serious crimes or crimes of a sexual nature seems sensible though. Becuase they are convicted of a crime society removes some of their rights to protect it'self.

But would it only be searchable in relation to serious crimes or crimes of a sexual nature? I fear not. Better not to have one at all, if it means certain people are highlighted when they are not suspects surely?

A serious crime is a loose definition and there is enough discrimination against reformed offenders without checking them every time an offence is committed? Take, for example, women convicted for murdering seriously abusive husbands, who do not qualify for unlawful act or dimished responsibility manslaughter pleas (Thornton et al). They may never commit another offence, but would become suspects in every other serious offence. We cannot possibly justify creating databases of burglaries, manslaughter, GBH etc separately, and we cannot justify having one database for one "classification" of crime without having a full database.

Permalink Reply by David Turner on December 3, 2009 at 0:07

James Elsdon-Baker said:

DNA evidence ... can still be usefull without a database of innocent people.

Innocent people? Ah didn't someone say"let he who is without sin cast the first stone"

So let he who has never broken the law be taken off off the DNA Databse!

Permalink Reply by Peter Finnigan on January 30, 2010 at 23:45

My talking points on this are...

Do you trust civil servants and private company contractors with all of your important information?
Do you want money and resources that could be used to track criminals, being spread out to track everybody?
Can you think of any recent local crimes that an ID card would have prevented?

Permalink Reply by Jack Holroyde on March 8, 2010 at 0:50

"Oh Damn, I've left my wallet in the hotel - I'm going to need new eyeballs and a finger transplant!'