Monday 25 February 2008

Genes Genie


If you were a foreigner coming to these shores for the first time in the past week, reading the news would lead you to believe were somehow in the middle of a violent crime wave, perpetrated in the main by middle-aged white men. (Which does make you wonder why the Daily Mail hasn't started a campaign about the dangers of the said constituency?) There's been Steve Wright, Mark Dixie, and today, Levi Bellfield. Three men, many unspeakable crimes, and the inevitable call for the reintroduction of the death penalty.

I'm a lefty, so there will be nothing of that sort on my blog, but one contentious question that was brought up by the first two cases was the use of DNA evidence to catch the killer. Both Steve Wright and Mark Dixie showed up on the National DNA database - but only because of the introduction of mandatory DNA swabs being taken from them. There were those who before saw this requirement as some sort of gross invasion of privacy, an argument which dovetailed neatly with the NO 2 ID campaign, with its fears of the encroachment of the 'database state'.

I hold no such fears. If everyone was to carry an ID card in my pocket with details of my medical history and DNA on it, I would feel ever-so-slightly safer. There obviously still remain many doubts about the government's ability to hold this information, and not lose it, and I don't think that it would stop the most sophisticated of criminals from going on with their business, it will certainly help to convict men like Dixie and Wright one hell of a lot quicker.

Call me a fascist, but if the technology is there, we must use it to our best advantage, because who knows how many cases could be resolved with all the population on this database?


No comments: