[Infowarrior] - UK: Put young children on DNA list, urge police

[Richard Forno]

Put young children on DNA list, urge police

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/mar/16/youthjustice.children

    * Mark Townsend and Anushka Asthana
    * The Observer,
    * Sunday March 16 2008
    * Article history

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This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday March 16 2008 on p1 of the
News section. It was last updated at 09:23 on March 17 2008.

Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they
exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life,
according to Britain's most senior police forensics expert.

Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA
spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate
was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders,
given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending
traits in children as young as five.

'If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then
in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely
large,' said Pugh. 'You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists
say some people will grow out of crime; others won't. We have to find who
are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.'

Pugh admitted that the deeply controversial suggestion raised issues of
parental consent, potential stigmatisation and the role of teachers in
identifying future offenders, but said society needed an open, mature
discussion on how best to tackle crime before it took place. There are
currently 4.5 million genetic samples on the UK database - the largest in
Europe - but police believe more are required to reduce crime further. 'The
number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right
people,' Pugh told The Observer. However, he said the notion of universal
sampling - everyone being forced to give their genetic samples to the
database - is currently prohibited by cost and logistics.

Civil liberty groups condemned his comments last night by likening them to
an excerpt from a 'science fiction novel'. One teaching union warned that it
was a step towards a 'police state'.

Pugh's call for the government to consider options such as placing primary
school children who have not been arrested on the database is supported by
elements of criminological theory. A well-established pattern of offending
involves relatively trivial offences escalating to more serious crimes.
Senior Scotland Yard criminologists are understood to be confident that
techniques are able to identify future offenders.

A recent report from the think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research
(IPPR) called for children to be targeted between the ages of five and 12
with cognitive behavioural therapy, parenting programmes and intensive
support. Prevention should start young, it said, because prolific offenders
typically began offending between the ages of 10 and 13. Julia Margo, author
of the report, entitled 'Make me a Criminal', said: 'You can carry out a
risk factor analysis where you look at the characteristics of an individual
child aged five to seven and identify risk factors that make it more likely
that they would become an offender.' However, she said that placing young
children on a database risked stigmatising them by identifying them in a
'negative' way.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, denounced any
plan to target youngsters. 'Whichever bright spark at Acpo thought this one
up should go back to the business of policing or the pastime of science
fiction novels,' she said. 'The British public is highly respectful of the
police and open even to eccentric debate, but playing politics with our
innocent kids is a step too far.'

Chris Davis, of the National Primary Headteachers' Association, said most
teachers and parents would find the suggestion an 'anathema' and potentially
very dangerous. 'It could be seen as a step towards a police state,' he
said. 'It is condemning them at a very young age to something they have not
yet done. They may have the potential to do something, but we all have the
potential to do things. To label children at that stage and put them on a
register is going too far.'

Davis admitted that most teachers could identify children who 'had the
potential to have a more challenging adult life', but said it was the job of
teachers to support them.

Pugh, though, believes that measures to identify criminals early would save
the economy huge sums - violent crime alone costs the UK £13bn a year - and
significantly reduce the number of offences committed. However, he said the
British public needed to move away from regarding anyone on the DNA database
as a criminal and accepted it was an emotional issue.

'Fingerprints, somehow, are far less contentious,' he said. 'We have
children giving their fingerprints when they are borrowing books from a
library.'

Last week it emerged that the number of 10 to 18-year-olds placed on the DNA
database after being arrested will have reached around 1.5 million this time
next year. Since 2004 police have had the power to take DNA samples from
anyone over the age of 10 who is arrested, regardless of whether they are
later charged, convicted, or found to be innocent.

Concern over the issue of civil liberties will be further amplified by news
yesterday that commuters using Oyster smart cards could have their movements
around cities secretly monitored under new counter-terrorism powers being
sought by the security services.