A SENSIBLE crime prevention strategy or an affront to civil liberties? The US Department of Justice is finalising rules to allow DNA to be collected from anyone arrested or detained by federal authorities, vastly increasing the number of people recorded in the national DNA database.
In the UK, DNA is already collected from those suspected but not yet convicted of crime. In the US this is allowed in only seven states, of which just two allow profiles to be forwarded to the federally run national DNA database. Elsewhere, only convicted felons must give DNA samples. Arrested suspects and most illegal…
