The Musings of Harry

Here, most unfortunately, we go again.

I recently posted about the partisan brain, and about how Neil Harding rather exemplifies it. It seems he was all too eager to offer up another example.

Mr Harding, it would seem, wishes to go even further than some police offers, who recently suggested that we should collect DNA for anyone who is arrested. He thinks that we should collect DNA from everyone (presumably at birth — who knows?) and keep it on file, just in case you commit a crime.

Harding says that the DNA database helps police catch the “correct perpetrators of many crimes”. He says that the success of the database is “unquestionable”. His use of words is interesting, considering that people are, in fact, questioning it: just last week, in Liberty’s response to the Home Office consultation on PACE, they asserted that the National DNA Database “does not seem to have a significant impact upon crime detection”. In fact, although the number of samples on the database has increased steadily since it was introduced…

…the rate of crime detected using the database has stayed at about 0.35% of all recorded crime (see Liberty response). If the database were so useful, one would expect that it would facilitate the detection of more crimes as it grew larger. That does not seem to be the case. It is, therefore, of questionable value. I’m sure it has a place, but collecting the DNA of everyone arrested, let alone everyone alive, is not it.

Another terribly important point to make is that all systems have a rate of failure. Although (bar twins) an individual’s DNA is unique, we are not necessarily able to collect, store or compare samples with sufficient precision to make a DNA profile unique to an individual. Just as with fingerprints, DNA profiling techniques do experience false positives and false negatives, and just as with fingerprints, these rates are more than one might expect. Here is an excellent page detailing many such experiences.

I’ve written about these problems before, so I’ll leave the subject there, except to say that a good way to deal with these problems is to keep the database as small as possible. By keeping the database small, one minimises the number of failures, making them more manageable. This, quite neatly, makes it eminently sensible to restrict people placed onto the database to those convicted of a crime: perhaps even only those convicted of a serious crime. The usefulness of the system is maintained, as is the privacy of innocent people: something which, quite clearly, Harding grossly undervalues.

PS: If the database is so fantastically useful, and if a person being arrested is a useful indicator of criminality, why didn’t Levy, Evans and Turner have their DNA sampled?

The Home Office’s review of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act was published today.

Having read it, I have to say that it is reasonably balanced. A wide range of views are expressed. One wonders what will happen next. Privacy International expressed the rather scathing view that the proposals being considered were vague and undefined, and that the Home Office was merely going through the motions in conducting a public consultation at all. One hopes that they are wrong. Here, in any event, are the things that caught my eye.

Powers of Arrest
Two points of note here. First is the eminently sensible suggestion that the citizen’s power of arrest should be extended to apply to any offence, not just to an indictable offence. If a citizen reasonably suspects that a crime is being committed, it is proper that they should be able to restrain the suspected offender until the police arrive. To expect a citizen to have sufficient knowledge of the law to know whether or not the offence is indictable or not is unrealistic.

Second is the depressingly predictable suggestion that PCSOs be given the power of arrest, the argument being that since they have the power to detain people for 30 minutes until real police arrive, they have de facto powers of arrest anyway. One must ask: if PCSOs are to be given powers of arrest, what differentiates them from real police? They must, if given powers of arrest, be “police on the cheap” as this blogger has suspected all along. The remit of PCSOs is different from that of real police (and, frankly, questionable) and the distinction is important. They are receive less training and less pay. They are not police officers, and it is not right to expect them to perform the same duties.

Collection of Biometric Data
Here we go again with crackpot suggestions from senior police officers. One Inspector Thomas Huntley responded to the review with the suggestion that the power to collect DNA should be extended to allow the collection of samples from people arrested for non-recordable offences: speeding, littering etc. In support of this suggestion, he offers the following, ridiculously bone-headed, argument:

“… failure to do so could be seen as giving the impression that an individual who commits a non-recordable offence could not be a repeat offender and therefore only those arrested for recordable offences are likely to have offended before.”

I reject his premise, utterly. The mere fact that a police officer chooses to arrest someone does not imply guilt; it does not imply that they are an offender at all, let alone a repeat offender. Retaining DNA samples only for those convicted of an offence should be the standard that we set for inclusion in the National DNA Database. ACPO may not agree with that, but even they think that sampling people for littering is a step too far:

But despite some support for the police’s request to massively expand the database, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) warned that granting such powers could contribute to the increasing “criminalisation of generally law-abiding public”.

On the same topic, Liberty threw down the gauntlet with a challenge to the assumption that the NDNAD is even useful: they say that statistically, it has had little impact upon the detection of crimes. Another encouraging suggestion came from the Human Genetics Commission, which expressed concern that DNA samples are held for innocent people, and suggested that those convicted of minor crimes should have their samples destroyed if they do not reoffend for a set period. Good stuff.

Search Warrants
Finally, the review reports that several respondents suggested that the power to issue search warrants should be removed from magistrates and conferred upon police superintendents! The suggestion is that the issuing of these warrants would then be reported to the courts after the fact. In an astonishing display of doublethink, one respondent from the CPS even claimed that such a move would increase accountability and transparency… This asinine suggestion is further evidence of a worrying trend: the reduction of the role of the judiciary in overseeing the actions of the police. Search warrants need to be approved before they are executed, not after it is too late to take action if a warrant is unreasonable.

When the time comes for the Home Office to announce what changes will be made to PACE — if any — it will be very interesting to see which of these suggestions are taken on board.

…but never mind; every cloud has a silver lining. Even global warming. The thinner ice will make it easier for Russia to drill for 10 billion tonnes of oil and gas believed to reside under the North Pole, and has staked its claim to the area by planting a titanium flag on the sea bed.

The ironies abound.

This stuff just makes me mad.

The times reports that police and retailers are backing home office proposals to set up jails in malls and sporting venues as a way of “speedily dealing” with shoplifters and other low-level offenders. People could be held in them for a maximum of four hours. This is actually months-old news — the Beeb reported it back in March — and it’s a tad depressing to see that it hasn’t died a quiet death.

These kinds of proposals are further evidence that we are slipping down the slope into a grossly illiberal society. The purpose of these jails is ostensibly to hold people until the police arrive. I find this unconvincing. I would imagine that the police are fairly uniformly busy, and undoubtedly, dealing with low-level offences is always tedious. How often could it be genuinely useful for the police to attend a shoplifting incident four hours after the crime was committed, rather than immediately? This explanation lacks the ring of plausibility.

I suspect that the idea is not to reduce or solve crimes; it’s to brush them under the carpet. It’s about justice being “simple, speedy & summary”, aka “facile, rash & dubious”. Why should police turn up at these low-level crimes at all? Let’s just let the rent-a-thugs handle it. Leave them in a cell for a few hours to consider their alleged misdeeds, and take their DNA to boot. After all, we don’t appear to need magistrates to issue fines any more, why should the police need to waste their precious time either?

Catch them, interview them, take their details, sample their DNA, imprison them for four hours and then let them go: the whole criminal justice process done and dusted in an afternoon with not a whiff of police involvement, let alone judicial oversight.

Detestable.

The India Times reports that two more cattle at Skanda Vale have tested positive for Bovine TB and will most likely be slaughtered. The monks, once again, have vowed to resist any attempt to take the animals.

I’m quite sure that the rule of law will prevail. What motivates me to blog about it is this interview with one of the monks, wherein the monk states that the death of Shambo is nothing to be sad about, that the cow’s death was the Lord’s will, that it would have “derived a lot of grace from God” because of the circumstances of its death, that Shambo “lives on” and may be reborn as a person or “liberated into the conciousness of God”.

I feel moved to ask: if the cow is an immortal soul that is merely “wearing” a body, then what does it matter if the body is now dead? To be quite frank, being liberated into the conciousness of God sounds rather more interesting than wandering around in a dank field, eating grass (it’s not tasty: I’ve had the pleasure) . If that’s what’s in store for the other infected animals, I don’t see why they’re complaining.

Finding holes in people’s bizarre superstitions is obviously not terribly hard, but — y’know — it’s just fun sometimes. For balance, I shall wrap this post up on a more serious note with this bang-on quote from the National Secular Society:

Shambo is dead and that is how it should be. Thousands of other animals have faced the same fate when they were found to be carriers of potentially catastrophic infections. The idea that this particular beast was “sacred” is a concept that exists only in the head of deluded people. The Bovine Tuberculosis, on the other hand, is a real and present danger that can be seen under a microscope. No contest.

*High-five*