Britain Goes Pre-Crime Crazy!

UK Police Want to Designate Children as Criminals Based on DNA

Mark Townsend and Anushka Asthana
The Guardian - 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’.

~This is an outrageous proposal, and one we should insist on boycotting. To pre-judge a childs potential behaviour, be it criminal or not, is an impossible task. What we are talking about is, not only trying to predict events that have yet to occur, but also we are talking about punishing a child for a crime they didn't commit. This is not only pre-crime, which in itself is ludicrous, but it is also yet another situation where thought-crime can become the social and legal norm. What ever happened to 'innocent until proven guilty'? It is simply wrong to even entertain these ideas, and as a nation we are responsible not to sit back and rest on our laurels, we must take action to prevent the 'police state' from taken full control over our freedoms and civil liberties. What the government should be doing with the information is addressing the issues it raises such as problems in the education system, or the family system, and put in place measures to ensure the child receives adequate care and attention and does not commit the crimes, they have so 'wisely' decided the child is going to commit! Not just stick them on a DNA database and wait to lock them up, in the already crowded prison system. As for the stigma attached to those potential criminals, look at what has happened with the ASBO, all it has done is encourage youths to be criminal, they have been stigmatised, and not treated or helped for their problems, which usually are political in nature in the first place. So to the government, if you were doing your job correctly in the first place to address problems in the education system and in family values, and to address poverty at large, most of these juvenile offenders would not be created in the first place.~ EyeCeyE