Significance
In May 2009, nearly 6 months after the court decision, the Home Office announced a consultation on how to comply with the ruling. The government proposed to continue retaining indefinitely the DNA profiles of anyone convicted of any recordable offence, but to remove other profiles from the database after a number of years. The practice of taking DNA profiles upon arrest is not affected by the decision - for adults arrested but not actually convicted of any crime, it is proposed that their profiles will deleted from the database after 6 years, except for those whose arrest was in connection with a serious violent or sexual crime; their profiles will be stored for 12 years before deletion. Young people arrested but not convicted will have their profiles removed when they turn 18 years of age, as will youths convicted of some less serious offences.
As of January 2011, this consultation remains unimplemented. The Northern Irish High Court has ruled that the regulations Marper declared breached article 8 should be followed despite the Marper decision. They said it was up to the government to change the law. This decision has been criticised, particularly since it was open to the court to declare the blanket DNA retention policy incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights.
In February 2011 the government announced the Protection of Freedoms Bill to limit the scope of the DNA database and comply with the Marper ruling. Under the new scheme the DNA profiles of those arrested or charged with a minor offence would be destroyed if they are not convicted. The vast majority of the one million people on the DNA database who have been arrested but not convicted of a crime would be removed from it within months of the bill becoming law.
On 18 May 2011 the UK Supreme Court ruled that the ACPO guidelines allowing indefinite retention of DNA profiles were unlawful, in line with the ECHR ruling. However given that Parliament was already legislating on the issue they decided that no further action should be taken.
According to The Independent on 27 July 2011, the UK government "has indicated that destroying the DNA of the innocent would be impossible because the records are mixed up in batches alongside the DNA of the guilty." The "Home Office minister James Brokenshire has revealed that these profiles will be retained by forensic science laboratories. The retained samples will be anonymised."
Read more about this topic: S And Marper V United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?—to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)