Questioning what the police intend to do with your personal information is always a good idea.  But while credit card numbers and flirty text messages are personal, nothing is more personal than your DNA.  The most extreme witness protection-style identity overhaul can wipe out your former life completely, but nothing can separate you from the DNA in your hair, blood and saliva – the things you shed wherever you go.

The DNA database has generated a lot of recent media coverage, including ‘grave concerns’ of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, MPs who have been arrested without charge, and unsolved crimes.  But there is a question yet to be answered.  The database only holds a DNA profile, not to be confused with a sequence of our genome. As the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) states on its website, “DNA profiling targets areas of the DNA that are known to differ widely between individuals. Apart from a gender test, these areas do not code for any physical characteristic or allow definitive determination of any medical condition.”

Correct, but the original samples which can be used to decipher these characteristics are kept in a freezer or laboratory. I contacted the NPIA to ask first what these stored samples are for, and second, if they are ever used for ‘research’, by whom and under what criteria? They hadn’t answered my questions by the copy deadline for this piece. This information is not available on their website, the Home Office website or any other official public source. 

As genetic research is continuing to learn more about how our genomes relate to unique characteristics, if this intimate information is going to be stored we must be given a good reason for it. Since we may share genes with the convicted, whether or not we are related, the treatment of these samples affects all of our rights and should be transparently and technically addressed publicly.