Source: Daily Mail
More than 300 children a day have their DNA taken by the police and added to the national database. Already 412,670 youngsters under 15 have their genetic profiles stored. Once 15 to 17-year-olds are added, the total rises to an astonishing 1.1million, according to Freedom of Information replies revealed yesterday.
The DNA samples, from children as young as ten, are kept regardless of whether or not they were ever charged. Critics accuse the police of arresting entire groups of youngsters simply to have their DNA to checked against evidence from crime scenes in future.
This year alone, police forces have taken DNA from 54,311 subjects aged 10 to 17, according to information obtained by Jo Shaw, the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Holborn and St Pancras. She said: 'Labour's approach to tackling crime is unfair, heavy-handed and ineffective.'
There are around five million people on the DNA database - making it the largest in the world. Of these, at least 850,000 are innocents who have never been convicted of any crime. On this basis, around 200,000 of the children on the database will be innocent. The samples were taken under rules introduced by Tony Blair which allow suspects to be swabbed as soon as they are arrested.
Miss Shaw said: 'Storing the DNA of thousands of innocent young people is unlikely to solve our crime problems, but is a costly way of stigmatising young people. If you're innocent, you shouldn't have your data kept for years
