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The Magistrate's Blog (2005-2012)

This blog has migrated to www.magistratesblog.blogspot.co.uk This blog is anonymous, and Bystander's views are his and his alone. Where his views differ from the letter of the law, he will enforce the letter of the law because that is what he has sworn to do. If you think that you can identify a particular case from one of the posts you are wrong. Enough facts are changed to preserve the truth of the tale but to disguise its exact source.

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Location: Near London, United Kingdom

The blog is written by a retired JP, with over 30 years' experience on the Bench.

Friday, June 27, 2008

DNA


There has been plenty of controversy over the Police practice of taking DNA samples from everyone who is arrested, whether or not that arrest results in a charge. I too feel a bit uncomfortable about it, and certainly few other countries go anywhere near as far as we do in the UK.
However, it is a fact that many crimes have been solved by DNA technology, and I saw one last year, when a man was charged with violent rape of a stranger. After the incident, several years ago, he got clean away. Until, that is, he was picked up for a trivial theft, the computers cross-matched the samples, and that was that.
Does that justify the backdoor building of a population-wide DNA database? It's not an easy one to answer.

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