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                            LexisNexisª Academic

                Copyright 2001 Nationwide News Pty Limited
                               The Advertiser

                         January 16, 2001, Tuesday

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 1258 words

HEADLINE: The great DNA dilemma

BYLINE: SAMELA HARRIS

BODY:
A call by a former Adelaide police commander to extend DNA testing to
suspects has reopened the debate on how much power police should be given in
the solving of crime. SAMELA HARRIS reports.

ONCE civil libertarians fought for personal privacies against the
encroachment of police fingerprinting.

Today, DNA testing offers a genetic fingerprint which is just as
individualistic as the whorls on the digit but tells a much larger story.
And, once again, civil libertarians are worried for individual rights to
privacy. The debates have been ongoing for years now as international
justice systems leap onto the DNA database bandwagon. Australia is there -
but according to former Adelaide police commander, Ken Thorsen, we are way
behind the times and need to go further than keeping the DNA tests of those
convicted of indictable offences, as we do now.

He thinks that all suspects should be DNA-tested to make the process of
detection easier - and he thinks the test results should be stored on a
database.

He told the Probus Club of West Lakes yesterday that South Australia's
legislation was the "weakest in Australia as a tactical investigative and
strategic policing tool".

The state's Forensic Science Centre has a very small database which consists
only of criminals convicted of indictable crimes since the legislation came
into power in 1998. Director of the centre, Dr Hilton Korbus, heads a team
of about 16 biologists and chemists with special DNA expertise who analyse
the samples provided through the police.

DNA samples may only be taken from offenders after permission has been
signed over to the police by a magistrate. Then they are usually gleaned as
"buccal swabs" from the inside of the cheek.

Other samples commonly are derived from blood or stains on fabric. The
extracted DNA is subjected to tests in sophisticated analytical equipment
and separated into different fragments which are classified according to
their size, patterns and combinations. The DNA is read as a series of
numbers which, unlike fingerprints, is very easy to store in computers.

Dr Korbus explains that the concepts of the DNA databases were enshrined
after the Commonwealth had developed a model bill and, while each state has
introduced subsequent legislation along the lines of the model, not all are
the same.

"What is specific to SA legislation is that it does not have a retrospective
component, which means that the existing prison population is not allowed to
be sampled, only those convicted of an indictable offence from the date of
the Act," he explains.

The next step in the evolution of the country's criminal DNA information
will be the incorporation into the national CrimeTrac databases in Canberra.

"When that database is online, all state-based data will be available to all
police," adds Dr Korbus.

Shadow Attorney general Michael Atkinson agrees with the DNA legislation as
it stands and does not wish to see the testing extended to suspects. "DNA
testing is a good tool for reducing crime, in that it increases chances of
being caught and lessens chances of crimes being perpetuated," he says.

"The bulk of crimes are committed by a comparatively small number of people.

"Obviously, the police would like everyone tested but I am broadly happy in
the current legislation although I can see merit in taking samples
retrospectively from all prisoners."

Attorney-General Trevor Griffin is on the record as reflecting that with all
the rights given to investigators "there has to be a balance and we try to
balance the rights of the citizen, and on the other hand the need for
investigators to be able to gather evidence and ultimately bring a suspect,
if there is adequate proof, to justice".

Professor Andrew Goldsmith, a Flinders University expert in legal ethics and
criminal justice, refers to the 1989 Fitzgerald Inquiry which pointed out
that the police often blame their shortcomings on inadequate powers.

"It is not a question of extending their powers so much, as how well they
use the powers they have - and are their existing powers well used or not?"
he asks. "Of course they want to take advantage of the technology as much as
they can. But there is a question of how widely databases should be used.
DNA contains information on a wide variety of issues and characteristics. It
goes wider than the needs of the police. And it opens the question of
effective oversight and the risks that computer hackers could get control of
databases."

Security problems are just one of the dangers perceived by Terry O'Gorman,
head of the Australian Council of Civil Liberties. "Where will it all end?"
he asks.

"It's convicted prisoners today, suspects tomorrow. Next thing will be a
whole street and then a complete neighborhood because, perhaps, evidence
from a crime scene points to a certain area. There is an incessant call from
the police to DNA wider sections of the population, which poses the question
of where it may end."

Mr O'Gorman also expresses concern about the security of data bases and the
risks from "human error, rogue police officers, rogue forensic scientists
and the dangers of planting false DNA".

"The police are raving about the wonder of DNA but they don't want to have
focus on the process in laboratories being vulnerable to mistakes as in
every other field of human endeavor," he reflects.

There is also a question of assurances on the destruction of a person's DNA
after they have been acquitted.

"There is always a risk with DNA that a proportion is kept while the sample
for analysis is destroyed in front of you," he adds. "There is no federal
watchdog. We have to rest on assurances, and history has shown that those
assurances have not always been reliable."

FLINDERS University Biologist and molecular geneticist Professor David
Catcheside sees a delicate balance between the practical advantages of DNA
databanks and the ethical issues.

"I am not an ethicist but I would have thought there are some advantages and
some dangers, depending on how the data is used," he says.

"The advantage is that the suspects are likely to include the perpetrator
and that would improve the clear-up chances."

On the other hand, there is the status of the innocent whom Professor
Catcheside says can be identified with even greater certainty than the
guilty.

"Lots would be demonstrated to be innocent," he says. "Exclusion is usually
100 per cent certainty."

He acknowledges that Britain has pioneered the processes of DNA databanks by
taking the DNA from convicted prisoners. This, he notes, "increases the
clear-up rate for crimes".

Britain has had a national DNA database since 1995 and remains a world
leader in the technology. Germany also has forged ahead with a DNA data
protocol which seeks to develop a trans-European system which may stand as a
model for future international standards for DNA forensic technology. So far
as victims are concerned, the executive director of Victims of Crime,
Michael Dawson says that a human rights line must be drawn between suspects
and convicted offenders.

"As a society it is going too far to test suspects and there is no huge
advantage to victims to warrant that level of intrusion into someone's
rights to privacy and innocence. It different for those convicted of serious
crime. We know that people tend to re-offend and from a victim's
perspective, DNA testing for those people is a crime and vicitim strategy
that is really very useful. But only for criminals who have been convicted."

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