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They collect DNA of anyone arrested by the police. Then they aim to destroy samples taken from people not subsequently convicted. As I understand it the proces

They collect DNA of anyone arrested by the police. Then they aim to destroy samples taken from people not subsequently convicted. As I understand it the process is quite opaque and there have been cases where some police forces have revealed that they are unable to (or simply refuse to) comply with the requirement to delete samples so they keep everything. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7863539/Police-ordered-to-use-powers-to-delete-innocents-DNA-records.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/786353... >Research found South Yorkshire was most likely to remove a DNA profile while Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire and Nottingham refused to remove any profiles.

vixen99 8y ago
So they make their own laws or break existing law? Either is unacceptable. How is one 'unable' to destroy a tissue sample?
- Spare_account 8y ago
  I'm lucky to be able to say that I haven't experienced it directly to be able to answer in more detail but the article I linked suggests that it is a bit of both. Some senior police officers interpret the rules in a way that suits them, some people say the law as written is ambiguous. I mostly interpret "Unable" in this context to mean it would require too many man-hours to clean up the database because it has been allowed to grow too large and disorganised. I can't back that up with evidence, it's just something I recall hearing. There are no doubt other reasons and this applies to the overall picture rather than individual requests for removal. In the case of an individual request I could still imagine that the system is so badly designed that it isn't actually possible to locate all parts of a sample, all references to an individual in the (various) database(s). I've seen environments like that in the corporate world, I assume the government is capable of creating them as well.

vixen99 8y ago

So they make their own laws or break existing law? Either is unacceptable. How is one 'unable' to destroy a tissue sample?

Spare_account 8y ago
I'm lucky to be able to say that I haven't experienced it directly to be able to answer in more detail but the article I linked suggests that it is a bit of both. Some senior police officers interpret the rules in a way that suits them, some people say the law as written is ambiguous. I mostly interpret "Unable" in this context to mean it would require too many man-hours to clean up the database because it has been allowed to grow too large and disorganised. I can't back that up with evidence, it's just something I recall hearing. There are no doubt other reasons and this applies to the overall picture rather than individual requests for removal. In the case of an individual request I could still imagine that the system is so badly designed that it isn't actually possible to locate all parts of a sample, all references to an individual in the (various) database(s). I've seen environments like that in the corporate world, I assume the government is capable of creating them as well.