DNA Testing and Social Control
Pragmatism is the name of the game when it comes to taking away freedom. The public tends to be against any attempt to curtail civil liberties across the board. It is standard practice, however, to for the government to violate the rights of certain groups in the name of public safety or to fight crime. This is what is happening with the government collection of DNA samples.
The state of New York announced on August 5 that it intends to collect DNA samples from every person in prison, on parole, or in probation in that state for one of a specified list of crimes. Included on this list are murder, sex crimes, drug dealing, and some drug offenses. The samples will be digitized and placed on state computers. Once this database has been establish, police will be able to search it in order to find a match with evidence found at crime scene.
New York is not alone in doing this. All 50 states maintain a DNA database of some type. Mostly though it is only individuals convicted of sex crimes that have their records stored. Eight states sample DNA at a level comparable to the New York proposal. In Louisiana the police actually take and keep DNA samples from any person that they arrest.
Proponents of expanding the use of DNA tests in the legal arena like to point out that these tests will exonerate truly innocent individuals. DNA tests have exonerated some wrongly imprisoned people but it is disingenuous to think this is the real reason for growing use of DNA tests. The real reason for all of this is, of course, to help prosecutors obtain more convictions. It is thus worth keeping in mind that the criminal justice system currently reflects deep class and race biases. Journalist and attorney David Cole argues persuasively in his recently published book No Equal Justice that this is no accident. Rather law enforcement, the legal system, and the prison system operate in a way that insures the disproportionate imprisonment of poor people and people of color. If the government only conducts DNA tests of people convicted of crimes, it will fortify and expand this already unfair process.
Of course one possible way to blunt these biases is to take DNA samples from absolutely everybody. This might seem Orwellian but there is a certain logic to it. A person convicted of a felony does not posses any more connection to a random crime than does any random individual from society at large. So why not test everybody? Howard Safir, the New York City police chief, has said, "the only ones who have anything to worry about from DNA testing are criminals." If it were guaranteed that the DNA samples would not be used by anyone other than prosecutors and law enforcement, would there be anything to fear?
In a word, yes. History doesn't offer much assurance the government would only use this data for its original purposes. Social Security numbers were only supposed to be used for the Social Security program but now are a ubiquitous form of identification. The U.S. government relied on census data when in the midst of WWII it decided to round up people of Japanese descent.
And scientific advances mean that the genetic makeup of individuals is going to be quite valuable information in the future. Insurance companies might use this data to deny policies to people with the wrong genes. Although there is no scientific merit to the idea that there is some sort of "criminal gene," this has not stopped certain individuals and groups from searching for such a trait. Presumably, if they located some specific gene to blame this and gained political support, the DNA testing could be used to label individuals as being criminals from birth.
The lesson is quite clear. Whenever the government takes DNA samples for the purpose of a permanent record from an entire class of people, it is moving one step closer to creating a permanent record of DNA samples from everybody. And this information will be used not just to solve crimes but also to keep tabs on citizens for a wide variety of purposes.Partner sites: Bulldog, Study Spanish in Mexico, and The Great Gatsby