Positive and/or negative consequences of establishing an international DNA database.
A:Â Pros:
- A DNA database covering the entire world’s population, would save massive amounts of police time and help solve crimes and catch criminals faster.
- The current system – the DNA of all those arrested for recordable offences, guilty or not, is retained – is selective and inefficient because it doesn’t cover the entire population, not even from an entire country, making it much harder to catch a criminal who hasn’t committed previous offenses.
- Current practice is unfair: ethnic minorities and young people are over-represented, creating resentment and anti-police feeling. Two-in-five black men have their DNA on record, as against fewer than one-in-ten whites.
Cons:
- Whatever is the utility of DNA samples, it’s weird to enter newborn fingerprints in databases.
- A national DNA bank would be incredibly expensive and bureaucratic.
- It would cause fear in between the population against its own government, because some people would feel like they were being controlled and not trusted.
- DNA information could be abused by corrupt police and others illegally passing information to unauthorised people.
- You end up being penalized for something you haven’t even done and then you have to submit your DNA to be stored in a database in perpetuity.