Homo Delinquens: The Race of Born Suspects

The lucky few freed from Death Row by DNA are now far outnumbered by the throngs convicted by DNA evidence - perhaps wrongly. Speaking at Stanford recently, UC Irvine Asst. Prof Simon A. Cole quoted a British report that in a typical month DNA matches are found in 15 murder cases, 31 rape cases - and 770 cases of motor vehicle crimes! But, Prof. Cole noted, DNA evidence requires specialists to find flaws, and public defenders assigned to such high-volume, low-stakes cases are highly unlikely to give those cases that kind of attention. So prosecutors have the advantage of knowing that purported DNA evidence will largely go unchallenged. In the same way that some activists initially supported the Taser as a more humane alternative to deadly force, and then found it was routinely used in minor offenses as a more deadly alternative to talking, use of DNA evidence to fight the death penalty bolstered its status as an infallible truth machine - making it more difficult to fight DNA profiling's dangerous expansion.

That expansion leaped into a new era in 2004, when California's Proposition 69 required collection of DNA samples from not only adults and juveniles convicted of committing or attempting any felony, arson, or sex offense, but also adults arrested for or charged with committing or attempting felony sex offenses, murder or voluntary manslaughter - even if there is no conviction. Additionally, starting in 2009 DNA will be collected from adults arrested for, or charged with, ANY felony offense - again, even if there is no conviction. The expanded list of qualifying offenses is retroactive, regardless of when the person was convicted. As a result, DNA can be obtained from adults and juveniles already serving time in correctional facilities as well as those who are on parole or probation for these offenses. As the League of Women Voters pointed out: "States have moved in less than a decade from collecting DNA from convicted sex offenders, on the theory that they are likely to repeat their crimes and that they frequently leave biological evidence, to data banks of all violent offenders, to all persons convicted of a crime, including juvenile offenders, and now to this proposal to collect DNA samples from everyone arrested or charged with any felony offense...Once individuals are put into the criminal DNA database, they must request a court order to be removed--even if they are factually innocent and never charged with a crime--and the government has no obligation to remove them. Each year in California, more than 50,000 felony arrests do not result in criminal charges."

Britain also retains DNA profiles of people who've been cleared of crimes - and this appalls Sir Alec Jeffreys, the inventor of identity matching by DNA. In 2002 Professor Jeffreys called the practice "highly discriminatory". Jeffreys also notes that a DNA sample is not the same as a fingerprint, since a DNA specimen contains genetic data on family and health: "My other concern is that some forensic scientists are now beginning to look for physical characteristics; genetic determinates of hair and eye colour, ethnic group as well - to get some indication of the physical appearance of a person where you have no clear suspect. The use of this sort of very private genetic information by the police does fill me with very considerable concern." So not only has the government rapidly expanded the criteria for DNA collection, but the use of the DNA sample has been steadily moving beyond simple identity matching to speculative construction of physical identity - i.e., here in California, DNA leads to BMA/HMA: "Black/Hispanic Male Adult".

In May 2006 forensic researchers publicized their newest way to circumvent the restrictions of the original vision of DNA "fingerprinting": familial searching. Frederick Bieber, of Harvard Medical School explained in a BBC interview: "Normally one would look for a perfect match between crime scene [DNA] evidence and a known offender in a database. Very close but not perfect matches might indicate, with some reliability, that crime scene evidence was derived from somebody very closely related to somebody in the databank. The offender may not be in the databank, but he may be the father or the son or the brother of someone who is."

It's important to note how often this brief statement uses the words "may" or "might". While both the public and law enforcement views DNA matching as infallible, specialists know that matching is not deterministic but statistical: the match is never 100% certain but, under best conditions, there is a high probability of accuracy (Consequently, some scientists warn that expanding the database increases the chance of a false positive match resulting from two unrelated individuals that coincidentally share the same DNA identity features). But routine forensic procedures are far from best conditions. The new technology is handled in the old way: in the corrupt style of the FBI Crime Lab, which a mid-1990s Justice Department investigation revealed had provided false reports on fingerprint, DNA, and ballistics to confirm local police theories without actually performing work - in cases including the 1995 Oklahoma bombing and the 1993 World Trade Center incident. Or in the incompetent style of the Houston police crime lab, whose work was so shoddy that it was banned from submitting into the FBI DNA database. Or the pure red-white-and-blue style of break-ins, theft, fraud, kidnapping, perjury, fabrication of evidence, frame-ups, and murder that distinguishes COINTELPRO and its current successor of unknown name. The systemic criminal injustices of the US criminal justice system guarantees that the expansion of DNA profiling will deepen the disparities in the US, home of the world's highest incarceration rate. According to a 2003 Justice Dept. report, a US black male has about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime, a Hispanic male has a 1 in 6 chance ; a white male, 1 in 17. From that basis, familial searching will spin a web that effectively incorporates entire communities into the database of "suspects": criminalized second-class citizens subject to increased monitoring and intrusions without even the minimal legal protections that govern conventional detention and arrest procedures. Prop 69 means you can be freed from bogus charges, yet remain a suspect for life. Familial searching means when your kids inherit your DNA, they also inherit your bogus criminalization: born suspects.

If DNA is a key to our identity, then it must be understood that locking up our DNA in government databases is "identity imprisonment". The mass roundup of DNA provides the selection pool that streamlines the ongoing program of widespread physical imprisonment of targeted communities. It's the next step toward achieving the dream of generations of US eugenicists - to cleanse America of its genetic undesirables - with a ruthless brutality that surpasses that of the Nazis in both scale and efficiency.

Resources:
- "DNA: Problem or solution?", October 2006
http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/display.var.985191.0.dna_problem_or_solution.php

- "Kin search 'could trap criminals'", May 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4763545.stm

- DNA Fingerprinting and Civil Liberties: from the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2004-2005
http://www.aslme.org/dna_04/index.php

- "Proposition 69 DNA Samples. Collection. Database. Funding", Nov. 2004
http://www.smartvoter.org/2004/11/02/ca/state/prop/69/

- "Privacy fears over DNA database", Sep. 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2002/leicester_2002/2252782.stm

- "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race", Edwin Black 2004 (book)