From jail cells to skin cells
Those who fear Britain is turning into a big brother state may not be too far off the mark as a new report purportedly points to the fact coppers are nabbing people just to get their DNA on a national database.
The Guardian reports that the government's human genetics commission report, entitled Nothing to hide, nothing to fear? says England and Wales have the biggest DNA databases in the world at just over five million profiles, a whopping one million of whom have never been charged with an offence.
As if that wasn't bad enough, it seems the police are also being rather, ehem, selective about their profile subjects, with a stunning three-quarters of young black males, aged 18 to 35, already in the database.
For a process which allegedly has little clear statutory basis or independent oversight, those are rather alarming statistics.
Perhaps even more disturbing is the home secretary's plan to hang on to those records for six years, whether the subject is innocent or not.
Think that's steep? Thank your lucky stars the European court made it illegal for governments to indefinitely retain DNA profiles back in December 2008.
