Moving in the Wrong Direction
Posted by Osagie Obasogie April 22, 2009
Biopolitical Times
After both California and the federal government recently took steps to enact provisions that allowed for the inclusion of people merely arrested for (but not convicted of) crimes into their respective criminal databases, many commentators suspected that this trend would continue. And it has. In recent weeks, both Nevada and Colorado are pursuing state laws that would place arrestees’ DNA in forensic databases, right next to profiles from convicted felons.
The inclusion of arrestees’ DNA in forensic databases raises several social justice and privacy concerns, which are discussed at length in Playing the Gene Card? and a recent front page article in the New York Times. But we should all give pause to this rapid expansion from their original conception as repositories for only the most heinous convicted criminals to now, where in some states, being accused of felonies as unremarkable as writing a bad check might land you in one of these databases.
The inclusion of arrestees’ DNA in forensic databases raises several social justice and privacy concerns, which are discussed at length in Playing the Gene Card? and a recent front page article in the New York Times. But we should all give pause to this rapid expansion from their original conception as repositories for only the most heinous convicted criminals to now, where in some states, being accused of felonies as unremarkable as writing a bad check might land you in one of these databases.