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Lyndon Hood - correctorer, Wellington

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Viz earlier post about Nat DNA testing:

Using Scoop's new souped-up archive search I found this:

6. We’ll make it easier for police to catch and prosecute criminals by giving them the power to take DNA from every person arrested for an imprisonable offence.

We will pass this law as a matter of priority and work with police to provide the resources needed to ensure that, by the end of our first term at the latest, this is the practice of every police district in the country. As is the case with fingerprints and photographs, we will require DNA records to be destroyed where charges are dropped or where suspects are found not guilty.
So while it does still seem inexplicably extreme to me (why not just wait for convictions), that does preclude the particular evilness I was concerned about.

*breathes out*

Now we can move on to the merely daft and counterproductive aspect of their justice policy.

[Update: It struck me that it's still likely to encourage the cops to charge people just to get the DNA. But I'll try to wait and see.]

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