Sat, 15 Sep 2007
The Police have eventually considered my case
exceptional
and have
destroyed
my bio-information and deleted the associated database
records (more details, in context, at the two links).
Here's a flow chart from Appendix 2 of the
Management
of Police Information (MoPI) Guidance - Step model - Retention
Guidelines (also known
as the
Retention Guidelines for Nominal Records
on the Police National Computer, incorporating the Step Down Model).
It describes the procedure to decide whether a case is deemed to be
exceptional:
This document doesn't describe the process after the red circled box is
reached. Hopefully there are processes to ensure that no database
record or bio-information sample is missed in the destruction and
deletion procedure.
Last
year 115 cases were considered exceptional.
Related news: on 2007-09-18, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics will be
publishing its Report The Forensic Use of Bioinformation: Ethical
Issues (
agenda
and registration). My response to the consultation and other
background info can be found in
Should
the Police keep your DNA forever?. Last week, Lord Justice
Sedley's
said
it would be fairer to expand the National DNA database to
cover the whole population and all those who visited the UK, even for a
weekend. Justified? Proportionate?
