Brave New Britain just keeps getting Braver and Newer: Now there is a serious discussion of putting the DNA of children into a database because they might become future criminals. From the story:
Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert. Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.
‘If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,’ said Pugh. ‘You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won’t. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.’…
Pugh’s call for the government to consider options such as placing primary school children who have not been arrested on the database is supported by elements of criminological theory. A well-established pattern of offending involves relatively trivial offences escalating to more serious crimes. Senior Scotland Yard criminologists are understood to be confident that techniques are able to identify future offenders.
Yea right! The so-called “experts” are always confident until the whole thing blows up in their faces.
This is just a new eugenics. Who are these future offenders? Minorities? Boys being boys whose parents won’t drug them? And once we judge them as future offenders, can’t that become a self fulfilling prophesy by the way we treat them?
Good grief! If a kid is a problem, intervene to solve it. But DNA is a private thing and the government has no business taking it from children because they “might” do something wrong in the future.
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