Collecting DNA during arrests assumes guilt rather than innocence

Despite the good intentions of the government to fight crime, collecting DNA from every Tom, Dick and Harry who the police arrest hinders our society more than it helps it.

A recent New York Times article reported the Federal Bureau of Investigations would join 15 states in collecting the DNA of arrested people or those being detained.

The article further reported the FBI plans to expand its DNA database by 80,000 a year to its already 6.7 million profiles.
Perhaps what the FBI, government and advocates of this move fail to remember is people have assumed innocence until proven guilty within the framework of the Constitution.

Sure, we’ll hear all about the crimes this will help solve and the wrongfully accused this plan will save, but such action only creates problems for everybody else.

This is not to say the convicted innocents and the unsolved crimes are worthless endeavors.

Quite the opposite of that, because maybe what police need are more accurate ways to collect and test DNA. This new procedure, however, takes things to a paranoid level.

Think about it.

It’s certainly possible that you could be out late one night and get picked up as a suspect in a felony crime. It’s a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Maybe all you were doing was walking home from the bar one night, which is something millions of people have done.

Except you got arrested and, despite what we’ll all probably hear, you’ll be a suspect by default. Sound like something else in history?

Of course, the defense against this is to tell people to not commit crimes.

However, telling people to not commit crime is like telling a kid to never make a mistake.

This is not an avocation to commit crimes, but rather an attempt to highlight that making errors is part of being a human. Yes, even good and wholesome people can be around crime.

That’s not to say being around crime makes people guilty, but it certainly doesn’t look good in the eyes of the law. And remember, DNA is permanent.

Without ever making a mistake, people don’t learn right from wrong, good from bad or many of life’s lessons.
But let’s not forget who does the arresting, either.

When police make arrests, it’s because someone broke the law. But with law enforcement agencies collecting DNA, it’s certainly possible these same people protecting us could use such a procedure as leverage against civilians.

Not in a cruel sense, but just something which develops as collecting DNA becomes the norm. Such behavior, however, assumes people should not be allowed to make mistakes.

So why can’t the government learn this lesson? Perhaps it requires too much on their end.

As stated earlier, maybe police need better DNA collecting and testing of convicted criminals and of crime scenes. This will help ensure the wrongfully accused stay out of prison.

However, this brings up an interesting point with the wrongfully accused sitting behind bars. It means, somewhere on the pipeline, the government made a mistake. At some point between arresting people and hearing the gavel seal their fate, the government made a mistake.

Hard to imagine the government making a mistake, this point only highlights the need for a margin of error for civilians.
Making room for errors and understanding people make mistakes always works better than collecting the spit and blood of every suspect felon riding in a squad car wearing handcuffs. Only a government that thinks its citizens are criminals would believe otherwise.

This is not an avocation to commit crimes, but rather an attempt to highlight that making errors is part of being a human.
Yes, even good and wholesome people can be around crime.

That’s not to say being around crime makes people guilty, but it certainly doesn’t look good in the eyes of the law. And remember, DNA is permanent.

Without ever making a mistake, people don’t learn right from wrong, good from bad or many of life’s lessons.
But let’s not forget who does the arresting, either.

When police make arrests, it’s because someone broke the law.

But with law enforcement agencies collecting DNA, it’s certainly possible these same people protecting us could use such a procedure as leverage against civilians.

Not in a cruel sense, but just something that develops as collecting DNA becomes the norm.

Such behavior, however, assumes people should not be allowed to make mistakes.

So why can’t the government learn this lesson? Perhaps it requires too much on their end.

As stated earlier, maybe police need better DNA collecting and testing of convicted criminals and of crime scenes.
This will help ensure the wrongfully accused stay out of prison.

However, this brings up an interesting point with the wrongfully accused sitting behind bars.

It means, somewhere on the pipeline, something went wrong. At some point between arresting people and hearing the gavel seal their fate, the government made a mistake.

Hard to imagine the government making a mistake, this point only highlights the need for a margin of error for civilians.

Making room for errors and understanding people make mistakes always works better than collecting the spit and blood of every suspect felon riding in a squad car wearing handcuffs.

Only a government that thinks its citizens are criminals would believe otherwise.

Originally published in The Blue Banner, Spring 2010