Monday Map: The Debate Over DNA Databases

Today's map shows the 21 states where the DNA profile of everyone arrested for a felony is added to the state database and checked against unsolved crimes. These laws have spread quickly in recent years, with several more states are considering joining the 21 above. The federal government started collecting profiles from arrestees last year. Here's the dilemma: many people arrested for a crime are innocent. The expansion of DNA databases to include suspects will lead us to solve some serious, violent crimes - but it also raises big concerns about three issues: the potential invasion of privacy, increased minority contact with the system and an unmanageable new burden for crime labs.

The map above comes from DNA Saves, an organization founded by the parents of a murder victim seeking to prevent future crime by catching perpetrators more effectively. The group's goals are admirable - a violent criminal is usually more likely to be arrested than an upstanding citizen, even for a minor crime. When the person's DNA profile is entered into the database and it matches the profile of a perpetrator of a serious crime, we've caught a potentially dangerous person. But in my view the logistics and the potential misuse of DNA evidence raise too many questions to go forward with arrestee databases. Here's why I feel this way:

1. The logistics: Ben Protess reported recently at ProPublica on the growing backlog of DNA tests in many states and in federal labs. ProPublica also connected the dots between DNA lab lobbyists and the lawmakers who support including arrestees in databases. You won't be surprised to learn that money is behind the growth of the database as well.

Backlogs and lab overload are the most critical reasons I think we should keep DNA databases to convicted felons. Passing a massive database expansion without funding more testing means rape kits will go untested, labs will be overburdened, crime scene evidence won't be tested. The rape kit crisis in Los Angeles is an example of how bad this can be. Authorities must remember to balance all of the cases before them. If there aren't resources to conduct tests in actual crimes, how are we able to test and store samples from everyone we arrest?

Liliana Segura covered this issue in a great piece last week at Alternet, and found the even within law enforcement, officers are finding database expansions "a blessing and a curse."

2. Racial imbalance: Members of minority groups are more likely to be stopped by police, they're more likely to be arrested for crimes and more likely to be convicted than whites. Storing samples from every arrestee means increased minority contact with the system. The U.K. has long had a very inclusive DNA database. Matilda MacAttram wrote on the Guardian's Joe Public blog recently that 3% of England's general population is in the database, while it includes 27% of the country's black population. One in four. In this way, databases only exacerbate the racial imbalances in the system. One can even imagine law enforcement officers exaggerating a cause to arrest someone just because they suspect their DNA profile will match one in the system.

3. Privacy: We don't know the exact bodily function of the DNA information we're currently storing - we think most of it is extraneous. If we're wrong, the government could be storing sensitive medical information. MacAttram wrote in her post as well about the potential for misplaced or stolen information. And then we have to worry about rogue databases (operated by local authorities outside of state jurisdiction) and familial searches, where officers search for similar profiles to the crime - rather than exact matches - potentially bringing suspicion down on more innocent people.

Database expansion is a tricky issue, because databases are powerful crime-solving tools and they should be used. We simply need to watch closely exactly how we use them, and how big we let them get.