In recent years, old arguments about civil liberties have taken on a decidedly national security slant. But with passage of a recent slate of federal and state laws, the debate over privacy rights and due process might be taken to a new arena...the mouths of criminal suspects.
Michigan will soon become the fifteenth state in the union to make it legal for law enforcement officers to take DNA samples from people suspected of a violent crime at the time of arrest. No waiting to be charged, no waiting for an attorney to show up. At the moment of arrest, suspects will get the ol' cotton swab to the mouth and the resultant saliva sample will be entered into a statewide DNA database.
According to a report in the Flint Journal, the new law will go into effect on July 1st and require anyone arrested for a violent crime, such as sexual assault or murder, to submit a DNA sample to the FBI-run National Combined DNA Index System, which contains over 6,539,919 offender profiles and 248,943 forensic profiles as of December 2008.
Before the law change, only people convicted of a felony and certain misdemeanors had their DNA submitted to the system. The change is expected to cost the state of Michigan (hardly experiencing an economic boom at this moment in time) about one million dollars a year for increasing the number of state police crime lab workers to handle the expected DNA sample increase.
Michigan joins states such as Arizona, California, Texas, and Virginia in the new DNA policy - not to mention the federal government, who announced last year that they would begin collecting DNA samples from anyone arrested by a federal law enforcement agency and from foreign nationals that have been detained but not yet charged.
At the time of the passing of the federal law last spring, Arizona Senator Jon Kyl told AP that "many innocent lives could have been saved had the government began this kind of DNA sampling in the 1990's when the technology to do so first became available."
Michigan State Representative Robert Dean, a supporter of the state law, compared the taking of DNA samples to collecting fingerprints and noted that the law won't just help with solving crimes, but can also possibly help overturn wrongful convictions. Dean told the Grand Rapids Press that the law is "a good way of helping law enforcement while, at the same time, respecting people's civil rights."
Just don't count the American Civil Liberties Union among the law's supporters. William Fleener, an attorney who has worked with the ACLU, told the Grand Rapids Press that "You have a privacy interest in your DNA. It's a pretty small step from this to requiring DNA samples from everybody at birth."
Hyperbole aside (mostly), the ACLU sent an open letter last April to Congressmen Robert Scott and Louie Gohmert of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security expressing their dismay at the new law. In the letter, Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, makes the argument that "housing a person's DNA in a criminal database renders that person an automatic suspect for any future crime - without warrant, probable cause, or individualized suspicion."
Fredrickson and Legislative Counsel Jesselyn McCurdy go on to cite issues such as privacy rights, racial biases, and the simple practicality of this policy as points to consider. The letter closes by making the argument that "crossing the line from convicted offenders to arrestees or other innocent persons renders a database a tool for surveillance rather than one for investigating crime and should not be tolerated."
Gary Elford, a retired detective who currently works as an analyst with the Flint Violent Crimes Task Force, takes a more bottom-line approach to the law. Elford told the Flint Journal, "anytime we can increase the number of people in (the database), it can help solve crimes."
In a city like Flint, which averaged 26 personal crime incidents for every 1,000 residents in 2007, the bottom line might just be the only thing that matters.
That being said, debates over civil liberties are never a cut and dry affair. Controversial laws from the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Patriot Act have been passionately argued over by both those in favor and those opposed to their implementation. With the current debate over Guantanamo Bay in full swing and the sharply divided reactions to the laws such as the one recently passed in Michigan, it is probably safe to assume that those debates aren't going anywhere any time soon. On top of all that lies the issue of pragmatism. Just how practical, not to mention affordable, is it for law enforcement officers to collect and catalog DNA samples of every suspect placed under arrest? That is a question not easily answered, but it is certainly something to keep an eye on.
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