Black males four times as likely to appear on DNA Database

The national DNA database (NDNAD) has been criticised for its racially disproportionate records in a report released earlier this week by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Police and Racism, which looks at racial discrimination in the police service ten years after the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry report, found that black males appear more frequently on the national DNA database (NDNAD) than their white or Asian counterparts.

The NDNA is due for review following the landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg at the end of last year.

More than 30 per cent of all black males living in Britain are on the NDNAD, compared with ten per cent of white males and ten per cent of Asian males. The commission says that this over-representation of black men on the NDNAD poses a number of potential threats, including:

•Race patterns on the database could strengthen the tendency for ‘ethnic profiling’.

•Samples or DNA records could be sold to commercial research companies for research such as trying to establish crimogenic genes in certain races.

The report states that while in some areas the service is making clear progress in delivering race equality, the police and the Home Office should be pressed to maintain their progress and “the police should be applauded for the undoubted headway they have made towards greater race equality in the last decade”.