Pre-crime future takes start via profiling DNA database

Stanford researchers have conducted a study according to which it is easy to know people who are about to commit a crime. According to the experts, the DNA profiling can show the potential abuse.

Colleen Berryessa, program manager for Stanford's Center for Integration of Research on Genetics and Ethics states, "We already do what's called predictive policing or hotspot policing, which is based on statistics of where certain crimes happen. Now, we're getting into looking at the behaviors of individuals to predict whether they might commit a violent act, and genetics is part of that. It's far removed from pre-crime, but they are definitely steps in that direction."

Genetic profiling might go against principles of morality but is aimed to increase individual responsibility. DNA investigation helps to develop pre-crime studies. This is one of the reasons that more than 54 countries, according to the Interpol, have invested in DNA database back in 2009. The number has significantly risen since then.

United Arab Emirates is one of the countries that have contributed a lot in the DNA development. Not only its database is considered to be one of the largest in the world, they also have included 5.5 million citizens along with native Bedouins in it.

The UK has also adopted the so-called Crime and Security Act that allows the police to take samples, from behind the cheeks of criminals and adds the results into their database system.

However, the largest DNA database on Earth belongs to FBI's CODIS cache, which consists with information of 11 million people. Last year, the Supreme Court has allowed law enforcement agencies to extract DNA without the warrant on anyone being arrested.

“It wouldn’t be a radical extension [of preventative law enforcement] in the future,” Berryessa said.

Regardless of the motives, it will bring a lot of ethnical disagreements. But law enforcement agencies see DNA database as this crystal proof, something that cannot lie, thus something that can help greatly in the investigation. People tend to "put a lot of stock in the idea that genetic identity and origins can explain how or where a person ends up," confirms Berryessa.

According to University of Leeds criminal law professor Carole McCartney, "Juries no longer need to be convinced of the accuracy or reliability of DNA evidence. Indeed, the concern is now that juries may be far too easily persuaded by DNA or may even demand it before they will convict."

Meanwhile, Berryessa contradicts with this, "There's a lot of scapegoating with horrendous sexual crimes or mass shootings. When people look for explanations, genetics is one of the first places they look."

During the last ten years, the DNA databases have become rather unpredictable and reactionary; materials gathered there will be used for pre-crime studies in the near future.

However, how would knowing that you might commit a crime prevent it from committing it? Experts have proved that if a person knows he might fall ill, most possible he will and the knowledge seldom helps him in that.

In response to that, Berryessa says, “The labeling affects the individual identity. A person could be completely changed by finding out that he is genetically a problem and therefore may choose to live differently.”