Get DNA of Children "Future" Offenders?
Yea right! The so-called "experts" are always confident until the whole thing blows up in their faces.Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain's most senior police forensics expert. Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.
'If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,' said Pugh. 'You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won't. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.'...
Pugh's call for the government to consider options such as placing primary school children who have not been arrested on the database is supported by elements of criminological theory. A well-established pattern of offending involves relatively trivial offences escalating to more serious crimes. Senior Scotland Yard criminologists are understood to be confident that techniques are able to identify future offenders.
This is just a new eugenics. Who are these future offenders? Minorities? Boys being boys whose parents won't drug them? And once we judge them as future offenders, can't that become a self fulfilling prophesy by the way we treat them?
Good grief! If a kid is a problem, intervene to solve it. But DNA is a private thing and the government has no business taking it from children because they "might" do something wrong in the future.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:58 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
A couple of years ago some school districts in Britain were fingerprinting children, and some stink ensued. Collecting DNA is the obvious next step. It will start with children, as in the story, who "might" become criminals or troublemakers. Why, who could be opposed to that? If you oppose this, you must be pro-crime, authorities will say. But over time more and more groups will be added until all children are in the DNA database. Government bodies are shifty like that.
And Britain has been at the forefront of requiring, for example, all the men in a town where a savage crime has been committed to give DNA samples. Don't want to give one? You're automatically a suspect. Through such tactics, eventually all the population will be included in a British national database.
Similar drives exist here in the US. A proposed Tennessee bill would require DNA testing for paternity at birth before the father's name could be put on the birth certificate. This would be true even for married women, as the legislators cite the proportion of men forced to pay child support for children who aren't actually theirs. Make no mistake: paternity fraud is a real problem and a real issue, especially where welfare benefits that require naming the father come into play. Yet the proposed "cure" seems pretty terrible.
Some men's and fathers' rights advocates like the idea and believe that DNA paternity testing at birth ought to be mandatory. To be frank, as in Britain, the federal government is likely to try to require as much of the US population as possible to give samples for a national database anyway, using as "reasons" the ever-popular excuse of terrorism, consolidation of medical records, etc. So such a database might as well be used to the advantage of men's advocates (the reasoning seems to be). But paternity testing will require DNA from the mother, prospective father(s), and infant, and it's a sure bet that all these profiles will be placed in the database. It would be most convenient for authorities.
The men's advocates don't seem to comprehend where this will all lead once everyone's DNA is on file. This story from Britain is just the tip of the iceberg and a hint of what will follow.
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Here's an example of the kind of "future criminal" who might have to give a DNA sample under the British proposal. This is from John Rosemond's syndicated (American) parenting column of 12 October 2006, and note his warnings:
"Q: My 5-year-old son started kindergarten this year. He is an active, inquisitive boy who has not taken a nap in three years. However, the school enforces a 45-minute naptime after lunch, during which the kids must either nap or lie quietly. His teacher complains almost daily that my son not only doesn't sleep, but won't be still and quiet. Is there a discipline method the teacher and I can use to stop this, or should I just suggest that she give him a book to look at during naptime?
"A: You can certainly suggest to the teacher that she accommodate your son's special naptime needs (I've got my tongue in my cheek here) by giving him a book to look at while the other kids nap. If the school's policies will permit it, she might consider putting him in an isolated area of the classroom or in the hall with a book or solitary activity with which to occupy his time.
"Quite frankly, I'm a bit amazed that a school requires naptime of 5- and 6-year-old children, most of whom, like your son, haven't taken daily naps at home in at least two years. This is more than a tad unrealistic and speaks, furthermore, to some degree of rigidity on the part of the school's administration. I see the potential of your son being identified as a problem at this early stage of his academic career. While this would probably say more about the school than your son, it's nonetheless a reputation that may well follow him from grade to grade. For this reason, I think it's important that the school work with you to solve this problem in a way that doesn't involve punishment. If they will not, then I would suggest that you consider moving him to another school before he becomes labeled a troublemaker and you and he find yourselves on the diagnosis treadmill."
[Deleted and reposted due to formatting problems.]
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