Last update - 00:00 31/12/2007
Police gather saliva samples from prisoners for national DNA bank
By Jonathan Lis
Police started collecting DNA samples from prisoners Thursday in order to add them to a comprehensive database they have been building since February.
Crime scene investigators from the Israel Police's Division of Crime Identification (DCI) on Thursday took cheek swabs from 183 prisoners in two wings of the Ayalon prison. This is the first time police have taken DNA samples from prisoners, not just recent convicts or suspects.
Police are expected to continue taking DNA samples at other Israeli jails.
The database was legislated in 2005 in order to let police investigators cross-reference genetic profiles taken from crime scenes and identify serial offenders more efficiently.
DNA samples also have been collected from persons detained for questioning under caution.
Legally, police may use the DNA database only in cases involving violent crimes, property crimes and security crimes. Only felons convicted of such crimes were required to provide DNA samples on Thursday.
The prisoners were notified in advance, and were asked to allow DCI personnel to swab the inside of their cheeks, in order to collect a saliva sample. A police source said Thursday that none of the prisoners objected.
"The law orders us to take real-time samples from anyone convicted [of relevant crimes]," said Chief Superintendent Dr. Zafrir Goren, who heads the DCI's laboratories, "but we must also work retroactively and take samples from anyone who was convicted and jailed for these crimes. These samples will be entered into our national DNA database."
Goren said Thursday that the samples being collected will also be used to help solve open cases.
The database, which began operating in February 2007, now contains the genetic profiles of more than 15,000 convicts. In the past 10 months, it has led to 130 indictments.
Even so, in order for this database to be considered effective in international terms, it will have to contain DNA samples of more than 5 percent of the country's population - more than 350,000 genetic profiles.
When the database was established, human rights organizations were concerned that letting the state hold such a vast quantity of information about its citizens would harm privacy. The police therefore decided to adopt the British model first - producing a genetic profile of every suspect and every convict, to be stored with no time limit.
The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee held extensive discussions on this subject, with representatives of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and restricted the use of the database.
Among other things, the new law states that data on a suspect will be erased from the database after seven years if criminal proceedings against him end without a conviction. The genetic profiles of convicts will be erased after 20 years.
The database will also not be open for research use, unless the research is approved by a committee headed by a judge. The police will have to provide annual reports on the number of samples collected and the number destroyed.
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