Call to add young to DNA database

Gary Pugh, who is due to become Acpo's spokesman on DNA, told the Observer that not enough of the "right people" were being sampled, and there could be great benefits in targeting young people.

Acpo insisted Mr Pugh was expressing his personal views, and their stance on the national register had not changed.

"The Acpo position on the national DNA database remains that it is an invaluable tool which assists the police in identifying and eliminating suspects in crime investigations and contributes evidence, which leads to the detection of thousands of crime," a spokesman said.

Changes to the way the database was run must have public support if they are to be effective, he said. "It is and always will be important, that the use of the database remains reasonable and proportionate and continues to contribute effectively to the detection of crime," he added.

Mr Pugh told the newspaper that current criminological research suggested that patterns of childhood behaviour could be used to identify people likely to go on to commit crimes in later years.

"If we have a primary measure of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting young people are extremely large," he said. "You could argue the younger the better. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society. The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people."

The Liberal Democrats condemned the idea of adding people who are not suspected of a crime to the DNA database.

The party's shadow home secretary, Chris Huhne, said: "This is the sort of Orwellian idea that should stay firmly in science fiction novels. Innocent people should not have their DNA stored, and that applies in spades to children who could be stigmatised by having their DNA taken. The only DNA samples that should be retained are of people who have been convicted or where DNA is found at the scene of a crime where there is a on-going investigation."

Police in England and Wales can take a DNA sample from anyone arrested or detained on suspicion of an offence, regardless of whether they are later charged, convicted or cleared, and DNA records are kept for life.