Nope, its completely true. DNA at the crime scene isnt any use
for catching the criminal if the criminal's DNA isnt available to
compare with the DNA that's found at the crime scene. Its only
useful when the more traditional approaches has turned up
suspects and can THEN be used to confirm if there is any of
that suspect's DNA at the crime scene with no plausible reason
for how it got there.
First, some countries (like the UK) are obsessed with keeping as much DNA
as they can - suspects, victims, people "helping the police with their
inquiries", and anyone else the police get hold of will get their DNA in
the database.
That is however a microscopic minority of countrys so whats
possible there isnt relevant to your general claim about DNA
And even there, **** all of the population has their DNA on
any database so **** all crime can be solved by just comparing
the DNA found at the crime scene with the database.
And once there, it is almost impossible to get it removed. The UK DNA
database has over 9M entries - one in seven citizens.
Still **** all of the total population, so **** all crime can be solved by
just comparing the DNA found at the crime scene with the database.
Secondly, crime scenes or victims usually have lots of different DNA.
Say a shop gets robbed. You can take DNA samples from everything in
sight - if you think you know who did it, then you can match the
suspect's DNA with spit found on the counter. But you typically can't
work the other way by looking up all the DNA samples and treating the
owners as suspects.
Yes, but most crime scenes arent like that. Most crime scenes do in
fact have DNA which is much more likely than not to have come from
the criminal and so can be used to confirm that particular suspect does
have his DNA at the crime scene without any plausible explanation
for how it got there.
Thirdly, DNA evidence is often considered as only circumstantial,
That's just plain wrong.
and not even enough to get a search warrant,
That's just plain wrong with crime scene DNA
and with a hit on the criminal DNA database.
as there are many ways your DNA can end up in odd places.
That's just plain wrong with most crime scene DNA.
Sometimes it can help, such as by verifying an alibi, but lack of DNA at
the scene does not mean the suspect was not there.
Yes, but presence of DNA does show that the suspect was there
most of the time.
Just another mindlessly one eyed view...
Irrelevant to your claim about how DNA is used.
That's just weasel words. There has been a massive increase in
the number of crimes where the guilt of the accused has been
proven using DNA and even more examples of where false
convictions have not happened because DNA proved that
a particular suspect wasn't the criminal that did the crime.
But they did allow them to be dismissed as suspects and so
allowed the police to concentrate on those who did the crime.
Yes, you can certainly make a case that it would be better to
remove those from the database and only retain the DNA of
convicted criminals on the database, but that's an entirely
separate argument to your original claim about DNA.
Nothing random about collecting the DNA of those.
Keeping the DNA of criminals on record is much like keeping their
fingerprints - it's an aid in catching or convicting people a second time.
But that's all.
Wrong. Its also a very effective way of catching the criminals
who do more crime later.
