In this post we provide a summary of a report conducted by Kris Dierickx in which all Member States were surveyed on the use and operation of DNA Databases in their jurisdictions. The full report is available here.

Collection of Samples

• Belgium and Italy require a judicial order for the collection of crime scene stains by police.
• Luxemburg requires that stains are only collected in the course of an official criminal investigation.
  Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia, England & Wales, and Scotland give police full authority to take DNA samples from suspects and convicted offenders.
• Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Luxemburg, and The Netherlands require a court order is required to coercively take a DNA sample.
• Austria, France, and Finland allow police are to coercively take a DNA sample only in cases of ‘serious’ offences, offences (meriting 10 years imprisonment)
  Sweden and Lithuania allow for coercive sampling of crime suspects but not convicted offenders.
• Only Lithuania, Sweden, and Slovakia do not allow sampling of minors and mentally ill-persons.
• Only Finland, Germany, and Luxemburg have set a precise minimum age whereupon minors can be sampled. Many others require consent of a legal guardian.

Placement of Samples on Database

• In Belgium and Luxemburg entry of a sample onto the database requires a court order.
• All States apart from Belgium and the Czech Republic allow for the entry of suspects’ DNA profiles.
• England & Wales, Scotland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia allow for the entry of those who are arrested for any recordable offence, while other Member States have higher conditions.
• In Finland suspects can be entered when they are arrested for an offence meriting a prison sentence of six months or more, whereas convicted offenders can only be entered when they are punished by three years imprisonment or more.
• Most Member States remove profiles immediately from databases where they do not match a crime scene or the individual is acquitted.
• England & Wales, Denmark and the Baltic States allow for the retention of all suspects’ DNA profiles, regardless of the outcome of the criminal investigation (legislative reform in UK pending).
• Six Member States (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Malta, Greece, and Ireland) have not yet established a forensic DNA database. Only Greece is not currently debating legislative proposals.

Database access

The study identified distinctions in who is given access to the database information. This could possible include forensic divisions in full or just police or judges.

• Only Germany and Denmark give both equal access rights.
• In Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Slovakia, Sweden, The Netherlands, and the UK, only the staff members of the forensic divisions have full access rights to the database information. Police and judicial officials have only limited access.
• Only in Denmark and Germany are police given full access rights. In all other Member States judicial approval is required.
• Only four Member States (Austria, Denmark, France, and Hungary) have given judicial officials full access.

International exchange of the DNA profiles

All Member States currently use the Interpol DNA gateway and database to exchange their DNA profiles. This is just an exchange platform and does not store the personal information into its database. Where a match is found, Interpol alerts the relevant countries who then negotiate the potential for exchange of information.

The Convention of Prüm allows its contracting partners to access each others complete DNA profile collections and establishes clear agreements on the exchange terms and on the privacy measures which should be taken into account, making the process more straightforward. Seven Member States have signed the Convention (Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and The Netherlands) of which six have also ratified it (except for France). Finland, Portugal, Italy and Slovenia have declared their intention to sign the Convention in the near future.