Dr Robin Cotton and Dr Andy Hopwood discuss mass DNA screening

Student:
You've just said about the screening – the DNA screening of criminals. What about the mass DNA screening of those people who aren't suspects? What is the public opinion of that?

Robin:
It's not very popular in the US. We don't have many instances where we've done that.

Andy:
Yeah, I'm not quite sure what's happening in the UK because we kind of expected a big fuss about changing the law. We changed the law in 1995 to allow us to take those samples, by force if necessary, and we don't tend to have to take them by force.

We've changed the law again since so that once your sample is on the database then it stays there, it doesn't come off at all, whether you're found guilty or whether you're not guilty. And again, we didn't get anything from the public rights people or anything like that, which we were quite surprised at to be honest.