Safe in their hands?

There is a postcode lottery relating to the removal of the records of innocent people from the DNA database.

South Yorkshire police force does best, complying with 83% of requests for deletion, see here. Other forces including Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire and Nottinghamshire have refused to remove any profiles. Essex, Greater Manchester and Thames Valley — wouldn't even provide any information on the grounds that it would be too costly.

We also discover via FOI requests that more than 400 officers and support staff have been sacked or given warnings after being caught looking at inappropriate material online and some officers have also been dismissed for using police databases to check out people’s backgrounds for personal reasons. See here.

The information provided by 47 police forces showed that on average nine members of staff have been punished for flouting IT rules in every force. In this respect, South Yorkshire was the force with the worst record, with 53 members of staff caught on inappropriate sites.

Also, remember that since 2005 if you have had your DNA taken, you will also have a record on the Police National Computer, see here, and evidently there are no plans to delete this accompanying identity data on the Police National Computer.