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[[[[[A CIVIL rights storm has erupted in England after the country's police chief called for the DNA of badly behaved children as young as five to be recorded on a national database.]]]]]Forensic science director for the Metropolitan Police Gary Pugh said bad children should be "targeted" because future offenders could often be picked out at a young age.The idea has attracted high-level political support despite complaints from civil libertarians.Home Secretary Jacqui Smith signalled that ministers were looking at the idea and Home Office officials said plans to include primary school children would be kept "under review".Britain's criminal surveillance network includes one of the world's biggest DNA databases which holds 4.5 million samples of genetic material, many taken from people who have been arrested but never charged with a crime.By next year, it is expected that 1.5 million of the samples will be from youngsters aged between 10 and 18.Mr Pugh, who speaks on DNA for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said signs of future criminality could be found in children as young as five."If we have a primary means 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."A spokesman for lobby group Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, said he was upset by the proposal. "My five-year-old likes sword-fighting and Power Rangers," he said."If this idea goes ahead he will be coming back from school one day with his name down on a criminal intelligence database."Jill Kirby, director of the think tank Centre for Policy Studies, said the plan was another example of the Government's obsession with databases."This is another example of the Government telling us that in order to be safe, we have to be on a database," she said."But they have an appalling record for handling data and the usefulness of DNA records is increasingly in doubt."The Home Office said there were no Government plans at this stage to extend the use of the national DNA database."We will however continue to keep this under review and listen to the views of those on all sides of the debate," a spokesman said.
As in the days of Noah....
