This bill has already been approved by Cabinet in April 2013, and during August, was signed into law after the National Assembly passed it.
This Bill, officially known as the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill B09-2013, now just need to undergo a couple of tweaks. In essence, it will have a profound impact on the criminal justice system in South Africa.
The bill sets out the circumstances under which DNA samples should be taken from persons charged with serious crimes and those convicted of serious offences.
It also provides for the voluntary giving of DNA samples to help police in missing persons cases, and to identify human remains.
And it is also high time – a proper functioning DNA database could potentially solve a lot of cases, and link already sentenced criminals to other crimes that have grown cold.
This sounds a lot like the CSI episodes watched on TV, but the fact remain, the effective use of DNA samples is very effective in fighting crime and will only boost law enforcement in this country.
Why it is has taken so long to get to the DNA Bill will remain a mystery, but at least, finally, the time it seems has come for criminals to be very careful of their actions.
At the moment, the existing DNA database in South Africa which has through default, evolved under the governance of the Criminal Procedure Act of 1977, is a wholly inadequate tool for regulating the use and retention of DNA profiles on a National DNA Database.
The new Bill will ensures that the future of the current DNA database is expanded and managed in a regulated and appropriate manner.
What will happen once this Bill becomes an Act, in simple terms, is that at the crime scene, the police will look for evidence, and among the evidence would be DNA that is left behind.
This will be known as crime scene samples and it will be loaded onto the database under the crime scene index.
Detectives would then be able to link criminals to crime scenes by taking DNA samples and checking them against the index. The DNA database can also be used to exonerate convicted offenders.
At the forefront of advocating for the use of DNA evidence in the resolution of crime is the DNA Project, which is a registered non-profit, public benefit organisation.
The DNA Project hopes that its efforts will translate into the comprehensive use of DNA analysis for crime detection and prevention in South Africa.
According to Vanessa Lynch, founder of the DNA Project, the DNA database is maximised to its full potential in combating and preventing crime in South Africa, whilst still ensuring that it has minimal impact on the civil rights of its citizens.
According to the DNA Project, the DNA Bill will enforce the following actions:
* It will make it mandatory to take DNA samples from suspects at the time of arrest for schedule one offences.
* It mandates that all convicted offenders DNA samples are taken retrospectively and before their release from prison.
* It calls for police officers to be allowed to take non-intimate DNA samples from arrestees and convicted offenders. The collection of a non-intimate DNA sample by a specially-trained police officer from an arrestee or convicted offender ensures that a sample is quickly and easily uplifted.
* The DNA Bill ensures the creation of a DNA database in South Africa that will function effectively not only as a tool for gathering inculpatory evidence, but also for gathering exculpatory evidence, to appropriately eliminate suspects and so safeguard against wrongful convictions or other miscarriages of justice.
The DNA Project highlights five storages of DNA:
* The Crime Scene Index, containing DNA profiles collected from crime scenes.
* The Reference Index, containing DNA profiles taken from persons suspected, reported, charged or cautioned for any recordable offence.
* The Convicted Offender Index, containing DNA profiles of convicted offenders.
* The Elimination Index, containing DNA profiles of people working in the collection and analysis of forensic samples.
* The Volunteer Index, containing DNA profiles of victims, as well as persons requesting their profiles to be kept on the database. Parents may volunteer to record their children’s DNA on the Volunteer Index in case they ever go missing.
Before we all get too excited, the Bill could pose two potential challenges.
One, it could call for an Oversight Committee to be formed to monitor the implementation of this legislation.
Then challenge therefore lies at the heart of the functionality and competence of such a committee, which will burden a lot of responsibility. History in this country attest to oversight committees at times proving to be non-operational and even inadequate for the task.
Secondly, in order to ensure the successful implementation of this legislation, first-on-crime scene police investigators, as well as key personnel involved in crime scenes, including the private security and emergency services sector, must be trained in how to identify, collect and preserve DNA evidence at crime scenes.
This calls for strict training, high levels of integrity and competence to collect DNA samples and store in again according to law. One already get this bad feeling that there is potential room for error and let us be honest, potential corruption.
As an interesting note, recently in America, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that DNA swabs taken from people arrested but not convicted of a serious crime are a “legitimate police procedure,” just like fingerprints and photographs, and lawful under the Fourth Amendment.
This step taken by South Africa, thus, to introduce the DNA Bill, it seems is in line with developments in America when it comes to fight crime while remaining sensitive to the rights of its citizens.
Personally, the DNA Bill gets a huge thumbs up.
