Use of DNA in crime fight a game-changer

FOR just over a century, fingerprinting has played a pivotal role in the resolution of crimes and the administration of justice. The process is such an effective tool that criminals, the blue-collar kind anyway, regard gloves as essential.

Since fingerprinting changed police work, DNA profiling advanced to the point where it is a reliable way of identifying an individual as a person of interest in an investigation — or ruling an individual out of an investigation.

For many years there was a reticence around DNA profiling in this country and a national DNA database was not established until last November. Because of that, it is likely that some individuals guilty of crimes avoided conviction, while innocent people might have been wrongly convicted and possibly jailed. Early research has shown the great value of DNA profiling in fighting crime — 215 unsolved crimes have been cracked in less than a year with the help of the national DNA database. More than 4,500 DNA samples are held in the DNA database and include around 1,760 taken by gardaí and around 740 taken by prison officers.