Over the years, state and federal laws expanded the scope of the database: it started to include genetic information from people convicted of misdemeanors and from people who were arrested - but not yet convicted - of major crimes. “It was supposed to have the DNA of a sexual predator after their conviction, for example, so that they could be caught immediately if there was another sexual assault.” “It was supposed to catch recidivism,” Prinz says. At the time, the database only included records of people convicted of violent federal crimes. The DNA Identification Act of 1994 first gave the FBI the authority to establish a national database of genetic information, called the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) National DNA Index System (NDIS). “If you increase the number of records that only correspond to immigrants, that’s going to be the population we see as criminals.” That skews statistics around who has committed crimes, Malin says. Having a larger proportion of DNA from some groups means it’s more likely that crimes that group commits are solved, even if they’re not committing more crimes overall. African Americans made up 40 percent of the database in 2011, for example, despite making up only around 13 percent of the population. “Except for immigration offenses, these are law abiding people,” says Mechthild Prinz, a forensic DNA specialist and associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.Īdding immigrants - mostly people of color - to the FBI’s database accentuates the bias toward non-white people that already exists in the system. “This has major implications for characterizing who we think of as a criminal,” says Bradley Malin, co-director of the Center for Genetic Privacy and Identity in Community Settings at Vanderbilt University.Īlthough President Trump has consistently claimed immigrants are criminals, they’re no more likely to commit crimes than people born in the US, and may even be less likely to commit crimes, according to research published in the Annual Review of Criminology. Those additions will fundamentally change the FBI’s system, both by expanding its scope and by amplifying the overrepresentation of people of color within the database. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the FBI’s national genetic database would house immigrant DNA, as part of a program that will collect DNA samples from people who are detained at the border. Sending genetic material from detained immigrants to an FBI database could have consequences for both immigrant privacy protection and criminal justice in the US more generally, experts say.
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