National security minister Peter Bunting has given the clearest indication yet that the long-promised DNA bill may not be enacted anytime soon and may not be operationalised this legislative year.
The minister was speaking during Tuesday’s sitting of the Standing Finance Committee, which examined the 2014-2015 Estimates of Expenditure.
“It will take some time to put in place the infrastructure for this widespread taking of samples. It will require administrative arrangements, not just in the lab, but literally in every police division across the island. The bill has not come to Parliament as yet. The nature of these types of bills when they come, they have to go to a joint select committee. That, as we have seen, could take another six months. Then, assuming it is passed, you will need some lead time to do training of police personnel to take the non-invasive samples,” the minister explained.
The DNA bill is one in a menu of legislative mechanisms proposed for the tracking of crime. It will allow for the compulsory collection of DNA samples from suspects and the maintenance of a database of these samples and the profiles that they get from the samples.
Bunting said his ministry had done its share of the work and was awaiting the return of a draft from the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel.
The minister is declaring that there is no backlog in the forensic certificates, including for victims of the May 2010 security operations in west Kingston.
no backlog
“I am told that all the forensic certificates in relation to the May 2010 operation are intact and there is no backlog of either forensic certificates or post- mortem,” Bunting said.
Bunting disclosed that the fingerprint automated system reached its limits last year, increasing the need for its expansion.
The Government is to spend $167.2 million this year for the purchase of equipment to expand the system, which will, among other things, allow for the mass conversion of three million paper record fingerprints.
“The system is now at its capacity … . We have to upgrade the capacity of the system as well other hardware to allow the processing capacity to be in line with the additional records because every day, you have new arrests, new charges, and new records being created, and all those have to be placed into the system,” Bunting said.
The Gleaner