Managing forensic DNA records in a divided world: the Belgian case

Pages269-287
Date16 November 2015
Published date16 November 2015
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-05-2015-0018
AuthorPatrick P.J.M.H. Jeuniaux,Bertrand Renard,Leen Duboccage,Séverine Steuve,Caroline Stappers,Inès Gallala,Sabine De Moor,Alexia Jonckheere,Benjamin Mine,Beatrijs Vanhooydonck,Morgane Kempenaers,Christine De Greef,Pierre Van Renterghem,Vanessa Vanvooren
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management,Information management & governance
Managing forensic DNA records in
a divided world: the Belgian case
Patrick P.J.M.H. Jeuniaux, Bertrand Renard, Leen Duboccage,
Séverine Steuve, Caroline Stappers, Inès Gallala, Sabine De Moor,
Alexia Jonckheere, Benjamin Mine, Beatrijs Vanhooydonck,
Morgane Kempenaers, Christine De Greef,
Pierre Van Renterghem and Vanessa Vanvooren
(Author afliations can be found at the end of the article)
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to describe the activity of managing records related to forensic DNA
identication. First, it illustrates the fundamentals behind the technique of forensic DNA identication.
Second, it explains the legal and institutional contexts in which it is used as well as the notion of DNA-based
judicial records. Third, it provides details of records management issues that are met in practice.
Design/methodology/approach – An interdisciplinary team reects upon the practices surrounding the
management of DNA-based records in the Belgian National DNA database during more than 10 years.
Findings – The main problems with managing DNA-based judicial records stem from the existence of
natural boundaries between the various stakeholders operating with or within the Belgian judicial system.
Six types of issues have been found: non-automaticity and omission, error-prone and inefcient manual
operations,electronic issues, results quality, useful reporting and incoherence and duplication. These problems are
discussed in terms of four records characteristics: completeness, correctness, traceability and usability.
Research limitations/implications The research is limited to the Belgian case with no
comparison with other countries.
Practical implications – This paper attempts to formulate general principles that aim to stimulate
good practices in managing records in the eld of criminal justice.
Social implications – The ethical issues surrounding the domain of criminal policy (e.g. the proper use of
nancial resources, the fair and balance use of records to carry out justice) are of general interest to the public.
Originality/value – The paper benets from a large temporal angle (more than 10 years) and applies
a multidisciplinary viewpoint on its subject.
Keywords Criminal justice, Records management, Public policies, Administrative boundaries,
DNA database, DNA-based judicial records
Paper type Research paper
The writing and research for this paper were supported by the PIES project and the Be-Gen project.
The PIES project “The Prüm Implementation, Evaluation, and Strengthening of Forensic DNA Data
Exchange”, project number HOME/2011/ISEC/AG/PRUM/4000002150 received nancial support of
the ISEC Programme “Prevention of and Fight against Crime” ( European Commission –
Directorate-General Home Affairs), grant agreement number 30-CE-0498536/00-03. The Be-Gen
project “Understanding the Operational, Strategic and Political Implications of the National Genetic
Database” received nancial support of the BRAIN-be Programme “Belgian Research Action through
Interdisciplinary Networks” (Belgian Science Policy Ofce), contract number BR/132/A4/Be-Gen. The
sole responsibility lies with the authors. The European Commission and the Belgian Science Policy
Ofce are not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained in this paper.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0956-5698.htm
Managing
forensic DNA
records
269
Received 15 May 2015
Revised 24 September 2015
Accepted 28 September 2015
RecordsManagement Journal
Vol.25 No. 3, 2015
pp.269-287
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0956-5698
DOI 10.1108/RMJ-05-2015-0018
Introduction
In this paper, we describe the activity of managing the criminal judicial records that are
related to the technique of forensic DNA identication (hereafter, the “DNA-based
judicial records”). To our knowledge, such a description is absent from the literature in
records management. Given the societal worries focusing on the use and misuse of
technologies involving personal data such as those based on DNA, whether they are
concerns for the right to privacy (Renard, 2011;Rothstein and Talbott, 2006;Shapiro and
Weinberg, 1990;Williams and Johnson, 2005), function creep (Dahl and Sætnan, 2009;
Renard, 2008), inefciency of justice (McCartney, 2005), abuse of law-enforcement or
miscarriage of justice (Machado et al., 2011), a thorough inspection of the mechanisms
that handle DNA-based judicial records should be of great interest to a democratic
society (Renard, 2013;Williams and Wienroth, 2014). For instance, issues of records
retention may induce infringement on private life as was seen in the judgment of the
European Court of Human Rights “S & Marper vs United Kingdom” (cf. Prainsack and
Toom, 2013). By opening up a rare window on the processes that handle such records,
we aim to offer a contribution to a much needed collective and public debate.
Taking Belgium as the context, we explain that DNA-based judicial records used in
that country are composed of different elements that are spread across several
administrative boundaries or stakeholders and that this divided world creates specic
issues of records management. We show that the ability of correctly linking the different
elements that compose DNA-based judicial records is a key objective of proper records
management. We also explain what processes attempt to ensure that records are
complete, correct, traceable and usable.
Methodologically speaking, our description of the issues is set up in the context of the
Belgian National Forensic DNA Database (hereafter “the national DNA database” or
“NDD”) within the arena of the criminal justice system. Among the authors of this paper,
some have worked at the NDD department from its onset, while others are practitioners
currently operating within it (records managers, database experts and biochemists) –
spanning together more than 10 years of activities. To reect on their experience, they
teamed up with colleagues (data scientists, criminologists) who investigate topics
relevant either to the functioning of justice and society at large or the use of forensic
evidence in particular. Parts of the thoughts and observations that are shared in this
paper have been collected either from the literature or from participant observation and
interviews of relevant stakeholders which have been previously reported (Renard, 2008).
Forensic DNA identication
Forensic science can be dened as the exploitation of science to support
law-enforcement and judicial decisions or as the study of crime and its traces (Roux et al.,
2012). Since the discovery by Jeffreys et al. (1985) that individuals can be uniquely
characterized by their DNA “ngerprints”, forensic DNA identication is used to
support criminal justice. A variety of technologies has been developed since then. The
standard technique used today leads to characterize individuals in terms of their “DNA
prole” (Gill and Buckleton, 2004).
DNA proles
For illustrative purposes, ctitious examples of DNA proles are given in Table I. The
headers of the table from L1 to L12 represent 12 “loci” (i.e. DNA is an elongated molecule
RMJ
25,3
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