International Law

ACPO spokesman: Eugenics and kiddy printing - incompetence or spin ?

What is the the Association of Chief Police Officers of England Wales and Northern Ireland playing at ?

Either they have incompetent internal management systems for developing a consensus view on "policing policy areas", and then for communicating these to the wider public and the mainstream media, or they are guilty of NuLabour style media manipulation and spin, in support of a particular political or commercial agenda, despite claiming that the Police service is apolitical.

How did Gary Pugh get to become the ACPO spokesman on DNA ?

His quotations in The Observer, confirmed by the BBC as being accurate, seem to show that he is a proponent of Nazi / Soviet style discredited pseudo-science of Eugenics

'If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,' said Pugh. 'You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won't. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.'

There is no scientific evidence that anybody can predict the future behaviour of 5 year olds with any degree of accuracy. You would have thought that Gary Pugh with a degree in Chemistry, who is meant to be familiar with the science behind DNA profile fingerprinting, would be familiar with the statistical concepts of false positives and false negatives.

Full post as published by Spy Blog on March 17, 2008 (boomark / email).