'The NDNAD Has No Ability in Itself to be Discriminatory': Ethnicity and the Governance of the UK National DNA Database

• Published in: Sociology (Oxford) Vol. 47; no. 5; pp. 976 - 992
• Main Author: Skinner, David
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.10.2013; Cambridge University Press
• Subjects: Bioethics; Black people; Classification; Crime; Criminal justice; Data Banks; Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; DNA fingerprints; Ethics; Ethnic Identity; Ethnicity; Forensic genetics; Genetics; Governance; Human genetics; Identity; Legitimacy; Management; Medical genetics; Neutralism; Police; Profiles; Racial discrimination; Racialization; Racism; Studies; Systemic racism; Talking; United Kingdom; United Kingdom > UK; databases; ethnic monitoring; forensics; genetics; ethnicity; race; bioethics; identity; institutional racism
• ISSN: 0038-0385; 1469-8684
• DOI: 10.1177/0038038513493539

This article explores the place of 'ethnicity' in the operation, management and contestation of the UK National DNA Database (NDNAD). In doing so, it examines the limitations of bioethics as a response to political questions raised by the new genetics. The UK police forensic database has been racialised in a number of distinct ways: in the over-representation of black people in the database population; in the classification of all DNA profiles according to 'ethnic appearance'; in the use of data for experiments to determine the ethnicity of crime scene DNA; and in the focus on ethnicity in public debate about the database. This racialisation presented potential problems of legitimacy for the NDNAD but, as the article shows, these have been partly neutralised through systems of ethico-political governance. In these systems of governance discussion of institutional racism has been postponed or displaced by other ways of talking about ethnicity and identity.