Political correctness and crime
Posted January 2nd, 2008 at 11:52 AM by Jon HamA black prosecutor dislikes a DNA test that proved a perp was black and not white, and wishes the technology would just go away. Cops had been looking for a white guy in a white pickup truck for years until a molecular biologist told them there was no way the serial killer was white. They eventually caught the guy, but the prosecutor would rather have him on the street than use technology that helped him get a killer off the street.
As Bryan at HotAir rightly says:
Political correctness has turned too many good minds to goo.
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:18 pm
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January 2nd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Unbelievable. I can’t believe that a prosecutor would have disdain for a technology that allows one to get closer to the truth, particularly when lives are at stake.
We may soon see the day when genetic analysis and computational power are sufficiently advanced to allow quick (or even realtime) generation of a person’s phenotype (their overall physical appearance) from their genotype (their genes). Think of how it would reduce crime if you could take a sample of DNA from a crime scene, plug it into some sort of scanner, and receive an image of what the person probably looks like. (Minus variable factors such as weight, scars, hair length, height variability due to childhood nutrition, etc.)
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:32 am
That would be a good thing, but there is still human fallibility when it comes to DNA evidence. Reliance on DNA evidence means that law enforcement has to do a foolproof job with evidence collection, preservation, and chain-of-custody.