Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says pro­vi­sions in the DNA Bill have been sim­pli­fied and will be user-friend­ly for po­lice of­fi­cers who will be trained and en­ti­tled to take blood sam­ples from peo­ple ac­cused of crimes. Ram­lo­gan said the ex­ist­ing DNA Bill had proven to be cum­ber­some and im­prac­ti­cal. He said the new DNA Bill was pre­sent­ed to Cab­i­net yes­ter­day and was ap­proved. The leg­is­la­tion will be pre­sent­ed to the Par­lia­ment at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty, along with the Elec­tron­ic Tag­ging Bill and the Abo­li­tion of Pre­lim­i­nary In­quiries Bill. Ram­lo­gan told the post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair that those three pieces of leg­is­la­tion would form an im­por­tant tri­pod in the fight against crime.

"We be­lieve that elec­tron­ic tag­ging of­fers op­tions that are not present­ly avail­able that can ease the over­crowd­ing in the jails that can al­low for dif­fer­ent op­tions with re­spect to the grant of bail at the Mag­is­trates' Court lev­el," he said. "It can al­so be an ef­fec­tive tool in sen­tenc­ing that can al­low peo­ple to re­main on the out­side but be ef­fec­tive­ly and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly mon­i­tored, us­ing the elec­tron­ic bracelet and GPS tech­nol­o­gy so that we can keep them out of the jail and from com­mit­ting crime again." The AG said the abo­li­tion of pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries would in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty of the mag­is­tra­cy to deal with mat­ters.

Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment had "done away" with the need for a court or­der to be ob­tained to take a DNA sam­ple, ex­cept in the case of those suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness­es or a mi­nor. "The po­lice will be en­ti­tled to take DNA sam­ples from ac­cused per­sons, sus­pects and de­tainees," he said. "We have, of course, ex­pand­ed the abil­i­ties of the po­lice, ex­cept where it is an in­va­sive sam­ple and you re­quire med­ical per­son­nel. "The po­lice will, in fact, be able to take that sam­ple and they will re­ceive prop­er train­ing to do that in cas­es where their pow­ers have been en­larged." He said a new clause had been in­clud­ed in the bill to take DNA sam­ples in the in­ter­est of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. He said the DNA data­base would al­low the Gov­ern­ment to have in its ar­se­nal, an im­por­tant tool in the fight against crime.