Who's Who? 100, 000 Bad records on DNA database

The complex relationship between the police, the National DNA Database Unit and the forensic service has left the UK's DNA database with at least 100,000 erroneous records, The Register can reveal.

Which makes the NDNAD Unit's admission in its annual report today that between 1995 and 2005 it failed to load 26,200 records to the DNA database because of errors sound trifling. 183 crimes went undetected as a result of this failure.

90 per cent of these 26,200 "load failures" only occurred after the NDNAD was linked [to] the Police National Computer (PNC) in 2001. After the link was created, new NDNAD records were routinely checked against the PNC and if they were found to be erroneous, were rejected.

But prior to 2001, most erroneous records were not being picked up and so were inputed direct [sic]onto the NDNAD, and are still there today, a spokesman for the NDNAD Unit admitted today.

"There's in the order of 100,000 unreconciled records now," said the source.

"We don't actually know," he said when asked exactly how many erroneous entries the database contains.

"There was a lower stringency on loading checks. There might have been an error but it wouldn't have been apparent," he added.