Universal DNA databases looming

Racial and ethical implications debated

DNA databases are great, aren't they? In the last few years, we've heard many a case of an innocent person, languishing in prison, being exonerated by newly discovered DNA evidence. Or, we hear of DNA solving a heinous crime, perhaps even a serial murder. (We see it even more often on TV crime dramas like CSI, but that’s a story for another day.)

DNA databases work best when they contain a lot of genetic data. So, why wait until people are arrested, or even convicted of a crime? Why not swab every single person at birth, before they grow up to commit a crime?

This is not far-fetched. Such a universal database is already underway in Portugal. And now, it's being debated in England, the country that started national DNA databanking a dozen years ago. British officials already have more than 4 million samples (7% of the population, the largest proportion of any nation), and a prominent judge this week proposed cataloging everyone, even visitors to the country.

Paradoxically, proponents of universal DNA banking cite concerns of justice and fairness. The current system amounts to racial and ethnic profiling, they say. Minorities make up far more than their share of those arrested. And even when they are subsequently proven innocent or released without charges, their genetic profiles remain. In England, more than three-fourths of young black men are in the database, compared with only about one in five young white men.

When the databases first caught on in the United States, the laws contained safeguards intended to prevent this. In many states, DNA was only collected upon conviction, and only for very limited types of crimes, typically murder and rape.

But politicians, always looking to boost their tough-on-crime credentials, have expanded DNA banking to an ever-increasing array of offenses. Most recently, laws are following the British trend of collecting DNA from people who are arrested but not convicted. The U.S. Justice Department may now collect DNA from everyone they detain, a policy that will hit immigration violators hardest.

Civil libertarians are up in arms. The expanded laws are creating near-universal DNA databases for black men, they say. As criminologist Simon Cole points out, "Some demographic sectors of American society, such as poor, black, inner-city males, have shockingly low probabilities of getting through adolescence without having at least one run-in with the police. If such encounters trigger inclusion in a DNA database, the database becomes discriminatory."

Opponents also point to the possibility of wrongful incrimination. Reports of errors at DNA laboratories are becoming more common. And the possibility that DNA evidence could be planted is ever more likely. In addition, DNA contains sensitive personal information that could be exploited.

In come cases, law enforcement agencies are utilizing DNA technology in ways that are outside of public awareness or judicial oversight. For example, in an ominous new trend, when investigators cannot match a DNA profile to a crime scene, they may look for close matches and investigate those individuals' family members. Thus, a minor brush with the law can ripple through an entire family.

"In a society in which young black males in some neighborhoods have a one-in-three probability of ending up in state custody at some time in their lives (and an even higher chance of getting an arrest record), the racial overtones of such a practice are dramatic," criminologist Cole notes.

Would a universal database solve discriminatory practices, as proponents claim?

That is unlikely, so long as our criminal justice system continues to disproportionately target certain sectors of the population. In the end, DNA technology could just provide one more powerful tool for discriminatory enforcement.

Thanks to Simon Cole, associate professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California, Irvine, for his excellent overview of this topic.

See also the American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics' web site, "DNA Fingerprinting and Civil Liberties."

Photo credit: Jovika (Creative Commons license)

Additional resources:

DNA and the Criminal Justice System: The Technology of Justice, David Lazer (MIT Press, 2004)

Rights and Liberties in the Biotech Age: Why We Need a Genetic Bill of
Rights, Sheldon Krimsky and Peter Shorrett(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005).

Senator Craig: "The breastplate of righteousness"

Much of the public debate surrounding Larry Craig's arrest centers on whether the senator is "gay." This completely misses the boat.

Back in the 1960s, a sociologist named Laud Humphreys conducted groundbreaking research into bathroom sex, or so-called "tearoom trade." He watched men engaging in sex in 19 public restrooms around St. Louis, Missouri. He surreptitiously noted their license plate numbers and later knocked on their doors in the guise of conducting an innocuous social sciences survey.

His findings, confirmed in more recent research, are that most of the men were married, religious, socially conservative, and heterosexually identified.

In other words, they were just like Senator Craig.

In fact, married men who engage in public sex are not only conservative; they often exhibit an exaggerated form of propriety. They drive late-model cars that are clean and polished, they maintain well-manicured lawns, they are impeccably groomed and dressed, and they attend church regularly. In short, they present themselves as proper, moral, and pious.

Although public sex is risky for these men, it allows them to maintain this veneer, which Humphreys labeled the "breastplate of righteousness."

As Humphreys' research demonstrated, public sex has been around a long time, and it is pervasive. Police have been stymied in their efforts to eradicate or even reduce it. In response to this longstanding dilemma, the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) has published an interesting manual on how to control such "illicit sexual activity in public places."

An innovative solution proposed in the manual, which only works if a community is amenable, is to tolerate some amount of public sexual behavior in clearly delineated areas, as is the practice in certain European communities.

Less effective, the manual cautions, is the decoy approach used on Craig:

"While using undercover officers to pose as interested parties in illicit same-sex public activity can lead to many arrests, such operations have not had long-term effectiveness in reducing overall activity levels. At best, they temporarily displace the activity to other locations, and the activity usually returns to prior levels once the operations have ceased. Further, given the active role that undercover officers must take to confirm suspects' intentions, the police may be vulnerable to entrapment claims. In addition, many officers are reluctant to serve as decoys because of the customary behavioral scripts they must follow. Finally, some may see the serious social consequences of the publicity following an arrest as disproportionate to the severity of the offense."

For a social science perspective on the Craig scandal and its relevance to issues of sexual identity, denial, and prejudice, see Gregory Herek's insightful blog post, "Tearooms, Labels, and Double Standards."


Photo credit: cybertoad (Creative Commons license)

Additional resources:

Humphreys, L. (1970). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places. New York: Aldine Publishing Co.

Johnson, Kelly Dedel. Illicit Sexual Activity in Public Places. 2005. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

Nardi, P.M. (1995). "The Breastplate of Righteousness": Twenty-Five Years After Laud Humphreys' Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places. Journal of Homosexuality, 30, 1-10.

Desroches, F.J. (1990). Tearoom Trade: A Research Update. Qualitative Sociology, 13, 39-61.

Dignan, J. 2004. Manhunt. Sacramento News & Review, (2004).

Frankis, J., & Flowers, P. (2005). Men who have sex with men in public sex environments: A systematic review of quantitative literature. AIDS Care, 17, 273-288.

The Wall Street Journal's online edition links to the above post.

The ongoing debate: Does sex offender treatment work?

In the wake of the attempted rape arrest of a man who had spent eight years in sex offender treatment, Vanessa Ho of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a thoughtful article about the controversies surrounding the efficacy of sex offender treatment:

… While the overall climate for sex offenders has radically changed - with longer sentences and more restrictions - treatment has largely remained static, relying on the same cognitive-behavioral methods introduced in the 1980s.

"It's an ongoing question, there's no two ways about it," said Roxanne Lieb, director of the Washington State Institute of Public Policy, on the effectiveness of treatment. "Certainly, it's not a cure-all," she said.

Last year, Lieb's office released a study that found that Washington's prison treatment program for male sex offenders - one of the largest in the nation - had virtually no effect on reducing recidivism rates.

The study echoed a landmark 2005 study, in which researchers found that a California hospital program for confined sex offenders had no significant impact on curbing repeat crimes.

Both studies, however, have detractors who point to other studies showing that treatment works....

The full story, along with some nice graphs, is available online.

The fascinating tale of San Quentin's murals

. . . another reason not to tear down the walls

A couple of years ago, while dining in San Quentin's cafeteria, I found myself surrounded by the most amazing, multifaceted murals I have ever seen. Painted in muted sepia tones, they ranged from pastoral scenes of California history to surrealist chaos. No matter where I stood in the cavernous hall, the eyes of a gypsy woman appeared to watch me from one of the enormous, floor-to-ceiling murals.

Until recently, the murals were shrouded in secrecy. Almost no one outside of prisoners and guards had seen them, and few knew anything about the man who had painted them. San Quentin's prisoner rolls from the 1950s are long gone, so prison officials had only a name - Alfredo Santos.

The murals' sophistication, and the fact that such subversive imagery of the working class was painted during the McCarthy Era, intrigued the few art historians who knew of the work. People speculated about the artist. Some thought he might have been an apprentice to the WPA artists who painted the famous Coit Tower frescoes in the 1930s. Others speculated that he must be dead.

"You look at the magnitude of what's on those walls, and it's hard to accept that a muralist of his caliber, if he were still alive, could just vanish," an art historian told a journalist a few years ago.

About a dozen years ago, San Quentin spokesman Vernell Crittenden blew a chance to solve the enduring mystery. He got a call from an ex-convict claiming to be the artist, and asking to come and photograph the murals. Crittenden turned him down.

"I essentially blew him off, and, to be honest, I've regretted it ever since," recalls Crittenden (who happens to be a very nice man).

The murals remained a mystery for another decade. Indeed, if Marin County developers had gotten their way a few years ago, the prison might have been torn down before the outside world ever learned of Santos and the art treasures he created inside California’s oldest prison.

Another hazard has been the setting. Over the decades, steam from the prison kitchen has taken its toll. In the late 1960s, the prison tried to restore the art by applying a protective coating, but it made the original reddish oil turn brown. In the 1990s, the room's skylights were removed in another effort to prevent fading. More recently, as San Quentin has seen an influx of shorter-term prisoners, vandalism has become a problem.

Suddenly, however, the prison murals have been discovered, and Santos is enjoying a burst of fame. The New York Times carried a feature, with an amazing online slide show. An art studio in the Catskill Mountains of New York is currently featuring a retrospective on the artist, now 80 years old and living on Social Security in a small apartment his native San Diego.

So, who was the artist, and what is his story?

Alfredo Santos was the son of a carpenter and union organizer who imbued in his son the socialist spirit manifested in the murals. Santos began getting into trouble in high school, and by the time he entered San Quentin at age 24 to serve time for transporting heroin, he’d already done a stint in federal prison for smuggling immigrants from Mexico.

Two years into his term, he had the good fortune to win a prison competition for the right to paint a mural in the dining hall. He spent the next two years (from 1951-1953) on the project. As he did so, he honed what was to become his lifelong profession.

"I was always going to be an artist," he told journalist Ron Russell in 2003. "In that sense [San Quentin] was good for me. It was really the first time I could focus on what I wanted to do without any distractions."

But upon his release he hid his remarkable feat from others.

"The murals are something I never cared to talk about publicly because I didn't want people to know that I had gone to prison as a young man," Santos said.

He went on to become a successful artist. For a time, he was on the lam and living in Guadalajara and Mexico City, where he thrived as an artist; he eventually settled in a small town in the Catskills, where he had an enthusiastic following.

A longtime patron and friend recalled the scene back in the early 1970s.

"People would come and watch him work and just hang out and talk politics, art - you name it. There was always a crowd. It was its own little world, with Alfredo the charismatic central figure."

Now, thanks in large part to the notoriety over his prison murals, Santos is coming full circle - returning to the small towns of Fleischmanns for a long-overdue celebration of his work.

Photo credit: CommandZed (Creative Commons license)

The New York Times has an interactive slide show that is well worth checking out.

Photographs of the murals are available for purchase at another site.

A friend has set up a website dedicated to Santos' artwork.

Ron Russell's excellent overview of Santos' life is at the San Francisco Weekly.

Art et cetera is the Catskills studio currently featuring Santos' work.

Astronaut to claim insanity

Last year saw two high-profile insanity cases - Lee Boyd Malvo and Andrea Yates. Next up, it looks like we will be seeing an insanity trial for Lisa Nowak.

Remember the case? Nowak is the astronaut who assaulted a romantic rival back in February. She armed herself with pepper spray, a steel mallet, a knife, and a BB gun, then drove 1,000 miles - wearing diapers so she would not have to stop for bathroom breaks - to confront the girlfriend of a former space shuttle pilot she had dated.

In court papers released yesterday, Nowak's attorney gave notice that he intends to use the insanity defense. He plans to call two Texas psychiatrists, including Dr. Richard Pesikoff, who testified in Andrea Yates' successful insanity defense in the drowning of her five children.

The experts are anticipated to testify that Nowak was suffering from major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, severe insomnia, and "brief psychotic disorder with marked stressors" at the time of the offense. One news report said Nowak was also diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder, a condition with autistic-like symptoms that causes problems with social skills and can lead to eccentric behavior.

"Even the most naive observer should recognize that Lisa Nowak's behavior on February 5 [2007] was uncharacteristic and unpredicted for such an accomplished person with no criminal record or history of violence," her attorney said in a separate public statement.

A Navy captain and pilot who was fired as an astronaut after her arrest, Nowak is charged with attempted kidnapping, battery and burglary with assault. She is out of custody pending trial, wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet.

Under Florida law, the burden is on the defense to prove insanity by clear and convincing evidence. To prove insanity, the defense must show that the defendant had a mental disorder that either (1) made her unaware of what she was doing or its consequences or, (2) caused her not to realize that the behavior was wrong.

Unfortunately, high-profile insanity cases like this one skew public perceptions of the insanity defense.

In reality, the insanity defense is rarely used. Once it is invoked, proving that someone did not know the difference between right and wrong is extremely difficult. One eight-state study found that the defense was used in less than 1% of cases, and was successful only about one-fourth of the time. In 90% of the successful cases, the offender had been psychiatrically diagnosed prior to the crime. To public knowledge, Nowak was not previously diagnosed with a severe mental disorder.

Another public misconception is that successful use of the insanity defense allows people to "get off" for the crime. In reality, most insanity acquittees are sent to locked state hospitals that look very much like prisons. They often spend more time locked up than if they had been convicted of their crime.

More information on the insanity defense is available at Wikipedia. A forensic psychologist colleague of mine, Paul Mattiuzzi, has an interesting take on Nowak's case on his blog.

Pioneering police psychologist (and In the News subscriber) retiring

From the Modesto (Calif.) Bee:

In the mid-1970s, Phil Trompetter decided he needed a better understanding of what the police officers he knew experienced every day in the field.

At the time, Trompetter was a clinical psychologist for Stanislaus County's mental health department. The laws had changed. The center could take in only those deemed a danger to themselves or the public. The rules created a tension between the mental health staff and the cops because some people clearly in need of help could not be held for treatment. They were back out on the streets, where the police were left to deal with them.

"The relationship between law enforcement and mental health was horrible," he said. "So I decided to start riding patrol with our (sheriff's) deputies, to listen to their stories, and explaining to them what's happening."

That was the beginning of his 30-year career as the shrink to law enforcement officers in Stanislaus County, a ride that made him a key player in every major critical incident here during that time, including the shooting death of an 11-year-old during a law enforcement raid and the Peterson case.

It's a ride that is coming to an end because he sold the police psychology part of his practice and is retiring, or at least semiretiring.

Trompetter, 63, will maintain the forensic psychology element of his downtown Modesto practice, continuing to evaluate defendants and suspects while serving as an expert witness in the courts.

The rest of the interesting story of Dr. Trompetter’s career is online at the Modesto Bee.