Investigating the Ethics of DNA Collection by CODIS

Abstract

America's criminal justice system has experienced controversy for decades and it seems as if the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), an FBI criminal justice database that stores the DNA profiles of millions of Americans, is a major contributor to it. Due to CODIS, an individual’s DNA is collected and permanently stored upon arrest, resulting in major red flags like privacy violations and marginalization. However, there are potential solutions - although each has its drawbacks - to this problem, in order of increasing efficacy: mandating the DNA collection of all Americans to alleviate biases, adopting a solely fingerprint-based system as forensic evidence, and terminating CODIS entirely.