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There are calls to stop Australian police from using a new technology it claims can predict what someone looks like — down to ancestry and facial features — for fears that it will be used for racial profiling. 

On Sunday the Australian Federal Police announced it has begun using “Massively Parallel Sequencing” (MPS) as part of its criminal investigations.

“The new technology … can provide predictions for visual traits of criminals from the DNA they leave at a crime scene allowing investigators to predict gender, biogeographical ancestry, eye colour and, in coming months, hair colour,” it said.

Two Australian academics, the Australian National University’s Dr Jenny Davis and Monash University’s Jathan Sadowski, want the use of this new technology halted pending further consultation with independent experts and communities.

In an open letter to the AFP, Davis and Sadowski outlined concerns that the technology would be used as a justification for racial profiling, while also noting that crime prediction tools have racial biases built into them. The pair has published the letter online, allowing others to add their names in support.

“We are concerned about the negative effects MPS will have on marginalised communities and on the credibility of the policing system,” they wrote.

Davis tells Crikey she was astounded to see the AFP say it was using the nascent technology. She says policing has a history of embracing “objective” technologies that end up reinforcing racism because of inbuilt assumptions. 

“There’s always been a tie between race, racism and policing,” she said.  

A 2020 paper published in the Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences about MPS documented a trial of Queensland detectives using the technology on four real criminal cases. In the workshops, detectives excluded 30% of suspects based on the technology but noted that participants frequently made errors.

“There was a high rate of correct interpretation and use of the MPS results; however, the frequency of errors suggest that detectives need support from a trained forensic biologist to ensure accurate result interpretation,” the paper’s authors wrote.

AFP has been contacted for comment about how it assessed MPS and how it intends to safeguard genetic information.