IN response to your report (LET, April 1) about DNA testing to catch the Witton Park rapist, the police authorities are to be applauded and encouraged in their persistent search for the perpetrator of this abhorrent crime.

However, what I feel it is important to point out - that was excluded from your article - is the very serious implications which DNA testing holds for society at large.

While acting Det Chief Inspector Neil Smith declared swabs were taken solely with subjects' consent, I am inclined to ask: "What if the subject refused?"

Such a refusal - while only asserting individual freedoms - may well result in an immediate suspicion of guilt, and subsequent interrogation.

So, the implication of such testing is an underlying assumption of universal guilt (for everyone that "fitted the rapist's general description"), which each individual needs to disprove in order to assert their innocence.

The changing criminal law effectively removes the old adage 'innocent until proven guilty,' allowing the authorities to penetrate into individuals' personal space and demand, not just an alibi, but scientific proof.

Under the Criminal Justice Act, police are empowered to take any 'intimate bodily samples' deemed necessary.

This may be undignified (urine, blood, etc.), and invariably displays a disregard of personal freedoms.

This is not a criticism of the police, but instead of the Government. Is this an inevitable result of scientific progress in conjunction with a criminal justice system which appears to place little importance on civil liberties?

JAMES SMITH, Rushbed Drive, Rawtenstall.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.