Plans to introduce a Police and Criminal Evidence Act have been welcomed by Commissioner Jonathan Smith who said a DNA database could be set up to crack more cases.

He said Police had been calling for reform for years and the PACE Act, based heavily on UK legislation, would remove ambiguities in procedure.

He told : ?It gives additional authority for law enforcement agencies to require intimate and non-intimate samples from suspects.

?One of the great attributes of PACE will be the establishment of a DNA database. It?s been very, very successful in England.?

Suspects arrested for non-minor crimes have to submit to a mucal swab with cells taken from the inside of the mouth for DNA analysis. It can then be matched up to DNA found at crime scenes.

?What happened in England was the detection rate for breaking and entering offences increased because there were more samples. When an offender breaks a window and cuts themselves they leave blood.?

It?s a simple breakthrough but absolutely vital, said Mr. Smith, particularly when the sample can be the only thing linking a suspect to a crime scene. PACE also covers the taping of interviews with suspects. Bermuda already has legislation covering this although implementation has been slow.

Mr. Smith said Hamilton Police Station would be ready in September.

Once the Southside station is completed every major Police station will have recording facilities while the new Hamilton Police station, which will be ready within three years, is having purpose-built interview rooms, complete with taping facilities.

Currently confessions are often written out longhand ? either by a Police officer or the defendant ? and are sometimes denied in court by witnesses who say they were misquoted or coerced. Audiotaping will remove the ambiguity, said Attorney General Sen. Larry Mussenden who believes the next step would be for videotaping of interviews.

?Once you have played a video the jury will be able to come to a conclusion very quickly about whether or not a person was willing to give a statement.?

Bermuda would take as much of Britain?s PACE Act as possible, said Sen. Mussenden, and only adapt it if there was an overriding need.

This would allow Bermuda to use UK precedents, said Sen. Mussenden, and get the most out of staff who had trained in the UK under PACE.

He said the PACE covered rights which affected everybody ? such as the powers of arrest.

?This affects you if you are coming home from a party on a Saturday night or you are being stopped somewhere for drugs. It removes the grey areas. The whole level of professionalism of the Police improves.

?This is going to require an enormous amount of training by the Police, by criminal defence lawyers, by Prosecutors. The Police are enthusiastic and fully behind it. PACE will set out how long defendants must be kept in custody before they are charged or released. ?The Police get a strict set of rules they know they can follow. Every time a Police team arrests an individual and they come to the Police station there will be a custody officer who is responsible for that person?s detention and treatment.

?Whether that person remains held or bailed rests with the custody officer. His care and treatment is with the custody officer.?

The custody officer reviews the case every few hours with reasons giving in writing to the defendant by a senior Police officer why they are being held longer.

Further detention requires the agreement of a magistrate.

Currently there are few checks and balances until the 72-hour mark is hit and a defence lawyer applies to court for their client to be released.

Defence lawyer Elizabeth Christopher said she was fearful PACE would interfere with the right to silence.

Currently defendants can remain silent when questioned by Police without anybody in a later court case drawing negative inferences from it. But under PACE they will be allowed to insinuate things if defendant had opted to keep quiet.