THE BRITISH PLOD have been adding 5,000 children to the DNA database every day, according to figures released by the Home Office.

A quarter of DNA swabs collected by police between October and January 2008 were from kids, according to data the government placed in the House of Commons Library early last month (but did not place in Hansard, its official record).

Jenny Willcott, the Justice spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrats, who asked for the data, said it represented nothing less than the "mass criminalisation of our children".

"Hauling thousands into police stations to keep their DNA on record for life is a grotesque overreaction to the problems caused by a very small minority of young people," she said.

The figures showed that police collected the details of over 200,000 children in the three months to January.

Helen Wallace, a campaigner at Genewatch, said that arrest targets were forcing the police to pick up kids for minor offences. The Police Federation has said this is also the reason why there is a disproportionate number of black men on the DNA database.

Wallace estimated that there were 100,000 children on the DNA database who had never been convicted or even cautioned for any crime.

The Libdems called for people who have not been convicted to be removed from the DNA database.

But Tony Lake, chief constable of Lincolnshire Police and the outgoing national DNA chief, insisted people should be kept on the database once they were there. Both the Ipswich murderer and the murderer of Sally-Anne Bowman were both found and convicted using DNA evidence gathered for minor offences, he said.

The trouble with the kids on the DNA database, he said, was that they were not so "young and innocent" as people made them out to be.

"There's a fairly hefty chunk of people who get arrested in their early teens. Many of those are repeat offenders. A person's criminal career starts at a young age," he said.

He said more criminological research needed to be done to understand the reasons why some children grow into criminals.

Dr. Priscilla Anderson, professor of childhood studies at the University of London, said the reasons were largely linked to poverty. Most people associated with crime came from deprived backgrounds.

And most of the kids put on the DNA database without a conviction were merely poor kids without anywhere else to go but the streets.

"If you are going to have a police database, at least have it record only convicted criminals," she said.

"Wouldn't it be better to be more supportive of young people who get into trouble instead of treating them like criminals," she said.

Chief Constable Lake said last year children could be stigmatised by having their details added to the DNA database.

But the police database is under heavier attack, with a case in the European Court of Human Rights challenging the right of the police to keep the records of people who commit minor offences for long periods.

The UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission said it was watching the case closely as well. It is deciding whether to sue the government over its storing the details of a disproportionate number of black men on the DNA database. µ