Police Minister Lisa Neville said Victoria Police has 55,000 unmatched crime scene DNA profiles for heinous acts ranging from rapes and murders to serious assaults and aggravated burglaries. Loading Currently, oral DNA swabs are only taken after court approval once a criminal is sentenced. The offender is able to fight the application. “We know DNA is a more effective way for police to prosecute and solve crime – this will help bring down high harm and high volume crimes,” Ms Neville said. “By giving police these powers they’ll be able to quickly identify offenders, which will result in faster arrests and help reduce reoffending.

“These reforms will have a major impact - helping police solve thousands of unsolved crimes and helping to catch serious offenders more easily.” Interstate police say serial offenders have been hiding in Victoria for years because they know they won't be swabbed for their DNA. Under the new legislation, police say they would be able to solve historic rapes and murders and capture serial offenders, getting large volumes of crimes off the books. Following collection, the DNA profiles would be uploaded to the National Criminal DNA database for interstate comparison to help police identify suspects who may have offended interstate. Serious crimes include cases of sexual assault, murder, manslaughter, drug trafficking, serious assault and home invasion.

The opposition has previously indicated its support for such a change, saying it was long overdue. Other Australian states including South Australia, New South Wales and Western Australia already have similar legislation in place. It is understood Victoria had not introduced such legislation until now because of previous concerns about the reliablity of DNA testing, the huge cost and previous scandals over contamination. Victoria Police's forensic services department estimates that if the state’s DNA laws matched those of other states, within the first year the number of DNA reference samples in their database would rise from about 8000 to 70,000. The costs would be funded as part of the 2017–18 Victorian Budget which allocated $46.9 million to fund more specialist forensic officers and implementation costs, Ms Neville said.

The Justice Legislation (Police and Other Matters) Bill 2018 also aims to reduce the administrative burden on police and courts, she said. Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said the force currently had only a limited scope to obtain a DNA sample from a person suspected of committing an indictable offence. Police said if the bill was successful they would work with the state government to iron out the finer details such as method of collection, the likelihood of cold case breakthroughs and the time frame it would take for result matches to be flagged. "The proposed new powers will significantly increase the number of DNA samples taken annually from suspects, further enabling our ability to cross match with ‘person to crime’ and ‘crime to crime’ unsolved cases where DNA has been located at the scene of an offence," Mr Patton said. "These additional powers and the resulting increase in DNA samples will identify serious recidivist offenders and reduce the high harm and high volume crimes to better protect the community."

The bill states Victoria Police would be required to destroy the sample and remove it from DNA databases if a suspect is not charged with an indictable offence within 12 months, the charge is withdrawn, or not proceeded with, or the person is found not guilty. If a juvenile (15 to 17-year-olds) is found guilty of a specified offence, police must apply for a court order to retain their DNA as a safeguard measure. The youth DNA sample would also need to be be destroyed when the young person turns 26 if they have not committed another offence. A DNA sample carries genetic information passed on from biological parents. To obtain a sample, police typically use a mouth swab. Police first started freezing evidence that potentially hold DNA in the early 1980s, almost a decade before the technology was first used in an Australian criminal case.