A DNA database is set to be established in Slovakia, drastically improving the effectiveness of law enforcement.
The database, the country's first, will be launched January 1, 2003. DNA evidence is currently used by Slovak police only in isolated investigations.
Parliament is planning to pass a bill in the coming weeks empowering police to take DNA samples from arrested and detained persons, from people accused of crimes and from sentenced criminals and unidentified corpses.
The former head of Slovak detectives, Jaroslav Ivor, compared the expected impact of the DNA database to that of Slovakia's fingerprint database, established in 1990.
"From the moment the [fingerprint] database opened, several thousand cases were cleared up," he said.
