My son Otis was arrested in 2006 – the charge was for suspicion of spray painting a wall. At the time my son was fifteen years old, he was arrested while on his school lunch break still in school uniform.

My son has never broken the law, never even been suspended from school. The arresting officers decided to handcuff my son, throw him into the back of a police van and drive around Bristol for an hour – even to my place of work to let me know they had him. They then locked him up in jail for 12 hours while they searched his bedroom looking for evidence. Meanwhile they decided to take Otis’s fingerprints; mug shot and DNA They put him on bail for six weeks, and then dropped the case. My son was never convicted. They kept his DNA.

I asked the officer what evidence they had for arresting my son and his reply was that he fitted a description given to them of a “brown lad with curly hair”. My son is black and has an afro.

Keeping fingerprints and DNA wrongly labels my son and other black men and children as criminals.

Data shows that 57% of all DNA samples taken from innocent people in London are from black people and that 77% of young black men are on the database, compared with just 9% of Asians and just 6% of the white population. The database currently holds profiles for 4.4 million people.

No other country in Europe criminalises children at such a young age; no other country in the world has such an extensive database.

The painting gives my son and many other black males, their dignity and power back.