An ounce of prevention.

Sherlock Holmes, the great fictional detective, could study a single footprint and declare that the person who left it was bald, left-handed, spoke with a Russian accent, had recently eaten a supper of mutton curry, and carried a pearl-handled pocket knife in his blue, Harris tweed jacket. Such power of deduction may have been elementary in the make-believe world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who created Holmes; in real life, crime detection is a bit more complicated.

Today's detectives have high-tech wizardry available to them that would amaze even Mr. Holmes. The venerable old detective might also disapprove of the way in which police sometimes rely on this technology.

Science has revolutionized crime detection. In 1901, Brittain's Scotland Yard began using fingerprints as a means of Identifying criminals. No two people have the same patterns on their fingers; not even identical twins have identical fingerprints. There are 10 print patterns; 65% of peoples' prints are loops, and 35% are whorls. Leave a print behind on the murder weapon and they've got you.

Of course, the bad guys quickly learned to wear gloves to avoid helping out the detectives. But, some of them get sloppy and police still look for fingerprints. However, cops now use much more sophisticated detection aids; DNA printing is one of them.

DNA is the material that makes up the blueprint for a person's life. Each one of us has a unique DNA signature. If investigators can collect a sample of DNA (it's present in blood, saliva, semen, hair, etc.) at the scene of a crime and it can be matched exactly to the DNA of a suspect it might be a good time to consider a guilty plea and try to work out a deal with the prosecution.

Dutch police have developed a technique for identifying people by the way they smell. Humans exude a mass of fatty acids, the odours from which they cannot smell themselves. But dogs can identity them. It's possible, for example, to take a sample from a robber's handprint on a bank counter and to make an identification from it by its smell alone.

Humans have also been identified by their lip prints, footprints, and bites. Ear prints are also unique to each individual, so crooks now have to be careful about pressing too close to a door to listen for sounds behind it before breaking in.

It's been said that no one can be present at a crime scene without leaving something behind and taking something away. What's left and what's taken may be so small as to be invisible to the human eye, but powerful microscopes can find it. There's more than one con doing time today because microscopic fibres from carpets, clothing, or some other source linked them to the scene of a crime.

Forensic researchers are using computers to produce photographic images. They can employ this technique to "look under" a robber's face mask by reading the contours on the tightly fitting hood. And, computer-generated images drawn from the description of eye-witnesses are producing vastly improved "pictures" of suspects over those that used to come from the pen of a police artist.

Another recently developed weapon in the fight against crime is psychological profiling. This is usually used in tough crimes where the leads have gone cold. The technique rests on the belief that the way a person behaves reflects his or her personality. It's done in about 150 cases a year and it helps police by attaching a personality to an invisible criminal. Profilers try to establish a person's sex, race, age, occupation, lifestyle, marital status, intelligence level, education, childhood environment, social skills, grooming habits, and state of health. They do this by minutely examining the details of the way a crime has been committed and comparing those details with the known circumstances of earlier crimes. Police reckon on an accuracy rate of about 75%, but they don't like to talk too much about their methods. They've already noticed the occasional villain trying to throw them off the scent by constructing a false personality.

Profilers are also working on techniques to uncover where an, as yet unknown, criminal might live. Geographic profiling is based on statistical analysis of where crimes of a similar type take place. Through very sophisticated mathematics it's possible to pinpoint the area where it's most likely the criminal lives. As with psychological profiling, the key to this system is the known behaviour of criminals already caught.

But, no matter how good investigators get at catching crooks, a far more effective approach to dealing with crime is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Former FBI agent John Douglas is the expert on psychological profiling. He says the most vicious kind of serial killers "don't just wake up in the morning and say "This is a great day to murder somebody.' There is a lot of turmoil in the life of this person." There are clear signs that this person is likely to commit such a crime. The best time to deal with him is before he commits a crime, not after.

As former University of Ottawa criminology professor Irwin Waller writes: "The only lasting way to combat crime is to stop it before it starts. . . Crime rates are highest in poor, disadvantaged areas, where access to recreational, health, and educational services is minimal, where crowded and poor-quality housing exists, and where many young, single men live in these frustrating circumstances."

Knowing where most of our crime problems are coming from is a major part of the battle. And, primary school teachers ought to be the front-line troops in the opening skirmishes. One study of 400 boys showed that one in four 10-year-olds who were "troublesome" in school were later arrested frequently by the time they were 16. Among the kids who caused little trouble at school the arrest rate was one in 150.

So, teachers can identify many of those most likely to end up in handcuffs. If society intervened at this stage a lot of pain and expense would be saved later on. The children at risk need counselling and their families need support. Of course, such help is costly, and it's precisely the kind of service that budget-cutting governments in Canada are now slashing.

In Europe, the story is different. Several countries have redirected part of their crime budgets away from catching and custody, and toward intercepting would-be criminals before they commit their first offence. Techniques being used include neighbourhood policing - getting cops out of their cruisers and walking the beat where they get to know the people. The courts are making non-violent offenders do community service rather than jail time. Heavy attention is paid to working with young offenders and idle youth. At the same time, communities are being redesigned to reduce crime opportunities.

* France has a system of 900 local crime-prevention councils. These bring together police, housing officials, educators, family counselors, and private groups concerned with prison aftercare, and drug addiction. All these people work together in a coordinated way and their focus is on crime prevention.

* In the Netherlands, the unemployed are recruited to work as community guardians. They get a little bit of police training and a two-way radio. Then, they go out into the community and serve as street monitors, tourist guides, and mediators of petty disputes. They operate in more than 100 towns, and petty crime rates are down.

* Britain spent $60 million on its Safer Cities program, and reduced burglaries by 35%.

* Belgium, with a population of 10 million spends $160 million a year on crime prevention.

Canada spends almost nothing and has set up only a couple of dozen crime-prevention councils across the country. Governments are going for what seems like a quick fix - cops, courts, and corrections. But, in all the years we've been attacking crime after it's happened, we've seen our prison populations rise, the cost of policing increase, and the numbers of crimes in Canada reach 2.9 million in 1995. In its 1995 report, the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) said that Canadian governments have done almost nothing to rethink "their dependence upon the traditional reactive responses to crime. . ."

The NCPC has been urging Ottawa to divert just one percent of its justice budget to crime prevention. By late in 1996, there had been no response.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. A spin-off from the billions of dollars spent on military research in the U.S. is a device that it's hoped will be able to scan people to find out if they are carrying a concealed weapon. Police could carry the camera-like device and scan suspects from a distance. It's not in use yet, but would such a piece of equipment be an invasion of privacy, a violation of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches? Discuss.

2. University of Alberta criminologist Tim Hartnagel says: "I think there are connections between the way in which governments exploit public opinion about crime and electioneering." What do you think Mr. Hartnagel means? Do you agree with him?