Sherlock Holmes Examines DNA Database

Baker St W1: This is a one-pipe problem. Peering through a haze of tobacco smoke and opium at your 21st century, my mind is swamped by identity issues. Like who am I? What are all these computer screens for? And what's the matter with you all?

In my day we had fingerprints. These were very useful so long as criminals forgot to wear gloves. If they did, we were in trouble so we resorted to more scientific procedures.

Like rounding-up the usual suspects and birching them until they confessed to whatever they had or hadn't done wrong.

Then we took them to the Old Bailey where they enjoyed a fair trial followed by a packed lunch and another good old thrashing before being locked up for the night. The following morning, as dawn broke, we'd hang them. In the 1880s people dropped litter or forgot to pay their TV licence at their peril.

Nowadays you've discovered this very clever stuff called deoxyribonucleic acid. I really wish we'd known about molecular structures and the 'secret of life' in my day.

From a detective's point of view, the great thing about DNA is it's whereabouts all over the human body.

So even if a villain is wearing gloves, he dare not shed a hair from his head or a drop of moisture from his lips at the scene of the crime.

Smoke a cigarette and he leaves his DNA behind on the stub: that's him done for. Sneeze or spit onto a surface and he's a dead man. Scratch his arm or leg and he's had it. Ejaculate and he might just as well go straight down the nick and give himself up.

So when Dr Watson told me last night that you lot won't allow the police to keep a gigantic file of all your DNA, I was somewhat surprised. In fact I immediately called for Mrs Hudson and got her to nip down the cellar and bring up a bottle of absinthe.

Are you all raving mad? Think of all the time and trouble you'd save.

OK you're not all mad. Apparently you've got organisations like Liberty who don't want to see England turned into a Police State.

Liberty complain that the DNA database is an infringement of Liberty. They claim that a database breaks the 'golden' code of society: that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

"Too much Big Brother" they shout.

I know a bit about Big Brother having spent last night in a pub with George Orwell. George has got this thing about communism. He goes on and on about it.

Like Liberty he really doesn't appreciate all that control-freak stuff. He'd almost certainly have been close friends with the lovely Liberty boss Sami Chakrabarti.

So anyway, George was asking me about police work and this magic DNA stuff that appears to be getting everyone in a twist.

I told him that people who do wrong have to give a sample of their DNA. But that under a new law, unless you've been very naughty, the authorities will only keep the DNA for six years. Then they'll bury it in a deep hole and pour concrete all over the top.

George was pleased to hear this. He said he'd also heard about millions of CTTV cameras all over England: and that the word in the 'Upstairs Bar' was that this is the most watched country in the world. He declared that Mr O'Brien was alive and well and living in Westminster.

So then I poured another large absinthe and spouted forth.

From a detective's point of view, everybody is looking at this the wrong way round. Anybody giving DNA to a database should look upon it as a declaration of innocence.

If everybody who was innocent declared they were innocent by giving their DNA - they'd also be proving they were innocent. Unless of course they'd done something naughty.

This would have been particularly useful when looking for Jack the Ripper. It would also have helped find the Yorkshire Ripper. It would have saved a lot of hard work, wasted effort and quite a few lives of innocent victims.

Then I took a large swig of the booze and repeated something I'd often tried to ram down Dr Watson's throat years ago.

Police work is a bit like being a doctor. If you're not sure what's the matter with a patient - or who committed the murder - your best answer is to play the subtraction game.

Don't waste your time looking for who did it. Take the easy route and find out through DNA who didn't do it.

"When you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable,
must be the truth".


Author's PS: Not convinced about the wisdom of this but thought it worth a mention.

PPS:- This was fun to write. But it's utter rubbish.

Following a drink with a pal - Mr Stuart Mitchell - I now understand the problem.

A crook could run his fingers through my manly mane, tug a bit, and walk away with some of the hair from my head.

He could do this in the pub... on a football pitch.. anywhere...

He could then go somewhere else and commit a nasty crime (no details necessary).

As a cunning bastard, he'd then leave a few of my head hairs at the scene.

The police would then knock on my door...

End of... We don't want DNA data bases.