Governments that refuse police requests for more power, recruits, computers and Teddy Bear biscuits for morning tea risk a move to the opposition benches come election time. But running the state requires more that just saying "yes" to every demand from the law-and-order gang, as there is a need to protect civil liberties that can be lost during the electoral cycle.

In some [red]neck of woods they want police to capsicum spray jaywalkers, the stocks for shoplifters and the return of the guillotine for littering. They are the sort who think Gandhi was a troublemaker who should have worn proper trousers like the rest of us.

Then there are the requests from police that are so straightforward, so logical and so practical that to fail to act is an act of breathtaking stupidity. And we have fallen upon one that without doubt would solve thousands of serious crimes, make Victoria safer, expose the guilty and at the same time protect the innocent.

It costs little, is painless and could be up and running in weeks. Yet for some reason there are some public servant types who are clearly uncomfortable with the proposed change.

If police are right, these faceless bureaucrats are deliberately running dead to protect a position that would be roundly defeated if put to the voting public.

We are talking about a simple mouth swab that can link an offender to one of 11,000 unsolved crimes where an unidentified DNA sample has been identified and recorded. The crimes range from rapes and murders to serious assaults and burglaries – all just waiting for a forensic match.

In most states anyone charged with an indictable offence is photographed, fingerprinted and subjected to a DNA buccal swab inside the gob. But in Victoria we refuse to put our money (or buccal swab) anywhere near our mouth in an act of wilful stubbornness that only helps the guilty.

Under our rules, a sample is taken after conviction and then only on application to a court, which means our level of forensic capture is 23 times less than other states. Or putting it another way: Police estimate if our laws were consistent with the majority of states, DNA capture would jump to 70,000 from the present number of 3000 obtained on court order post conviction. (Exceptions include taking DNA when a person is suspected of a specific crime.)

In fact some prosecutors "don't bother" to make application to certain magistrates they feel routinely reject DNA submissions. Many of those orders are made after the offender has been released from custody, which means the crook is instructed to turn up to a police station for the test. This means many don't (would you if it would implicate you in unsolved crimes?) resulting in police wasting thousands of hours trying to find them.

Each year, police take the fingerprints of 69,000 suspects on arrest yet only DNA 3000 on conviction. This simply makes no sense, as both are unique physical patterns that can link a person to a crime. So why can you ink a thumb but not swab a mouth?

(And another thing. The law has just been changed so police can take DNA from a convicted sex offender without a court order but need court permission to do the same to a convicted murderer. How dumb is that?)

Take the 1993 case of a dreadful home invasion and rape in Shepparton that after 16 years looked unlikely to be solved. Then in 2009, Victorian detectives ran the last remaining sample through NCIDD, which matched a low-level crook named Neville Mansfield who had been arrested and convicted in Queensland of burglary. He was later sentenced 11 years for the rape.

Now reverse the circumstances. If he had been arrested in Shepparton over a burglary and the rape had been committed in Queensland, there would have been no forensic match and the crime would not have been solved. And if we in Victoria believe such mandatory DNA testing is a breach of human rights, why was the evidence against Mansfield accepted in his trial?

Apparently it is perfectly fine as long as we don't do it. What a pathetic cop-out.

Interstate police claim some of their crooks hide out in Victoria because they are unlikely to be DNA tested.

The former head of the WA Police DNA Unit, Grant Taylor, said Victoria was the "black hole" in the national data base. He said as many of those arrested were repeat offenders, one swab could solve, "five, ten or even 20 crimes". 

"When it was first introduced (nearly 20 years ago) we were able to solve crimes by the bucket load."

This shambles follows a long history of Victoria being forensically idiotic, with double murderer and serial rapist Raymond Edmunds a tragic case in point. In 1966, Edmunds killed teenagers Garry Heywood and Abina Madill in Shepparton – a crime that remained unsolved for 19 years until police found Edmunds' fingerprints matched those found at the crime scene.

He was fingerprinted in March 1985 after his arrest for indecent exposure in Albury. But if he had committed that offence just over the river in Wodonga he would not have been linked to the crime because at the time Victoria did not have mandatory fingerprint laws.

If Edmunds had been printed when first arrested in Victoria in the late 1950s his dabs would have been on file and would have later matched the Madill/Heywood murders, which would have stopped him committing more than 30 serious sexual assaults while undetected.

The civil libertarians who blocked that reform for years have blood on their hands because Edmunds didn't have ink on his fingers. And when the law was finally changed did, the criminal justice system collapse? Were the innocent persecuted? Of course not. It was all a storm in a herbal teacup.

Police are preparing for a change of the law, and new custody officers employed to supervise prisoners in police cells are being trained to take mouth swabs. And in forensics they are about to increase the number of boffins who process DNA from three to 70.

It is understood Police Minister Lisa Neville (she is getting a good rap from cynical coppers who don't have much time for politicians) is keen to bring Victoria into line with the rest of Australia, but someone is dragging the chain.

This is just one example of the disconnect from what police want to what politicians promise and what is finally delivered.

In August 2015, the government promised an "unprecedented crackdown" on organised crime with the introduction of anti-consorting laws designed to stop serious crooks meeting to plan criminal activities. "These new laws will ensure our state is well-prepared to deal with the forms of organised crime facing us in 2015. We will find them out, stop them in their tracks and keep Victorians safe," the government promised.

In July last year, there were similar headlines when the Criminal Organisations Control Amendment (Unlawful Associations) passed parliament with penalties of up to three years' jail and fines of $54,000.

The law, we were told, would target outlaw bikies, Middle Eastern crime gangs and known drug traffickers. These are the powers police had wanted for years – to disrupt crooks planning crimes before they committed them. Finally, police would be able to issue warning notices that if breached would result in arrest.

So more than a year down the track, how many Mr Bigs have been arrested? Well none. Mr Mediums? None. Mr and Mrs Small Fry? Zippity doo dah.

In fact not one notice has been issued (let alone a single prosecution) because you can drive a truck (or a Harley Davidson) through the legislation. The truth is the crooks are more in danger of getting a paper cut while reading the Act than doing jail time from breaching it.

In NSW they have issued more than 1000 notices and Queensland and South Australia are using identical laws. Here in Victoria the files are gathering dust.

You have to prove any meeting is to plan a crime or expand a criminal network, which really means proving a criminal conspiracy – a law that already exists. 

There are so many exclusions, such as family members and business associates, or gatherings for political or industrial reasons (can hitmen vote to work to rule?) the law is unworkable. Another exception is participating in education or vocational training, which presumably means bikies are free to plan drive-by shootings as long as they do it during TAFE-approved pottery classes.

The real trouble is sophisticated crooks work on national and global scales while we continue to muck about state by state. We need all police ministers and attorneys-general to agree to one standard criminal code. Then, and only then, will the headlines match reality.  

This story first appeared in The Age